Wikidata

Wikidata:Property proposal/context of death

< Wikidata:Property proposal

context of death edit

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Person

   Not done
Descriptionthe person died in the societal context
Data typeItem
Domainhuman (Q5)
Allowed valuesinstance/subclass of occurrence (Q1190554)
Example 1George Floyd (Q95677819) → US police violence (Q96442197)
Example 2Tamir Rice (Q57339968) → US police violence (Q96442197)
Example 3Anne Frank (Q4583) → The Holocaust (Q2763)
Example 4Wat Tyler (Q311820) → Peasants' Revolt (Q498871)
Example 5John Jacob Astor IV (Q430672) → sinking of the RMS Titanic (Q2577588)
Example 6Wilfred Owen (Q212719) → Battle of the Sambre (Q1345169)
Example 7Michèle Kiesewetter (Q94744511) → National Socialist Underground murders (Q369336)
Example 8James Scurlock (Q97328628) → George Floyd protests (Q95965839)

Motivation edit

Prior discussion: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Project_chat#How_should_we_note_that_George_Floyd_(Q95677819)_was_killed_by_police?

We currently have no good way to model the context in which a person died. As a result it's not listed on items such as George Floyd (Q95677819) which makes it hard to query for all instances of US police violence. Sometimes constructions with instance of (P31) are used for holocaust victims but it would be more desireable to not overload instance of (P31) for those as well and have a decidated property.

I used the new item US police violence (Q96442197) to be able to neutrally describe a situation without making a judgement about whether the use of force is excessive (given that's criminal, such claims should ideally be sourced with court judgements). It might be possible to import data about fatal shootings from https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings which make no judgement about whether or not the use of force was justified or excessive.

I put the country in the item because it's not just important that a US citizen was killed but also that the killing happened in the US. We might also have narrower items for individual cities. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 11:07, 19 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]


Discussion edit

George Floyd (Q95677819) didn't die in George Floyd protests (Q95965839). His death caused George Floyd protests (Q95965839) which is a very different relationship. It also doesn't help with the use-case of querying for people who died to US police violence. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 14:58, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Yes true, I was just seeing it the social context, so why US police violence, not police violence in general or why not Black Lives matter Germartin1 (talk) 16:52, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Given subclass relationships you can query for police violence (Q96441150) even when the item is noted as US police violence. If you only care for Black victim you can narrow your query via ethnic group (Q41710). I consider it very desireable that there's a clear way to query for all deaths by police violence in a certain city and that would not be possible by setting the context as Black Lives matter. That said, I don't think there should be a single value constraint and it's fine if somebody who likes to think in terms of Black Lives matter and maybe also care for violence that's not directly done by police officiers where Black people are victims to set Black Lives matter as an additional value. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 17:27, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Support more to the point than "significant event" that is currently used a lot to model this. All for it! Moebeus (talk) 16:43, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Comment I'm not sure. I would use it for the project I'm working on collecting profiles from newspapers on Covid-19 victims but I think I would also continue to add it as a significant event since there are also profiles on people who recover, and it remains a significant event to those they leave behind. The entire group of people impacted by an event can be tagged the same way. That a significant event strongly correlated with the person's death can already be deduced from the proximity in time. 1Veertje (talk) 09:36, 1 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think systematic use of "significant event" would work as an alternative, but only if we can work out a consistent qualifier to clearly say "death connected to this event", and I don't think we currently have that. Relying on making the connection by date would get tricky for things with very long time-spans (eg it would be good to record people who died in the context of The Troubles (Q815436), but that lasted 30+ years) and might not be possible for generic events without specific timeframes like "police violence". Andrew Gray (talk)
Samples:
  • cancer death: #1/#2 we have a reference for both, #3: use "cause of death",
  • red heads killed on Mondays: #1 references are available, if #2 would be a yes, #3 would indicate to query manner of death, date of death and hair color instead. --- Jura 17:15, 14 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  •   Strong oppose. The 'context of death' is rarely an obvious thing. Anne Frank, for instance, was clearly a victim of the Holocaust, but equally validly the victim of antisemitism in general, German antisemitism in particular, xenophobia at its most general and Nazism in particular. And that's a clear-cut case in comparison with instances where one context is the pretext or means of another, such as a regime forcibly conscripting a certain ethnic group, or where multiple parties have different contexts to effect someone's death. For the latter, consider the killing of Hafizullah Amin (Q63831) as part of Tajbeg Palace assault (Q975430): the proximate contexts alone are numerous – the dispute between the Khalq and the Parcham, rivalries inside the Khalq, the Soviet Union's desire for a more reliable leader in Afghanistan, Soviet expansionism and so on. The biggest problem is that these reasons can often be quite controversial in a way that is not capable of sensible resolution. If Country A attacks Country B in retaliation for Country B's claimed violations of its sovereignty, is the death of an A-ese soldier at the hand of a B-ian unit taking place in the context of 'B's aggression against A', the 'A-B war' or 'A's aggression against B'? There's a Pandora's box here that is best left unopened. Equally, there might be quite valid disagreement as to the attribution of systemic causes. Bonnie and Clyde were in a sense victims of police violence, and in a sense their deaths also took place in the context of a crime spree they were wholly responsible for. I am unsure if this concept, as broad as it is, could be useful. Narrower incarnations, such as 'died at/in' (for battles, events, terrorist attacks and the like) could cover some ground. So could 'notable events'. The issue of deaths is already controversial enough, e.g. a number of people murdered during purges or the Holocaust were killed under the color of law and so their manner of death lists 'capital punishment' when arguably murder might be more appropriate. Including the context of death would invite a much more complex situation. Ari T. Benchaim (talk) 00:21, 17 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@ChristianKl: I appreciate that. My key concern is that there can be more than insignificant disagreement - and valid disagreement at that - as to what the most specific cause is. Is the Nazi repression of dissent or the German resistance the more 'proximate' context of the Scholls' deaths, for instance?
  Not done Too many open questions, lack of consensus --Emu (talk) 21:47, 13 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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