Talk:List of HIV-positive people

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This article is a current featured list removal candidate because it may no longer meet the standards of style, usefulness, and completeness to be a featured list. Please add a comment to support or contest its removal, or improve the article by being bold.

	List of HIV-positive people is a featured list, which means it has been identified as one of the best lists produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do.
List milestones Date Process Result October 12, 2006 Peer review Reviewed October 19, 2006 Featured list candidate Promoted Current Status: Featured list

Archives

*Archive 1

Contents 1 Junk removed 2 Feature? 3 Some quick analysis 4 Unsourced 5 "Famous"? 6 Tommy Morrison 7 Alexander Wilson (writer, horticulturist) 8 Jeffrey Mylett 9 Sources 10 Eve van Grafhorst 11 Outrageous 12 Criminal transmission still notable? 13 Ed Savitz 14 James Dressel 15 Tony Azito reference? 16 Suggestions for additions

[edit] Junk removed

I saw this page and much useful information had been replaced with rubbish so I reverted it. That's my IP address on the edit; apologies for not logging in first. Feel free to delete this section of the talk page. Naptastic 05:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC) Naptastic

[edit] Feature?

Now that Garion96 has brought it up to scratch, how about nominating this as a featured list? Trezatium 14:32, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Or at least aiming to do so in the near future. I don't think it's quite there yet, as it's not totally comprehensive, and some of the "Comments" could do with improvement. Trezatium 14:47, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Not yet. Although it was indeed my plan to do in the near future. :) The comments need to be improved and the intro needs to be expanded. A mention for instance the impact AIDS/HIV had on the arts. Garion96 (talk) 15:16, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it might be a good idea to mention that HIV has disproportionately affected artists and entertainers, but I've been unable to work out how to integrate such a sentence into the current introduction. Also, such a comment would have to stress that the phenomenon only applies to the USA and some other Western countries, because it's not true globally. Trezatium 20:19, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I guess it's better to leave it as it is. Perhaps that would be more fitting for a seperate article (if someone ever decides to write that). Since this list is not only for the entertainment industry. Garion96 (talk) 11:08, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some quick analysis

The list now has 271 entries, compared to 149 on September 29th. Of these, 42 people (15%) are living. The word "American" appears 176 times (two times for every three entries). "British" appears 22 times; "English", 6; "Canadian", 19; "French", 15; and "South African", 12. Trezatium 19:12, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Considering this is the English Wikipedia, it's still more of an international list than I thought. Garion96 (talk) 11:08, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

The list is now up to 306 entries, with (approximately) 189 Americans (62%), 25 British/English people (8%), 19 Canadians (6%), 12 South Africans (4%), 10 French people (3%) and 5 Australians (2%). Note that some entries don't specify nationality. Trezatium (talk) 11:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I've fixed eight of the nine entries that omitted nationality. That brings the American total to 196 (64%) and the Canadian total to 20 (7%). Trezatium (talk) 11:26, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unsourced

Regarding the list of unsourced names, I've tried most of them in Google, newspaper online archives (New York Times, Toronto Star, The Times and The Australian), Randy Shilts' And the band played on (index and Amazon full text search), and even a book about the AIDS Quilt. Any alternative suggestions are welcome. Trezatium 14:08, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Famous"?

Shouldn't this be renamed to List of famous HIV-positive people? -- Jeandré, 2006-10-31t11:45z

That's a reasonable suggestion. However, when we debated the inclusion criteria in the featured list discussion it was decided that "notability" was implicit, "since it is a basic rule on Wikipedia that lists of people cannot include non-notable people", and because it's common sense that no such list would try to include all of the 65 million eligible people. Some lists included in Category:Lists of people do have the word "famous" in their titles, but personally I think it's unnecessary. I'm unaware of any guidelines on this issue. Trezatium 20:36, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tommy Morrison

I've removed Tommy Morrison because his HIV status is uncertain (see this recent news story). Given that he's a living person, I think it's best to omit him unless and until he is confirmed to be truly infected. False positives can occur, as can laboratory mistakes. Trezatium 21:16, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Alexander Wilson (writer, horticulturist)

I added Alex Wilson, hopefully correctly. Here's the reference that refers to his having died with AIDS:

• Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives; Church & Wellesley: Photos. Accessed 28 April 2006.

Pinkville 21:27, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your contribution. I'm not sure that the reference you cited is entirely reliable. I've replaced it with another reference, though I'm not entirely convinced about that one either. It would be great if someone could find a photo of the memorial or a news article that clearly mentions his cause of death. Trezatium 20:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your added reference. Writing the stub article on him I ran into a common problem for people prominent in the 1980s and early 1990s - they're not recent enough to have many traces on the Internet, and not old enough to have many traces in printed matter... Pinkville 21:25, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jeffrey Mylett

Someone suggested Jeff for this list on the article's talk page. The best source is IMDB mentioned on that page. But it seems over my head technically to see how to add him to this list. Cott12 Talk 22:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment, but unfortunately IMDB doesn't qualify as a reliable source (as previously discussed). Trezatium 20:18, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

Liberace Source: his entry in Wikipedia
Rock Hudson Source: his entry in Wikipedia, common knowledge, and every newspaper in the USA —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dick Kimball (talk • contribs). 19:13, 22 February 2007

Wikipedia can't use itself as a reference and every newspaper is too vague. However it's not necessary since both those entries are already in the list and sourced. Garion96 (talk) 18:19, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Eve van Grafhorst

Eve van Grafhorst should be added here - i just don't know which section. PMA 11:25, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Eve is already listed under List of HIV-positive people#Miscellaneous. Rossrs 02:00, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Since PMA added a duplicate entry for van Grafhorst in the "AIDS activists" section, I've removed her from the "Miscellaneous" list. Trezatium 10:12, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Outrageous

I feel as though I'm going insane on seeing this list. There are 39.5 million people as of 2006 living with AIDS/HIV, according to UNAIDS/WHO. What is the point of Wikipedia listing the tiny number of them who have been mentioned in a newspaper? Some of them are still living, and some did not volunteer the information about themselves. This list is surely a BLP violation at best, and arguably deeply immoral. I was going to nominate it for deletion but then I saw it was a featured list, so there may be no point in nominating it. Can anyone explain how Wikipedia is improved by having it? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

For a prior discussion for and against such lists, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people with hepatitis C. The discussion on Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of HIV-positive people was totally supportive. Where does it violate WP:BLP? The sources used are first-rate.

Similar comments were posted on Talk:List of people with epilepsy. As a result of reading WP:BLP, I reviewed that list and performed an audit on the living people mentioned. You'd be surprised how open and campaigning these famous-names are. They are often actively recruited by charities to help remove stigma and help with awareness campaigns. If listing famous people with XYZ condition was "deeply immoral", then I'm sure the XYZ-condition charities wouldn't do it themselves. Colin°^Talk 22:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem is called Yad Vashem, a name and a place. At the center of the front page on the website there is a way to search and add names to the list. Being listed and remembered is a good, humanizing thing. Jehochman (^talk/_contrib) 22:57, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I knew I'd end up wishing I hadn't asked. List of people with hepatitis C? List of people with epilepsy? :-(

How about List of people with horrible noses/list of people we should beat up/list of people who maintain unpleasant lists?

Feel free to browse through Category:Lists of people by medical condition and Category:Lists of people by proposed medical condition and Category:Lists of people. I tried to kill (prod, afd) some lists, sometimes it worked sometimes not. Often the best thing is to source those lists and stop incoming unsourced crap. Which was the reason I worked on this list to clean it up from an unsourced mess. This article I do think is important, considering the stigma people get when having HIV. It's been a while since I worked on this list, but I don't they are many people on this list who are not open about their condition. Perhaps only in the pornographic film industry section (from that section I think a bunch of the actual articles should be deleted) and the Criminal transmission of HIV section. Garion96 (talk) 23:20, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, some of them are open about their conditions, but some are not, and this list mixes them up. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

SlimVirgin, can you give any examples of those who aren't open about their condition? Per the discussion at the Hepatitis C AfD, it looks as though a requirement for listing here would be that they (or their surviving families) are open about it. I don't think the tone of the article is in any way disrespectful or "stigmatising" of sufferers, but I agree that listing people here who were 'outed' as HIV-positive without their prior consent would be a BLP violation (except in cases of criminal transmission). That would be a reason to remove them from the list, but not a reason not to have the list at all. --YFB ¿ 00:32, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I think a concern that, despite the impeccable sourcing, is prevalent is that some of these people are not necessarily hyper-public figures; this Wikipedia articles puts them at the top of Google searches where they would not be otherwise and contains very sensitive information that, while is public (such that we could get it), would not otherwise be compiled in such immaculate detail. It is rather insensitive to those who are listed on it. --Iamunknown 23:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

True, we already tried to solve that a bit by not accepting red links in this article. I also think some articles of the people on this list could be deleted. Garion96 (talk) 23:28, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

This type of list occasionally attracts some very hot criticism so here's the background on its genesis. A bit more than a year ago I started Wikipedia's first featured list of this type: List of notable brain tumor patients. That was a revised and reverified version of a similar list I had compiled and circulated during my father's illness, and which had received an enthusiastic reception in the patient and caregiver community because it was several times larger and better referenced than any previous list of its type. A leading brain tumor charity even contacted me to request the original list and has since reproduced excerpts from it in its publications. All of the information from that list was released voluntarily by the patients and/or surviving familiy. Brain tumors strike people of any age and have surpassed leukemia as the leading cause of childhood cancer deaths in the United States. That list serves a useful purpose for parents and teachers who want to humanize the condition and combat its stigma. It also provided reassurance to patients of all ages who wanted to feel that they were not alone. With the advantages of collaborative editing at Wikipedia, that list has grown far larger than I had been able to compile alone.

Other editors who had a similar respectful interest in other ailments have followed this example. The editors who have worked on this list have impressed me with the same attention to dignity and discretion that I paid and that these subjects demand. I respect the expressed concerns and affirm with confidence that, to the best of my knowledge, these lists serve a purpose and BLP concerns have been adequately addressed. Durova^Charge! 01:49, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

It's true that articles like this are actually a good thing and helps de-stigmatise diseases. Not mentioning it or deleting this article will only have the opposite effect. I congratulate the creators for such an exquisite article. Christopher Connor 14:47, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

This kind of list is absolutely disgusting, I agree 100% with SlimVirgin. They didn't choose to have this disease, they didn't want it. This list will serve only one thing : emphasize the disease and remove all the rest. Making a differences between "famous people" and "famous HIV Positive people" is an insult for all HIV Positive people. It's nazi, nothing else, nothing more. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.210.78.36 (talk) 01:29, August 27, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criminal transmission still notable?

Hi. I was just passing by this article the other day and happened to have a news story about a new criminal conviction at hand. I added the fellow to the criminal transmission section and also added a link to Trevis Smith. I've just noticed that both additions were deleted pretty quickly although Trevis Smith's original entry under Sports remains, even though his bio is almost entirely consumed by his conviction. Any idea why? Has criminal convictions for this no longer notable? Is it only notable in Canada seeing as most of the criminal-transmission entries are from Canada? Searching for such convictions is not something I do regularly but I'm curious as to the rationale for inclusion/deletion. Canuckle 22:14, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

While waiting for dialogue on guidelines on notability criteria for criminal transmission, I've added a See also: Criminal transmission of HIV to that section of the list. It does seem like the section that stands out the most from the others, the people listed are involuntarily notable and always better to be cautious when the courts are involved. Canuckle 00:35, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

One of the criteria for inclusion in this list is a corresponding article in Wikipedia. If you know of any notable HIV-positive people not currently in the list, for whom you can supply at least one reliable reference, then please go ahead and create an article on them and then add them to the list. Alternatively, post the name and the reference on this talk page and I or someone else will do the rest. But please ensure that you have a reliable reference, especially if the person in question is still alive.

With regard to Trevis Smith, we need to determine what he is most notable for: either being a sportsman or being convicted for criminal transmission. Personally I don't know nearly enough about Canadian football to make a judgement on this issue. Trezatium 12:06, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Trevis Smith is notable due to his status as a professional athlete (even if in the low-profile linebacker position). However, if he won awards I haven't seen that mentioned in media articles. It should be fair to say he was an obscure figure for the general public until criminal charges were laid. He may have been the first person to play in the CFL while HIV-positive -- but his status was not public knowledge until criminal charges were laid. If a reader didn't know that background, the current description on this list under Sports would give the inaccurate impression that he voluntarily revealed this info and was a leader like Magic Johnson. In fact, without criminal charges his HIV status would have remained private. Much of the media coverage and controversy about Smith's case was due to this secrecy. The team received enormous criticism (deserved or not) for witholding his status from other teammates, competitors and the community (given that the team knew he may be promiscious but did not warn fans looking for relationships with players). If he has to be listed in one category, I'd move him to Criminal because that's where the balance of his notability lies. The 'first in the CFL' and 'controversy over HIV confidentiality in competition' could be of interest to readers following sports issues. You could have a duplicate entry under Sports but I would just have it say "refer above to criminal transmission." Canuckle 21:44, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

As you suggested, for your consideration I've created the article for Carl Leone from recent coverage of his guilty plea. My first impression was that criminal convictions are so rare that each one is notable. But perhaps the passage of time has lessened their notability. Canuckle 03:20, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply on Trevis Smith. I've moved him to the criminal transmission section as suggested.

Criminal transmission cases used to be unusual but over the last year or two they've become commonplace - there seems to be a new one in the news almost every week (for some examples, see Criminal transmission of HIV, this table and the list in this article). With this in mind, I'd question the notability of Carl Leone. It appears that the only unusual feature of his case is the number of charges involved. Trezatium 07:49, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Nice work on the Leone article. I withdraw my comment on notability, and have added him to the list. Trezatium 21:33, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ed Savitz

Ed Savitz is listed under Business. Appears that he was an actuary in his brother's company. His HIV-positive status was revealed after he was charged. He may have died before trial and I couldn't tell whether the charges related to his HIV status.Canuckle 20:26, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I'm not trying to find quality problems, really!! I was just looking to copy the chart for use in another list and stumbled on Savitz's odd entry. Canuckle 20:26, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Your contributions are very welcome here. I too have doubts about the notability of Ed Savitz. I'll raise this on the talk page of his article. Trezatium 20:54, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

In fact, after re-reading the guidelines, I reckon the article probably wouldn't make it through the deletion process, if only because the subject was mentioned in at least three New York Times articles, and caused a reported "AIDS scare in the Philadelphia area". Trezatium 21:31, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

It's not mentioned in his article but one of the References ([1]) does state the class action civil suit against him was considered '"unusual" and "precedent setting" because it places the onus on those with sexual diseases to warn their potential partners.' That mighthelp his notability. However, he's probably better off listed under Miscellaneous on this list as he wasn't noted as a businessman. I did change "convicted" to "accused". Canuckle 21:50, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree and I've moved him. Trezatium 06:49, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] James Dressel

A note on Talk:James K. Dressel asked for a reliable source to confirm his HIV status for this list. I don't know if this is disqualified as "original research", but: I am his nephew, and I know for a fact that he died from AIDS-related pneumonia. If you need an out-of-Wiki source, there's this. - Tverbeek 14:30, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

That's enough to satisfy me so I've added him to the list. Thanks for helping. Trezatium 18:37, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tony Azito reference?

Does anyone have access to the full article on Tony Azito? Does it make reference to his sexuality? I am trying to find a reference so I can add him to List of LGB people, but it's proving difficult. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 17:32, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions for additions

Three names that have appeared in the news lately, that might well deserve articles and subsequent addition to the list:

• Umanji (South African musician) [2] - done Trezatium (talk) 14:22, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
• Zombo (South African musician) [3] - done Trezatium (talk) 15:26, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
• Vasily Alexanian (jailed Russian oil tycoon) [4] - done (article already existed as Vasily Aleksanyan) Trezatium (talk) 18:46, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I might add these myself if I have the time. Trezatium (talk) 09:50, 27 February 2008 (UTC)