User blog:Ryoung122/Article First Lines and Subjects

Greetings,

There's a disturbing Wikipedia trend, which is bleeding over to the Gerontology Wiki, to misunderstand what the subject of an article is. The subject of an article is what the article is about, and why the subject is notable.

Roger Federer isn't notable just for being a tennis player, or for currently being #3 in the world...he's noted, first and foremost, for having 17 Grand Slam titles, and being a candidate for GOAT. There have been times in the past when an article on Wikipedia would simply say, "Person X is condition Y". But that is NOT how an article introduction in an encyclopedia should be worded. Instead, the focus should be, firstly, what the subject is mainly about.

So, there's no need to say, "person X was a verified American supercentenarian" or "person Y was an unverified American supercentenarian".

In fact, if that's all you can come up with, one has to wonder whether an article should even exist.

But, erring on the side of allowing more than just an article on the WOP, one could note that "Person X was notable for their longevity" if there's nothing else notable. Specific items that could be mentioned, in many cases:

--WOP status

--National recordholder status

--Oldest by gender

--Oldest Living by nation

--Oldest living by gender

--X-oldest (say, 3rd-oldest in the world)

I'm open to hearing the comments from others on this. Clearly, if someone is just 110 then it may be harder to come up with a rationale, but in general we need to move away from the error of confusing case status with notability status.Ryoung122 (talk) 18:11, April 13, 2016 (UTC)