I'd love to join the starter pack!

Update: The deletion nomination of the Wikipedia article on Luigi Mangione has failed, so unless the result is overturned (which appears unlikely) it will be kept.

I can see the case either way!

I often post about @wikipedia.bsky.social and its role in the information ecosystem, so if you found this interesting, follow for more!

You can also read more about why some Wikipedians support or oppose article deletion in this essay: meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletio...

The "Killing of Brian Thompson" article, meanwhile, has accrued more than 1.5 million pageviews, with nearly 2,500 edits from nearly 500 different editors. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing...

My guess is that the Mangione article will ultimately survive the deletion attempt. There's a reasonable way to read the rules that allows for it, and given wiggle room Wikipedians generally find a way to arrive at the common-sense result. But they're in no rush.

Some editors interpret this rule to mean that it would be impossible to create a policy-compliant article on Mangione and that there should therefore not be an article.

Another wrinkle — Wikipedia wants to avoid libel, so there's a further rule: For non-public figures, "editors must seriously consider not including material — in any article — that suggests the person has committed or is accused of having committed a crime" without a conviction.

This, folks, is the bottom of the rabbit hole. There is no consensus on those questions, and different editors have different views. They're going to debate them in the coming weeks, and until that process concludes, the article will be tagged for deletion.

The policy says the significance "is indicated by how persistent the coverage is". That's both murky (How long is needed to qualify as "persistent"?) and unhelpful for recent events (which haven't yet had a chance to persist).

Mangione seems to meet (1) and (2). For (3), the assassination was clearly significant if you look only at the current zeitgeist. But from a long-term, world-historical perspective, it's murkier. Will people still care about this in a decade? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

Because of this, someone does not get an article if three criteria are met:
1. Sources cover them only in the context of a single event.
2. They otherwise remain low-profile.
3: The event is not significant or their role was either not substantial or not well documented.

This rule works remarkably well, but it doesn't work for everything. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia cares about the long term — it wouldn't want an article on every person who's ever committed a major crime, even if it was covered in the news.