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	Death was a Natural sciences good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones Date Process Result January 23, 2007 Good article nominee Not listed February 5, 2012 Good article nominee Not listed March 24, 2023 Good article nominee Not listed
Current status: Former good article nominee

To-do list for Death: edit · history · watch · refresh · Updated 2024-12-10 Expansion In biology Animal behaviour when dying and towards dying/dead animals Grief in the Chimpanzee Arthur E. Brown The American Naturalist > Vol. 13, No. 3 (Mar., 1879), pp. 173-175 Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0147%28187903%2913%3A3%3C173%3AGITC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M Deaths role in natural selection (expand), geometrical expansion of species and the struggle for life, shorten extinction section Causes of death Predation, parasitism and other potentially fatal biological interactions Natural disasters Accidents and injuries Senescence, evolution of ageing In medicine Cut down the defintion section, perhaps look at a separate article such as medical definition of death It may also be appropriate to create a separate article on Causes of death (not just a list) Death before or following birth: Miscarriage, stillbirth, abortion and infant mortality Pandemics In culture A middle sized version of the death and culture article needs to come back (a summary, but a reasonably detailed one) The discussion of abortion does not seem neutral Tasks now at Talk:Death and culture/to do Add 'Symbolism' subsection summarizing Symbols of death Other Expand lead section to 3 or 4 good paragraphs (in progress, contributions welcome) Introduce each main subsection with a paragraph or so of prose Reference fully Perhaps finished, not entirely sure. Article is too animal (especially human) centered - greater discussion of other life forms needed Merge as much of 'See also' into the article as possible Improve picture placement, ensure all free images used are moved to or located at commons Discuss whether this article should be split any further, and if so how to split it (e.g. death in nature (non-human death), death in science (biology and medicine or human/non-human death), death in medicine, death and culture (done), human death (medicine and culture, probably not given we now have a culture article)). Current size is around 60 kilobytes. You can comment at Talk:Death#Splitting off articles. Please comment if electrical activity in the cortex/whole brain, once it has stopped, could be restored. If so, there need to be a time frame for electrical inactivity in which consiousness can be recovered. Needs a whole section on "Awareness of Death" in both animals and children. Ernest Becker has shown that awareness of death occurs in children at between the ages of 3 and 6, and results in an "Existential crisis" which requires resolution for healthy human development. Also there is no mention of the pioneering "Death and Dying" work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. It would be excellent to have a section (or whole article) dealing with the actuarial perspective on death, specifically, likelihoods for death by age and by cause. Resubmit for GA when rest is complete death of non-organics like a dead volcano, electronic circuit and star Please add anything you feel is missing I really feel like there needs to be a section on coping with death or different ways to find help when dealing with death. (Clbratt (talk) 22:41, 23 March 2009 (UTC)). I will make it, I have all of the information, I just don't want it to get deleted right after I make it (Clbratt (talk) 23:22, 23 March 2009 (UTC)). I also agree, there should be a section added or a link to explain how grieving with different types of death are possible. Depending on how the death occurred, from sudden death to a sudden occurrence of death. (Bmhans3 (talk) 20:19, 26 March 2009 (UTC)) I have some additional information that may be possible to add to Clbratt's information, if wanted. (Bmhans3 (talk) 20:21, 26 March 2009 (UTC)) Here is some information regarding phases of grief, part of the coping stage. 1. Shock: disbelief, unreal 2. Denial: denying that your spouse is actually gone, that it is not true. 3. Bargaining with a higher power to make it all go away. 4. Guilt: difficult stage to get through, you start to blame yourself for the death. You feel as if you did something differently they would still be here. but everyone is responsible for their own actions, there is no way you made anyone do anything. This stage would be helpful to have a friend to talk too, to help you understand it is not your fault. 5. Anger: not always a phase, some find it easier to move on if they are angry at the spouse for leaving, but often it leads to feeling guilty for being angry at them, if the phase doesn't start to occur, don't worry yourself, you can skip this phase. 6. Depression: varies, it comes and goes, give it as much time as possible to heal. While dealing with depression stages try to stay clear of the child and not let them know you’re breaking down. Remember be strong for the child. 7. Resignation: finally believe the reality of the death 8. Acceptance and Hope (“moving on”): you finally understand it can never be the same, but you have to move on in life with a meaning and a purpose. (Bmhans3 (talk) 22:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)) The summary does not relate to the topic at hand -- "Humans increased the number of extinctions in recent times, one cause being, for example, the destruction of ecosystems as a consequence of the spread of industrial technology.[1]" Not only is human causes of extinction events completely unrelated, but it doesn't sound completely neutral. This should be removed. --Andreas

Text and/or other creative content from Death was copied or moved into Grief. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

00:10, 23 March 2026 reversions

@Altenmann: your reversion choice: I provided quite a few reasons for the changes:

• Diagnosis -> Definition: "Legal" is not a sub of "Diagnosis"
• "in most places": "not true (the source is US not global)"
• "of electrical activity": "is also not true: neurotransmitters"

+ you returned a cite without all the source information I added. Cattenion (talk) 10:05, 23 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Cattenion:*Yes, I agree that the structure of sections was confusing. I fixed it now.

• Yes, I removed "in all places" and put United States in a subsection
• Yes, I removed "electrical activity" - not in the sources cited
• I removed your cite of Machado because you quoted him confusingly. In fact, the article suggests a new criterion, and to add it here would be imporper: it puts an undue weight on an opinion of sine author citing from a primary source. To be added into Wikipedia, by our rules, his opinion must be discussed in secondary sources. --Altenmann >talk 16:21, 23 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Lead rewrite

Per our rules (WP:LEAD), the lead section must be the summary of the article content. The current one violates this principle in two ways: on the one hand, it does not summarize; on the other, it has content not covered in the body. I made a crude fix by sepatarting large part of it into a new section, "Background". Meaning that a real lede, i.e., a summary of the article is yet to written. --Altenmann >talk 16:30, 23 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't worry about what people do/don't with the lead until the body is sorted. Let them play with it; it's neither possible nor important to get the lead right until the body is sorted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:27, 26 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Split out Religious views on death

I suggest split religious into a separate article, because it is a completely independednt subject and the article is huge. Leaving a summary section, per WP:Summary style--Altenmann >talk 16:38, 23 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

1. in the least "completely" is an exaggeration, if not, what is your evidence? your statement is a reiteration of the fact that the article in your opinion should show only the reality of death as bio-medical etc 2. Religious opinion excluded: your argument is not neutral="all significant views":WP:NPV - the number of believers is a significance. 3. In defence of your statement - this is obvious because bio-medical sources are provable (ergo science) so provide a knowable causative principle to base action on (a way for verifiable improvement of human life in this world) - so are like "reliable" (as a sourcing criteria/principle) - while religious (supernatural) statements and beliefs presumably aren't provable. 4. Contrary to your argument: as scientific knowledge increases so death as a religious subject decreases (since in the past science=medecine=treatments could not provide as many (any) effective contraries to imminent or known death-causes) so science: knowledge of the natural - replaces superstition-the supernatural, but religion continues to maintain the connection to "eternity" (if/as death is eternal) as the scientifically inexplicable fact the infinite: time before the universe & distance out from the observable universe - those things science fails at. Cattenion (talk) 22:03, 23 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

If there are reliable sources (professors-universities) which have the factors death+religion the determination "death" is a subject of science only is not informative. It depends on how much information exists on the subject of death+religion in a sourcing effort not on exclusion of any preliminary attempt to prove. Cattenion (talk) 22:30, 23 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

https://iask.ai/q/religious-beliefs-moment-of-death-3c3tjj8 https://iask.ai/q/religious-views-moment-of-death-5s1jal0 Cattenion (talk) 22:45, 23 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Taking it at face value, and as death is inevitable to every human so far, every single religion has some form of dealing with death. Are we going seriously going to list all of them out in that article? LS8 (talk) 16:25, 26 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a paper book to put all info about the subject in one article. Besideds, we do not have to remove all of it. We have a guideline to deal with very large articles: WP:Summary style. --Altenmann >talk 16:49, 26 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Altenmann, I'm not finding that very convincing, though. It's the sort of "coincidence" that makes me suspect a different, unstated motivation. I grant that you know yourself best, but here's the facts I see:

• Pagesize says this article has 6821 words of "readable prose".
• WP:SIZERULE says that articles ">8,000 words" "May need to be divided or trimmed".

So you are asserting that the article is "huge" and "very large" and needs to be split, but our guidelines disagree with you. Consequently I oppose splitting at all, because the article isn't "huge" or "very large".

But the specific proposal for splitting it concerns me more. I notice that the particular content that you've proposed for removing from this article is:

• nowhere near the biggest or most bloated section (the entire Death#Religious views section, even if completely removed [which would violate Wikipedia:Summary style], would reduce the article size by less than 10%), and
• central to most modern and historical sources discussing death, but
• a subject that many Wikipedians are personally opposed to or uncomfortable with.

For example, you propose removing 130 words about Buddhism and 66 words about Christianity, but leaving in 100 words about cryonics and 200 words about whether pets are sad when their humans die and 180 words on the evolution of senescence (which is not dying). I hope you are not surprised to learn that I think is a very strange choice.

I think this proposal runs a serious risk of NPOV problems. The religious views of death are all over the sources, and sci-fi fantasy stuff or whether getting old is inevitable from an evolutionary POV is distinctly not a common thread in high-quality sources about death. As NPOV says: Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors or the general public. I'm thinking that this proposal fails that point. I therefore oppose the specific proposal to shunt religious content off to a sub-article as probably producing a serious violation of NPOV. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Support I concur with this point: only the major world religion's views on death should be briefly listed here, the new article (Religious views on death) would be more detailed and include lesser known religious views. KneeHallHawk (talk) 17:04, 26 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@KneeHallHawk, do you see any "non-major" religions listed in Death#Religious views? I'm not sure if it was clear, but the point of this proposal is to reduce what little we've got about religion here in this article. (Anyone could create create an article on Death and religion, but we don't need a WP:SPLIT proposal to do that.) @Vert34, do you also support having less information about religion in this article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Religious views on death could be a viable article, as could Biological death and Philosophical views of death and Legal definitions of death. To propose a reduction of religion-related information, when that constitutes less than 10% of the article, but not any of the other subjects strikes me as a subtle form of POV pushing.

There are approximately:

• 3,000 words on medical views of death
• 1,100 words on sociocultural aspects (e.g., funeral rites)
• 900 words on non-human biological death
• 850 words on Death#Related issues
• 600 words on religious views
• 250 words on psychology and fear of death
• 200 on legal death (and half of that is about organ donation, which is medicolegal)
• 150 words on etymology and word usage
• Basically nothing on non-religious philosophy

If I were going to cut something, it would be most of Death#Related issues and Death#Language, but I don't actually think we need to cut anything. This article isn't too long by WP:SIZERULE standards. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:22, 26 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose Article is definitely not "huge".

Cognsci (talk) 06:25, 2 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Support I think it should list lots of different religions and points of views as well. It can be longer this way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vert34 (talk • contribs) 03:44, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

support agree w/ Vert34 --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:39, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a quick search of some high-quality sources, and what they cover:

What the high-quality sources talk about

Source	Religion	Buddhism	Christianity	Hinduism	Islam	Judaism	Cryonics	Grief in pets
The Routledge Handbook of Law and Death	19	1	12	1	2	1	0	0
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death	17	4	2	5	1	4	1	0
Encyclopedia of Death and Dying	15	27	17	18	17	19	9	(maybe)
Handbook of Death and Dying	17	23	16	12	14	23	7	1

As you can see, I have chosen only high-quality scholarly books that are not focused on religion.

These numbers are how many pages I find when I search for the keywords and the obvious grammatical variation. For example, "Religion" is the number of pages containing the word "religion" plus the number of pages containing the word "religious", and "Islam" includes "Islam" and "Muslim" (but not, e.g., Islamic or Sharia or plurals). If you think of this as "pages", it could be an overcount, but it also captures something of the depth of information (because a page that says "Buddhism" alone could be a passing mention, but a page that says "Buddhism" and "Buddhist" is probably one that is discussing the religion in more depth). This suggests that we should have 10 to 20 times as much information about religion as we do about cryonics. And yet the proposal here is to make the article have even less about religion.

And the net result of this survey is: If we're going by the sources, we aren't spending enough time on religion in this article, and we're probably spending too much time on things like cryonics. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:30, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing: You are drawing correct conclusion from your survey, but making wrong implications. The amount of sources for "death+religion" simply means that we have to write a much larger article Religious views on death. Especially keeping in mind your point in talk section #Mentioning "afterlife" in the lede. --Altenmann >talk 19:03, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

My conclusion is that, whether or not we have a much larger separate article, we must have a lot of information about religion in this one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:38, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Correct, "Death" is a "top-level" overview article, and as such, it must cover all major aspects of death. --Altenmann >talk 04:51, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Modified suggestion: Religous views on death and immortality

Comment @WhatamIdoing: @Cattenion: @.nhals8: @KneeHallHawk: @Cognsci: @Vert34: @Ozzie10aaaa: I have just noticed a huge content fork: Immortality#Religious views. Therefore I would like to modify the suggestion: Religous views on death and immortality.

Repeating again, sice it seems that some of you misunderstood my suggestion: I am not suggesting removing religion from this article completely: I am suggesting to make a new, decent article and incorporate it here using WP:Summary style guideline.--Altenmann >talk 19:16, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need a split proposal to create a new article. The only purpose of a split proposal is to get content out of the original article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:22, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It is not "the only". Again, see WP:Summary style, for Gods, sake. On top of this page there sits template:Controversial, so I decided to be cautious and vented my intentions here. And ther as a positive outcome of this discussion. I hate situations when a WikiEd short-term student editor starts rewriting a major subject. I am not an expert in death, but I clearly see mess an dissincronization of the coverage of the subject here and related artices. --Altenmann >talk 00:06, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm familiar with WP:SUMMARY. It is possible to write an article on a subtopic without splitting. But you didn't actually propose doing that; you said that you want to "Split out Religious views on death". I notice particularly the word out, as in "take material out of this article". "Split out" is very different from "I would like to write a long article on a narrower subject, and then I'll link it back here". WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:34, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

My proposal was I suggest split religious into a separate article, because it is a completely independednt subject and the article is huge. Leaving a summary section, per WP:Summary style. - Miscommunication due to my nonnative English, sorry. --Altenmann >talk 03:26, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Agree 100% it should be "Religious views on death and immortality". Vert34 (talk) 21:55, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Support, as major religious views on death are often paired with immortality (or afterlife) but I'm still not exactly sure how we'd go about doing that ^^ nhals8 (rats in the house of the dead) 01:36, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

On the question of death vs death+immortality: Editors can choose any scope they want, but they are separate topics. For example, Tukdam involves a Buddhist phenomenon about what the definition of death, though there's no claim for immortality in that religion. Similarly, we have here just two sentences on Judaism, but nothing about the traditional Jewish religious definition of death, which is when breathing stops instead of when the heart stops. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:47, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they are separate, but heavily overlap (at least in Wikipedia :-), as I reported. --Altenmann >talk 03:26, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

BTW: we have Immortality#Buddhism and Immortality#Judaism.

And the fact that " we have here just two sentences on Judaism" begs for an better article. In particular "Jewish religious definition of death" is not that simple as you stated. You may probably know that the Jews disagree on almost everything. Not to say that Israeli law (including opinions of most rabbis and rabbinates) relies on neurological criteria. And which does contradict the beliefs of some. So again, it is a mess not covered in Wikipedia, just google for death in Hudaism. --Altenmann >talk 03:55, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

"Death of abiotic factors" removed

I removed the section because it is off-topic: the figurative usage of the term "death". There is a large mumber of these usages. If some are notable or well-established terminology, separate articles must be written, according to Wikipedia's guideline of disambiguation; see Death (disambiguation). --Altenmann >talk 16:52, 23 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Mentioning "afterlife" in the lede

Per WP:LEAD, the lead section is a summary of article content. The article discusses afterlife, therefore it must be mentioned in th lede. --Altenmann >talk 15:47, 24 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think Death#Afterlife should probably be merged into Death#Religious views (and that this should probably be put in ==Society and culture==). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 26 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing: I agree that "Religious views" must be a subsection of "society and culture". --Altenmann >talk 18:52, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The content of "Afterlife" is overwhelmingly about religious views and their treatment from non-religious perspective. Therefore after some hesitation I agree that "Aftelife" may made a subsection of "Religious views" --Altenmann >talk 18:52, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

In addition, I think a brief subsection about "Immortality" can be made in section "Related issues". --Altenmann >talk 18:52, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Unsourced Predictions template; to remove or not?

I noticed in the section regarding religious views on death someone had placed the template that said section contained unsourced predictions. However, I noticed that all of the claims of the afterlife were sourced. I see no reason to not remove the template; any thoughts? KneeHallHawk (talk) 22:25, 25 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

While the template is sloppily phrased, it is basically correct. The section says "After death, the individual will undergo a separation ...?" This is nothing but speculations religious beliefs, and the section must clearly say so. --Altenmann >talk 22:51, 25 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I could write "it is believed that the individual will undergo a separation..." would that solve the problem? KneeHallHawk (talk) 12:02, 26 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it will solve the issue with this sentence, but all religion sections must say clearly this, e.g., prefacing them with the phrase "according to Chistian/?Buddhist/Bahai... beliefs..." That's why I suggested to make a split a separate artice, "Religious views on death", to avoid thie repeated (and hence annoying) equivocation. So, please state your opinion in the section above: #Split out Religious views on death. --Altenmann >talk 16:18, 26 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Saying "According to ___ beliefs" is the opposite of an equivocation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 26 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Correct. I wrote "to avoid equivocation" which is informal fallacy resulting in the failure to define one's terms, i.e., e.g., not "undergo", but "according to... undergo". Maybe I used this word incorrectly. In Russian, the corresponding term strongly implies ambiguity and omission. --Altenmann >talk 19:26, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

An equivocation involves using a word with two valid meanings, but not using the same sense every time. Consider:

• A: "Mom, you'll be so happy. I've decided to become a doctor."
• B: "How wonderful! That will be such a great thing for our family, and you'll have a fine career!"
• B (several years later, on graduation day): "Now that you're really a doctor, can you help your cousin? He's very sick and his poor wife is so confused by all the medical terminology."
• A: "No, I don't know anything about that. I'm a doctor of literature, not of medicine."

So – "a" doctor, but not "that kind" of doctor. If you'd defined the term "doctor", this confusion couldn't have happened.

The problem here (in the "the individual will undergo separation" sentence) is just being vague. It's unclear or incomplete writing rather than a fallacy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:05, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]