Talk:Luke Letlow/Archive 1

Archive 1

Details in personal section

The personal section contains some detail that in my opinion aren't noteworthy, and some of them are the kind of information one might prefer to not share on the internet. I have removed the Congressperson's wife's maiden name, birth year and home town. I also propose removing her employment, unless someone has a reason why it's noteworthy. I also propose to remove the list of former places of residence. Cheese and Games (talk) 04:57, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Agreed with the points above; I've removed the employment and former places of residence, and added sourced info about Letlow's recent COVID-19 treatment. See Special:Diff/996663253. DanCherek (talk) 23:43, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

The article presently says that the town of Start is west of Monroe, but maps show it due east of Monroe. I'll let someone else, more familiar with wiki procedures, make sure this gets corrected. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.8.28.143 (talk) 06:58, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

He's dead.

COVID. [1]

Probably could be put a bit more gracefully than that, but yes, he died of COVID. An edit to articles referring to the election will likely be necessary, to mention the impact his death has on the filling of the seat. Also, please make sure to sign your talk page posts. Builder018 (talk) 02:48, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Does someone remain candidate-elect if they die?

As QoopyQoopy has pointed out in This edit summary, it's not immediately obvious whether or not someone remains (candidate)-elect, in this case representative-elect, if they die during the period between their election win and their inauguration. I figure we should establish a consensus here before moving forward. Builder018 (talk) 02:59, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Someone changed the phrasing so it merely says that he was elected - I think that's a good way to do it. QoopyQoopy (talk) 03:02, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree that the current state of the article seems sufficient, though I'll leave this thread open for any alternative proposals. Builder018 (talk) 03:29, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

There's precedent here (see Jack Swigert) to include member-elect. Kingofthedead (talk) 04:01, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

As User:Kingofthedead pointed out Apollo 13 astronaut Jack Swigert was elected to Congress in 1982, but died before being sworn in. He is still considered to be a Representative-elect on Wikipedia. I believe that Letlow should be marked as a Representative-elect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:192:8880:3410:18DD:67DF:B539:6792 (talk) 10:37, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Does anyone know if there will be a successor for the next congress via yet another election, or will it remain vacant until the 118th Congress? Negrong502 (talk) 04:24, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@Negrong502:: The governor of Louisiana has that power to make that decision. Given public pressure, Louisiana citizens is almost certainly going to call for a special election soon. The House of Representatives is too close to leave that seat vacant. But that's just flatulent speculation. OfficerCow (talk) 04:36, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

According to CNN, there will be a special election. These matters can greatly complicate things. When the mayor of Juneau, Alaska died a few weeks after taking office it resulted in the town having four mayors within one year. First came the predecessor, who was voted out. Then Greg Fisk took office, but he died weeks into his administration. The temporary successor decided not to run for the office. In the subsequent special election, a fourth mayor took office - all within one years time. Juneau Mike (talk) 10:23, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Position on covid-19

Here's the position on covid-19 that he ran on before he got infected. According to the Washington Post, he followed the medical advice inconsistently, wearing masks some times but not other times, and also urging the state to ease pandemic restrictions.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/12/29/luke-letlow-covid-louisiana-congress/

Luke Letlow, GOP congressman-elect from Louisiana, dies of covid-19
Washington Post
Tim Elfrink
Dec. 30, 2020

As the coronavirus ravaged Louisiana, Letlow urged residents to follow social distancing guidelines and to listen to doctors, noting that Abraham, a physician, had returned to Louisiana to help treat covid-19 patients.

But photos on his Twitter page show he had an inconsistent record of wearing masks while campaigning, sometimes covering his face at meet-and-greets but also speaking indoors without a mask on to rooms of mask-free residents. At a candidate forum in October, Letlow urged the state to ease pandemic restrictions, saying, “We’re now at a place if we do not open our economy, we’re in real danger.”

--Nbauman (talk) 16:20, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

This information seems relevant and worthy of inclusion in this article. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 18:04, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Infobox officeholder

@KidAd: I am not saying the election disappears, but he will never take office, so why should he be referred to as an officeholder? What office are we saying he held? Removing this template just constitutes an acknowledgment of reality, it doesn't invalidate the election. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 18:29, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Winning an election confers officeholder status to an individual. Scrubbing the infobox of any useful information will only serve to confuse casual readers who are reading his page because of his death. KidAd talk 18:31, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

KidAd, what's the policy basis for this claim that "winning an election confers officeholder status to an individual"? There are plenty of people in undemocratic countries who win elections who are never allowed to take office, and we don't call them officeholders, since they don't hold office. I don't see this in the template documentation. The template isn't a prize we give out for winning an election. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 18:35, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

When he won his election, he became "Congressman-elect." As far as I know, members-elect of legislative bodies in this country cannot be de-knighted, even in death. KidAd talk 18:37, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

KidAd, but "Congressman-elect" is not a political office. It's a designation of someone who will assume office in the future. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 18:38, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

 Comment: If there is further disagreement about this, it may be prudent to move it to Template talk:Infobox officeholder so the documentation can then be updated accordingly. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 21:31, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Heart attack

@Spaastm: I'm not seeing anything about a heart attack in the reference you cited. It attributes Letlow's death to COVID-19. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 21:42, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

@Tartan357: I didn't add the reference. The reference was already there in the "Personal life and death" section of the article. I merely added the reference to the infobox. --Spaastm (talk) 21:45, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

[2] says "LSU Health Shreveport Chancellor G.E. Ghali said Letlow died from a heart attack following a procedure related to the infection.". Most of the sources I've seen say "complications of COVID-19" or simply "died with COVID-19" (not giving any explicit cause of death). power~enwiki (π, ν) 21:46, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Power~enwiki, then we should say "complications of COVID-19", since that's what the RS are saying. It's important to realize that there will always be an organ system that fails first whenever anyone dies from anything. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 21:49, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Power~enwiki Thanks for the link! I've edited the reference accordingly. Tartan357, "complications of COVID-19" is too vague when we know exactly what the problem was: A heart attack while being treated due to having SARS-CoV-2 in his body. --Spaastm (talk) 21:52, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Spaastm, it's not too vague, that's a very common medical phrasing for a cause of death. The RS call it a complication of COVID-19, so we should too. I must say that given past warnings about poorly-sourced COVID-19 pandemic edits on your talk page, and your immediate removal of the COVID-19 GS alert I left you, I suspect that you might be engaging in some POV-pushing here. Please, explain why we cannot call this a complication of COVID-19, which power~enwiki has pointed out is what the RS call it. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 21:58, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Tartan357, I've lost interest in this discussion. I've undone all the edits I made to this article. You can go ahead and decide for yourselves what you want to put down as this man's cause of death. --Spaastm (talk) 22:10, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

"Heart attack" seems to be a misquote. The sources that quote directly use the term "cardiac event". - anon

RfC on infobox template

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

This interesting RfC concerns Luke Letlow, a US politician who was elected to Congress but died before he could take office. On Wikipedia, a remarkably large proportion of RfCs concern infoboxes, which are a useful at-a-glance summary of key information but don't handle nuance very well. In this case, the problem is that we don't have an infobox that fits Mr Letlow. The only question considered at this RfC is which is the least bad: {{Infobox person}} or {{Infobox officeholder}}?

Editors consider whether to customize an infobox for Mr Letlow and others in his position. This would be a perfect solution but is laborious and expensive in Wikipedia's only scarce resource, which is volunteer time. Nobody considers removing the infobox entirely, although that would also solve the problem; I presume that there is no enthusiasm for such an approach.

There is some discussion about whether the RfC is in the correct venue. We don't have strict rules about where to hold RfCs, and article talk pages are one of the normal choices, so I consider it to be in order that this RfC was held here.

The reasonably civil and well-conducted debate contains well-argued points on both sides, and nobody is persuaded to change their position. There is, clearly, no consensus, so by our rules, the outcome of this RfC should be to restore the status quo ante.

Personally, I'm not 100% comfortable with this. The status quo ante from before the dispute began would be to use Infobox Officeholder, but that was added when Mr Letlow was alive, and he never held office -- he died on 29 December 2020 and the RfC commenced the next day. Nevertheless, despite my discomfort, those are our rules and as a closer I have to follow them.

As the article currently uses {{Infobox officeholder}}, in practice the outcome of this RfC is not to change the article from its current form. I hope this helps.—S Marshall T/C 13:58, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

---

As there has been some disagreement as to whether this article's infobox should be Infobox person or Infobox officeholder, I have opened a RFC to resolve the issue. Which infobox template should it be? Lettler^{hello • contribs} 21:56, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Survey

• Person: "Congressman-elect" is a designation used by one who is scheduled to assume office in the future, and is not an office in and of itself. I'd also like to note that pointing to Jack Swigert is nothing more than an WP:OTHERCONTENT argument. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 22:01, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
• Officeholder The scrubbing of pertinent infobox information will only confuse readers. An election is not voided when a yet-to-be-seated politician dies. KidAd talk 22:04, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

  KidAd, please tone down your rhetoric. We can have a civil debate about this. Making wild accusations that using the person template constitutes voiding an election and "scrubbing" information is unnecessary. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 22:07, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

My rhetoric has been nothing but civil thus far. The characterization of removing useful content from an infobox as "scrubbing" is about as tame as you can get. I'm confident that this civil discussion can continue without any further condescension. KidAd talk 22:13, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

KidAd, the suggestion that I'm proposing we declare the election void is absurd. Whichever template we decide to use, we will not be making a statement about the validity of the election by doing so. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 22:14, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Erasing the status of "congressman-elect" or "member-elect of the U.S. House of Representatives" from the lede and infobox certainly makes it appear that no election ever occurred because the subject died. I don't see anything absurd about that assessment. KidAd talk 22:22, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

KidAd, I am not against stating he won his election in the lead. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 22:23, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

• Given the two choices. Infobox person. He never held office. He was only scheduled to hold office. Another possibility would be to use the redirect {{Infobox Politician}} as semantically more accurate even though it redirects to office holder. A third possibility, but one that would require big effort to convince others, would be to split {{Infobox Politician}} into a new template since "office holder" and "politician" are not totally equivalent. Jason Quinn (talk) 23:47, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
• Officeholder The infobox as it is currently (present version as of when I'm typing this) fails to include what makes him notable: his election to Congress. All it has right now is birth and death date/place, alma mater, political party, spouse, and number of children. From WP:Manual of Style/Infoboxes, An infobox is a panel, usually in the top right of an article, next to the lead section (in the desktop version of Wikipedia), or at the end of the lead section of an article (in the mobile version), that summarizes key features of the page's subject. "Person" fails to summarize the key feature of Letlow's notability. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:37, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

  But "office holder" doesn't summarize a key feature of his notability either, and is technically counter-factual. Is being under-specific with "person" worse than being false with "office holder"? Jason Quinn (talk) 05:52, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

  Jason Quinn, by including that he died without taking office, it does summarize the situation and is not counterfactual. I think "person" is indeed not specific enough, and is worse than "officeholder", yes. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:30, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

• A few words, first: yes, I'm with Tartan regarding the procedure—I do not believe this talk page to be the right venue for discussion of this matter; given the existence of the Jack Swigert page, it is more than likely that Template:Infobox officeholder is being used (incorrectly, in my view) in this manner more than once, twice, or even thrice (I recall seeing it used elsewhere, too). Setting the question of venue aside (though I'd be awfully grateful if this were to be copied over there, etc.), I should think that an officeholder is defined by their office: that is, once it starts. If one never takes office, one cannot, by definition, hold such an office. And, as such, Template:infobox person is correct here and in all cases where the officeholder-elect has died before taking office, subject, of course, to the caveat that another infobox template does not take priority (such as in the case of Captain Swigert). — Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 22:51, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
• Person - He hasn't held & won't be holding an office. PS: How has this been handled in bios of other elected people, who didn't take office? GoodDay (talk) 23:39, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

@GoodDay: Happy new year. I'll keep this short (I know, I like hearing myself talk): of the few individuals for whom that designation applies, very few have infoboxes. Of those that do, however, the "Died before taking office" line is used for the "|term=" parameter. I can't say I like it, but it is what it is (for now). — Javert2113 (Siarad.|¤) 03:28, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

• Officeholder per KidAd. Idealigic (talk) 16:02, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
• Person: He will never hold public office in the future, and he never held office in the past either. Even though he was elected to become a Representative, he will never enter that position. I support including that he died before he was able to be sworn in in the lead, but I don't support including it in an officeholder infobox. CountyCountry (talk) 02:09, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
• Office holder. This is a borderline case, but it's important to evaluate this in terms of serving readers. The officeholder infobox is structured to present key information that the reader is likely to consider important here, in particular his political party and the elected-office that he won. Alsee (talk) 05:12, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
• Officeholder, I think "Officeholder" is a better option for it. Ali Ahwazi (talk) 15:40, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

  Ali Ahwazi, WP:ILIKEIT. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 19:32, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Discussion

 Comment: This probably belongs at Template talk:Infobox officeholder. As it currently functions, using that template requires the label In office to be placed above any statement that could be made about him dying before he could take office, which is a bit awkward. This is an issue with wider implications that, if addressed in the proper forum, could result in the template and/or its documentation being changed. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 22:06, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Indeed the RFC should be expanded to cover all bios under this situation. GoodDay (talk) 23:40, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

At least, this isn't as messy at the Tancredo Neves bios. GoodDay (talk) 23:45, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Death cause in infobox

@Nikkimaria: What in the template doc led you to remove the cause of death from the infobox? ― Tartan357 ^Talk 01:27, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Nikkimaria pointed us to the template documentation in her edit summary, which says "Cause of death. Should be clearly defined and sourced, and should only be included when the cause of death has significance for the subject's notability, e.g. James Dean, John Lennon. It should not be filled in for unremarkable deaths such as those from old age or routine illness, e.g. Bruce Forsyth, Eduard Khil". I disagree with the removal. Cause of death has significance, it's the COVID pandemic and he's the first member of Congress (including members-elect) to die of it. It's not an unremarkable death, and does not come from old age or routine illness. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:29, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

It's not significant to his notability though. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:31, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Nikkimaria, his notability came from his election to Congress, yes, but almost nobody had heard of him until his death from COVID. As I quoted in the RfC above, An infobox is a panel, usually in the top right of an article, next to the lead section (in the desktop version of Wikipedia), or at the end of the lead section of an article (in the mobile version), that summarizes key features of the page's subject. I think dying of COVID before his swearing in is quite key to understanding the life of Luke Letlow. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:39, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

I think it would make sense to sort out which template to use above, and only after that work out which parameters to use within that template. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:42, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Nikkimaria, but both templates have this parameter, so this should have nothing to do with which template is used. I agree with Muboshgu, this is very important information that should be restored. ― Tartan357 ^Talk 01:50, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, I don't see what this has to do with the choice of template other than Infobox person and removal of the death cause are both cases where the key information is being omitted from the infobox. Was there any consensus determing when the death cause is or is not to be used? MOS:INFOBOX should overrule that. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:53, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

The consensus regarding parameter usage is laid out in the documentation of the respective templates. In {{infobox person}}, the parameter is only included when significant to notability, which is questionable in this case; {{infobox officeholder}} has no similar restriction. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:54, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Nikkimaria, I found this discussion from 2017 that you participated in. Editors were taking it for granted that death causes should be included for James Dean and John F. Kennedy, even though the nature of their deaths was not related to their individual notability, but because it was a significant part of their biography. I think that guidance needs to be rewritten and will probably start a new thread over there shortly. – Muboshgu (talk) 02:05, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Of course, John Lennon's notability doesn't come from being a shooting victim, either. It seems to me that the phrase significance for the subject's notability is broad enough that this should be clearly the case for Letlow. – Muboshgu (talk) 02:10, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

At this point it's a current news story - it's difficult to say how it will work out longer term. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:13, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

If he had been sworn in, he would have become just one of 435 members, and a freshman at that, so he likely would have been low profile (most House freshmen are not AOC). Now, he's the only U.S. federal lawmaker to die of COVID, the pandemic that is the story of 2020. One last note about the notability from page views: Letlow had a much larger page view bump on December 23, when he was transferred to the ICU, than December 5, when he won the runoff election to Congress. – Muboshgu (talk) 02:16, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria. It's definitely significant to his notability. It's basically the one and only thing he's made national news about and the primary reason why people will have heard of him. And when you add in the fact that he's a member of a party that been against preventative measures and sometimes even claiming it's a hoax, this also makes the cause of death an important part of his life story. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:57, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Agree with the above. Luke Letlow might have initially gained notability as an elected congressmen, but he never made it. Most articles covering his life now, quite simply, cover his hospital stay and subsequently his death. His political positions, voting history and other trappings of his professional career are fundamentally moot but the significance of how he died is pretty clear. Koncorde (talk) 10:06, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

All right, fair enough. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:51, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Img

Might be useful to try and send in some OTRS requests to get a free use image here. Kingofthedead (talk) 08:28, 13 January 2021 (UTC)