The same thing that 15,000 people in the NYC marathon are doing. Pushing themselves and accomplishing personal goals.
One tricky thing is how to avoid U.S.-centrism, or how to even know you need to do so. I hope CAMJAY77 doesn’t mind my beating his list into the ground in the way of providing examples, but he has Australian and South African politicians on his list. Most of us, of course, have no way of knowing whether people in their countries, outside of their legislative districts, actually know who they are. (Lord knows there are people in the U.S. House of Representatives whose names would fail to ring a bell with 90% or more of regular GD posters who hail from the U.S.A.) It would be hard to know when you had a sufficiently fair group of references to determine the celebrityhood, or lack of it, for such people.
The 95% suggestion probably wouldn’t help, they’d probably be in the 5%, or the 2%, or whatever, even if legit.
I was in another death pool for many years and one rule we had was that the person had to have a wikipedia page. Wouldn’t mind doing that here next year.
I wish I were more eloquent, or a better writer, but I’m not. I’m going to set down some musings I have on the nature of celebrity, in relation to this game.
To me, if an international wire service, like Reuters, UPI, or the like, picks up and runs with a story on the death of a person, said person is celebrity enough for me. It’s the same if a prominent national newspaper, (NY Times, Times of London, etc) carries a death story.
I don’t rely on Wikipedia because anyone could have a Wikipedia article about them.
If a major website, say, like IMDb, carries a name and biographical info, even if that person is long retired, I’d figure that person counted. Heck, my 2013 list was made up of people from 95 to 100 years old. These folks were big back in the day. (Alicia Rhett, why couldn’t you have died a week and a half earlier?)
Someone said upthread that it’s easier to search for celebrity information now, with the internet, so we can find folks from other countries. And since we are an international board I figure politicians, prominent business people, and the like, from other countries, are fair game. For example, this year, for the first time, I have a themed list. All the people on the list share my birthday, of December 31st. Some are very recognizable, like Ben Kingsley and Anthony Hopkins. But the First Minister(is that like prime minister?) of Scotland is a man named Alexander Salmond. Not only was he born on December 31st, but in the same year as me, 1954. If an important politician like that croaked I figure in would at least be on MSN News.
I still agree that a person famous only due to a medical contion, illness, or related actions or events, is not a celebrity. This is why I would have nixed Ryan White.
I do not limit celebrity to what I’ve written above, but that’s what I’d be looking for. It helps me, as DeathMistress, when players explain who their choices are, before giving the plain list. This makes it easier to look them up if there is a challenge.
Ah yes, challenges. The right to challenge is an important one, but it should start privately, by PM or email. It’s a fun game we are playing here, and I don’t want to create hard feelings for any reason. I hope players will trust that I’ll act fairly. I’ll check on challenges, and if I agree with a challenger, I’ll politely ask the player in question to choose another name. These jackboots don’t fit very well and I don’t want to use them.
You’re driving, but I’d rather have a gentlemanly, public inquiry into whether or not a candidate is suitable.
Then we could take the little weasel out back and steal his lunch mon…
Let me get back to you on this.
I think I can see a slight temporal problem with being able to use this metric. 
It is difficult to prove celebrity without unfairly disadvantaging non-US players. To choose an example from my list this year, I doubt Lorrae Desmond’s death would be picked up by international news carriers, yet I expect Australian news sources will cover it, just like they covered the death of her former co-star Joyce Jacobs last year. If we polled all the players in the death pool, I believe less than a dozen would know who Lorrae Desmond is, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s quite famous in Australia. Everyone (over 35) knows Shirl from A Country Practice!
We furriers do have an advantage for unique picks from our domestic celebrities, but we also are disadvantaged by our lack of knowledge of US celebrities like news anchors, sports stars and celebrity cooks, etc, because those people are often only famous in their home market. Surely it evens out, especially as the US potentially has a far greater pool of domestic celebs by virtue of its greater population size.
The rule has long been that you can challenge the celebrity status of a pick who has died, but an obituary from a mainstream publication is acceptable proof that they qualified. We talked at one stage about defining which publications count as major publications, but I think we agreed it was too hard to make a comprehensive list that accommodated our international audience.
Well, maybe notanyone.
Agreed.
Furriners?
Unless you speak of platypus pelts or something.
My Father repaired airplanes in your country during the Second World War, and longed to return. Unfortunately, he was never able to do so.
I’m not sore because you rejected one of my challenges and accepted another. Rejecting challenges is your prerogative. I would point out, however, that you also completely ignored two of my challenges. Both of which were more egregious violations of the only-famous-for-their-illness rule than the challenge you accepted.
I know everybody appreciates what you’re doing, but you may note some guarded disagreement with you here. I’m clearly not the only one who’s annoyed that some people turn this from a celebrity death pool into simply a death pool.
I’ve only been playing this game for a few years, and I know that years before I started, there was some kind of dispute over what constituted a celebrity, and that dispute caused the celebrity bar to be set very low. It’s not my game to run, and you should of course run it how you like, but I don’t see why some objective standard couldn’t be implemented that would eliminate the dispute.
I hear this from a friend I golf with: he’ll pick up anything within about fifteen feet of the hole, saying “eh, that’s about a club length.” Now I’m not going to make him putt it out if it’s two feet away, but come on.
You know, Randy, you are taking a great deal of the fun out of this thread. I appreciate that you have issues but Baker has repeatedly asked that such issues be dealt with in PMs and not clutter up this thread. I wish you would do that. I personally am not interested in your concerns in the least little bit, and I don’t think I am the only one who feels that way. Take it to PMs.
Then don’t try.
If you had challenged my pick in a gentlemanly manner to me, I’d have seen there were no mentions on wikipedia before she was ill, and conceded defeat.
And hope no one else picked her and got away with it.
We can continue this in PMs if you would like, rather than messing up the thread.
Come to think of it, since you challenged in a PM, why fuss about it in the thread?
I’m not very good at this game and am just in it for fun. So, I’m just fine with however the Death Mistress wants to run it. With that said here is something I saw on another site’s list of rules for their death pool:
One thing I think all of us agree on is that we don’t enjoy this arguing over the rules. This game is just for fun. So if you aren’t having fun, don’t play.
Baker has apparently made her decisions on the issues you raised. It’s her game and it’s her call to make. You need to let it go.
Sounds good, but doesn’t Google use context (like your location) to decide which results to show you? I get 5+ results for retired Australian football player Lou Richards when I Google his name, but would an American get the same results?
+1
Let’s consider the subject closed.
Now, any DEATHs to report? I mean, Ariel Sharon was a big hit, but we can go on without him. How’s Bush Sr. doing? Or Lindsay Lohan?
It would seem your wish is Roger Lloyd-Pack’s command.
I enjoy arguing over whether I enjoy arguing over the rules.
He was only 69. Pancreatic cancer got him.