Wikidata:Property proposal/status of mortal remains

status of mortal remains

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Person

   Not done

Description	status of the mortal remains of a assumed dead person
Data type	Item
Domain	human (Q5); fictional character (Q95074); organism (Q7239); person (Q215627); legendary figure (Q13002315)
Allowed values	disappeared (Q83978538); dead (Q83978562) or others, if they appear.
Example 1	Almir Custódio de Lima (Q63069565) → disappeared (Q83978538) with ref
Example 2	Daniel José de Carvalho (Q17413814) → disappeared (Q83978538) with ref
Example 3	Maria Lúcia Petit (Q10326010) → deprecated: disappeared (Q83978538); normal rank: dead (Q83978562) all with ref
Planned use	All the 430 disappeared and dead people from the Brazilian dictatorship.

Motivation

This property is important because it points out the situation of the remains of a dead individual (or assumed to be dead individual). Several databases that I have worked on have this information expressed in one way or another, as seen in the examples. Some cases where this is useful are:

• Individual A has their remains kidnapped from their grave;
• Individual B fighting against a dictatorship was killed by the Government, that fails to return their mortal remains to the family.

Ederporto (talk) 21:10, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

• Status of mortal remains" = "dead" doesn't seem to make sense. Also: how this correlates with cases were individual was buried in X, then relocated to Y, and eventually finally to a mausoleum in Z? And with cases where mortal remains are distributed by a series of places? And presumed to be (also?) in place W?--DarwIn (talk) 15:48, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
•  Support.--Arbnos (talk) 19:05, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
• Yeah, I agree with the complaint about "dead" not making sense for human remains. I mean all human remains are dead (is this a translation issue?)... What other values other than disappeared are we anticipating here?  – The preceding unsigned comment was added by BrokenSegue (talk • contribs) at 16:44, 15 March 2020‎ (UTC).
• Could we use place of burial (P119)→disappeared (Q83978538)? Maybe P119 should get revision, because it is currently called "burial", when instead it could be "location of mortal remains". Burial and cremation often end with mortal remains going to some location. If we talked about location of mortal remains, we could also include more abstract concepts, like (person in sunken)→(location of mortal remains)→(some ocean). I agree that we should have a place to note where bodies go, but I am unsure if we need a new property when perhaps our current one would work. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:49, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. Relabel place of burial (P119) as "Location of remains" or similar, and use "unknown" where applicable. This also allows us to deal with edge-cases like heart in a museum, body in a mausoleum, or body in a cemetery, head unknown. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:52, 31 October 2020 (UTC)
•  Oppose per Andy Mabbett. --Tinker Bell ★ ♥ 23:51, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

 Not done Seems to be lacking consensus. JesseW (talk) 02:27, 12 March 2021 (UTC)