Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Death of Elisa Lam/2

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result pending

This article has a number of issues which I believe require a GAR. Ordinarily I would attempt to fix these myself, however I'm aware that editors, such as @Daniel Case, have been working on this article for many years. So I think a community discussion would be more helpful, especially as I would prefer the outcome to be for this to remain a GA. (It has the potential to go all the way to FA, should the main contributors also want that.) But these issues need to be addressed first:

The following is based on this revision.

• PRIMARY sources: 1, 6, 11-15, 18, 26, 33-36. At least 13 in use.

• Unreliable sources:
  

11-13: Primary blogs. WP:BLOGSPOT is not reliable.
17, 30: International Business Times is not reliable per WP:IBTIMES due to poor editorial practices noted by reliable sources. (Have been replaced. Y)
47: TV.com is not reliable per WP:RS/PS due to being a WP:USERGEN site. Was shut down in 2021. This should be replaced. (Has been replaced. Y)

• Questionable sources:
  

4: Daily Maverick is a South African not-for-profit newspaper currently tagged with ^{[better source needed]} in the article.
16: Refinery29 is a marginal source according to RS/PS. It's had a few issues in the past as explained in its article.
29: LA Weekly is flagged in WP:NPPSG as being the subject of an LTA Wikipedia editor and for having poor editorial standards.
50: Marginal on Chinese Wikipedia.
56: Unknown site. Presumably a Substack according to the homepage.

• There are other sources, such as 41, which is a YouTube video from an unknown individual. This seems to have information that violates WP:SYNTH based on the this comment from the 2019 GAR.

• There are citations in the lead, which should be removed per WP:LEADCITE. (Fixed. Y)

• The final paragraph of Elevator video is an WP:MNA and reads as speculative. This is an WP:UNDUE inclusion from a questionable source in my opinion, and should either be resourced or removed entirely.

• The Theories and speculation section is almost entirely sourced to Daily Maverick and is UNDUE. This requires major trimming to comply with policy.

• The popular culture section is bloated with unsourced paragraphs and needs a complete rewrite. (Reliable sources have been added.  Done)

If this article were being reviewed by me today, it would fail points 1, 2 and 4 of WP:GACR6. This article has already had a previous GAR, which had sound reasoning and many editors raised issues with its heavy reliance on PRIMARY sources. This is clearly a very notable case, so I think these issues can be sorted relatively easily. I would be happy to help with this (when time permits). 11WB (talk) 08:57, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

A note on this article from Daily Maverick. It is almost entirely speculation, and makes claims of "speaking to doctors", without any links to back this up. It does however link to this Blogger article, which they claim are "body language experts". WP:BLOGGER is USERGEN and is therefore unreliable. I will give DM credit for their current detailed about page. Unfortunately, the Wayback Machine only has the about page saved from this year, and that article is from 2014. One has to question why the about page wasn't archived before this year...

I'm not convinced that they are reliable based on this. I think a discussion at WP:RS/N may be warranted, especially as it's cited 13 times. 11WB (talk) 09:58, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

Daily Maverick is pretty good afaik. The article individually might not be, but Daily Maverick is one of the most reputable papers in South Africa. PARAKANYAA (talk) 20:49, 7 July 2026 (UTC)