Talk:Etika

Change the article name to Etika's name?

Should we just change the article name to Daniel Desmond Amofah? This article already showcases more of his life other than his disappearance as shown in the career part and Etika is already a notable, well-known enough figure online to have his own article rather than just based on one incident.Uelly (talk) 09:44, 25 June 2019 (UTC)Uelly

Wait - It's still a developing situation. Decide once it's concluded. Parafron-trodaí (talk) 11:37, 25 June 2019 (UTC)Parafron-trodaí

I also agree that we should wait for the current event to conclude but at the time being I would lean towards changing the article name to "Etika" over "Daniel Desmond Amofah". Etika probably is notable enough to have his own page without the disappearance and would be better known to the public as "Etika" over his real name. So yes, wait until current events have concluded but if we were to change it afterwards, it would be more suitable to change it to "Etika". Braveb1rd PokeMC (talk) 16:22, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I am pretty confident that he was notable before his death (more in the last year, but still)... the question is whether to use Etika or his proper name. There's no WP conflict with Etika, but I see there's a Malaysian star known by that so I think his proper name would be better here. --Masem (t) 17:02, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Another alternative could be their proper name with their username in parenthesis, or potentially referencing their connections to youtube / content creation. -Anonymous 17:32, 25 June 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.77.67.18 (talk)

If it isn't suitable to use his username, then the page should at least be titled "Desmond Amofah". Etika himself went by Desmond and it is by far the more common name he went by. If searching for this page "Daniel Amofah" would not be the first or even second thing someone would think of. Braveb1rd PokeMC (talk) 18:47, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

86.6.178.179 (talk) 17:53, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

His full name, Daniel Desmond Amofah, would portray him as more of a real person rather than someone who doesn’t need to be called their real name DreaganX (talk) 06:30, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Change title to "Deceased"

Etika has been found dead, per here. Trazire (talk) 16:47, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Change page name to Desmond Amofah

His first name is Daniel but he goes by Desmond Michael14375 (talk) 18:22, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

He is more well-known by his username Etika, so why not just stick with that name instead or use Etika (internet personality)? HapHaxion _{(talk / contribs)} 18:41, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

No more page moves until consensus is reached here

The following discussion 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.

---

This page is now named Etika (streamer) but it should not be. There is no need to disambiguate. If we are going to use the name Etika that should be the name of the article. Etika is now a redirect to this article which makes no sense. But there have been two or three moves of the page in the last few hours. There should not be any more until consensus is reached. What should the article name be? -- MelanieN (talk) 19:34, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

I have move-protected the article for now. Please discuss here and let's decide what the name should be. The most likely candidates seem to be Etika or Daniel Desmond Amofah. -- MelanieN (talk) 19:42, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

• My vote is Etika per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:PRECISE. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 19:46, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
• He's known internet-wide as Etika and a majority of news outlets covering his death initially refer to him as such - so the article should probably be named Etika. Toreightyone (talk) 19:52, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
• "Etika" should be fine, my only concern is there are other newsworthy people (seemingly) that do not have articles on WP but could that are also named Etika, but without articles now, or even redirects for this, shouldn't be an issue. Hat notes or other facets may need to be added later. --Masem (t) 19:56, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
• Clearly it should be at Etika. Pointless move protection. - hahnchen 22:42, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
• We should use Etika, it looks like most people and news outlets call him that and it was his preferred alias. Roll 3d6 (talk) 23:38, 25 June 2019 (UTC)
• I was gonna name the page Etika instead of Etika (streamer) but it was already taken. Michael14375 (talk) 02:14, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
• Etika per above. --Wow (talk) 04:45, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
• @MelanieN: Please move the page to Etika. --- Coffeeandcrumbs 05:32, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
• MelanieN has basically okay'd me on my talk page to move this page when the decision was made (even though I did !vote above), and as this is SNOWing, I will go ahead and move things around. --Masem (t) 13:55, 26 June 2019 (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.

Semi-protected edit request on 25 June 2019

It'd be more respectful to have a photo posted by Etika from his Instagram, rather than using a screencap from his "goodbye" video. An image such as https://www.instagram.com/p/BrqPHIRhta8/ would be preferable. (Direct Link: https://scontent-iad3-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/fc5d7bb507704f6ce6901cb515703f10/5DB769D0/t51.2885-15/e35/46714583_373416163426326_4629470249639477248_n.jpg?_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-1.cdninstagram.com)

Thank you, and rest in peace Desmond. 2605:A000:1618:C368:D49F:4C21:6DD1:D58E (talk) 20:50, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Provided that the image in the article is available under a free license, you'd need to find a free image to replace it. A fair use rationale falls flat as the image in the article is a free alternative to any of the images on his Instagram. Luigi970p 💬Talk📜Contributions 21:09, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Which this is probably a good place that if you (WP reader) are in possession of a good photo of Etika, you are welcome to contribute it as a freely-licensed file if you feel its better than the one we have from Instagram. (But this has to be your own photo, not something pulled off YouTube or social media). --Masem (t) 21:12, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

The goodbye video picture isn’t fitting. I want a pic from his Instagram to show the joy in him LogicIsTheBestWhiteRapper (talk) 21:32, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Our non-free image policy (demanded by the WMF) doesn't allow this. --Masem (t) 21:35, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

BTW, this video from his Minecraft thing is CC with reuse (CC-BY), and thus as long as we're not including any game screens, any screen from that video or others marked with Creative Commons is 100% allowed to be used as an image here. --Masem (t) 21:49, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

OK, no problem. I'll upload a screencap from there. Cth103 t (talk) 22:33, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Uploaded at File:Etika - 2.png. Cth103 t (talk) 22:38, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

Some additional information and reactions

The news article is "YouTube Star Etika Is Found Dead in NYC, Leaving Thousands of Fans in Mourning" from Dara Sharif of The Root (magazine). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:9000:A507:FCB6:A19A:2362:5C45:2B3F (talk) 01:54, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 June 2019

On this page if states cause of death was murder but no evidence has shown what the cause of death was as it could he suicide or murder 75.163.172.126 (talk) 03:58, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

This appears to have already been removed/fixed. --Masem (t) 04:43, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Death Date

So the E Online announcing the cause of death states he died on June 24. Reading the full article, it seems as if they're using that date as it's the date police were notified of the body in the river, so do we change it to June 24 as shown in the source, or leave it as circa the 19th? Magitroopa (talk) 15:47, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Change.org petition citations

Shouldn't the citation (no plural) be of the change.org petition itself? Citing three sources that talk about the petition instead of the petition itself is just deadweight loss. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.170.126.187 (talk) 20:01, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Nope. Change.org is, for all purposes, user-generated content and thus unverified/filtered, etc. We generally do not link to user-generated content just because it exists, see WP:ELNO. But as several reliable sources identified the petition there as well as the volume of signatures there so we are in good shape to add it but usng our reliaable sources as the reference point. --Masem (t) 20:48, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Unverified? Change.org can't verify itself? You need three different news articles to verify it? How exactly do these articles verify it? Perhaps by citing the petition? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.170.126.187 (talk) 17:19, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Anyone can start a petition on change.org. It's user-generated. And the three different articles have different information related to sourcing; for example only one gives the 380,000 signature count. --Masem (t) 17:46, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Isn't his name Desmond Daniel Amofah, not Daniel Desmond Amofah?

Despite what the media says, his full name seems to be Desmond Daniel Amofah, according to himself, his ex-girlfriend, and his friend. 90.252.85.46 (talk) 23:23, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

 Done Thank you for clearing that up it will now be changed Michael14375 (talk) 00:17, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

A suggestion

"Amofah's death highlighted social media platforms' handling of posts by users who appear at risk with mental illness or who are contemplating suicide. In 2017, Facebook increased its efforts to screen and alert possible suicide threats after several people in 2017 live-streamed suicides on Facebook Live. Facebook now utilizes both algorithms and user reports to flag such threats."

However, I failed to find that he was live-streamed on Facebook Live and I think it is more suitable in broader topic such as "Social Media and Mental Health" rather than a person's topic. Should we delete it and only mentioning Facebook's attempt to reduce suicide? Mariogoods (talk) 22:35, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Change date of death to June 22?

Etika went missing on June 19, which is the date currently listed in the article, but his ex-girlfriend Christine tweeted that she learned he actually died on the 22nd: https://twitter.com/TheAlicePika/status/1145388228272427017 Though this obviously isn't an official police report, she was one of the closest people to him and it sounds like she may have learned this from an official source. Should the date be changed to the 22nd instead of the 19th? CeilingMessenger (talk) 03:42, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

We need an official police report that we can cite, or otherwisse an RS that has likely had access to it. --Masem (t) 03:47, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

He even has photos on Twitter liked on June 20 which doesn't make any sense. Michael14375 (talk) 13:51, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

There are tools that can automate postings, so that's not necessarily a way to say that; it falls into WP:OR. --Masem (t) 13:59, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Why does Etika's Date of Death still has a circa by it?

Haven't at this point in time the police and forensics figured out the exact day Etika was declared dead? Or has technology haven't gotten far enough where you can exactly pinpoint a drowning victim's time of death. Uuruuseiyo (talk) 05:08, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

We know there was a coroner's report, and from his gf, it likely was ruled on the 22nd. The problem is, outside of her tweet about that, we have no reliable sources that specifically state the day of death. And I did ask about using her tweet at WP:RS/N and was told a resounding NO. So until someone publishes what the official report says, we have no way to include the exact date, so we have to leave circa there. --Masem (t) 05:14, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Etika's View Count is over 145 million, not 4 million

Counting all three of his past channels, he has accumulated exactly 145,385,079 video views (and counting) as of July 9th, 2019. 143,741,591 views on "ewnetwork," 839,717 views on "Tr1Iceman," and 803,771 views on "EtikaFRFX." PantheonRadiance (talk) 01:44, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

 Done Thanks for clearing that up, I didn't check that he lost 143 million views on EWNetwork. Michael14375 (talk) 17:07, 10 July 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 July 2019

The memorial that the fans put up for Etika has been taken down. 104.10.133.48 (talk) 19:40, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

 Not done We need a reliable source to note this - and regardless, these memorials are always short-term, so its not really newsworthy. --Masem (t) 19:44, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Contested deletion

This page is not unambiguously promotional, because... (your reason here) --47.148.66.221 (talk) 22:46, 14 July 2019 (UTC) ITs important for people to know about etika and how depression kills everyone

Contested deletion

This page is not unambiguously promotional, because... (your reason here) --AceAlen (talk) 22:48, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Should be left alone. Many people have tried to delete this article for ridiculous reasons and should just be left alone.

Contested deletion

This page is not unambiguously promotional, because... (your reason here) --100.40.122.112 (talk) 22:49, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Dear Wikipedia,

After reviewing this article on the now deceased Desmond Daniel Amofah A.K.A. Etika, I have come to the conclusion that it does not in fact "only serve to promote him", as what is claimed. The article provides transparent information as to where Etika projected his work by providing links to channels owned by him. In addition to that, this article details his life, his career, the mental health issues he faced, as well as details on his death and disappearance. I believe it's an excellent article for Etika and should not be deleted.

Thank you.

Regards,

Anonymous

Suspension of his Twitter

Should we add information on the suspension of his Twitter and when it got hacked? Michael14375 (talk) 08:40, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

since it was restored and back up I don't feel like it needs to be mentioned — Preceding unsigned comment added by HappyBoi3892 (talk • contribs) 16:25, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Years Active

should etikas years active be 2008-2019 since his "rapping career" started in 2008? or should it just be kept his 2011-2015 (modeling) 2012-2019 (youtuber)

Rapping was more of a hobby than a career. Michael14375 (talk) 05:07, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Removing the suicide note video

I'm removing the suicide note video. It serves no encyclopedic purpose and is arguably sensationalist and voyeouristic. If we want to show a typical example of his work, we can easily find another (more typical) example; it appears they're all CC BY licensed. Huon (talk) 20:37, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

I disagree. It is relevant for his biography. He explains why he did what he did. And he says in the video "I hope that my story maybe helps to make YouTube a better place somehow in the future, to let people know boundaries and limits, how far things should go" and "Let my story be one that advises caution on too much of the social media sh** man. It could f*** you up. It can give you an image of what you want your life to be and it can get blown completely out of proportion dawg. And unfortunately, it consumed me. And it made me forget about consequences to my actions."

I think his words are very mature. And he wanted to share these words, so why would the video be voyeuristic? But I agree with you that in addition to this video, it would be good to also add a more typical video. But how can a video from YouTube be inserted? Volstra (talk) 18:57, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

How is it relevant? We can summarize in our own words what secondary sources have reported about the content (I don't think any secondary source comments on the style or maturity) of this video without having to show the video itself. In fact, that's already done. It's voyeuristic because the entire point of having the video is "this is what he said right before he killed himself" - the next step would be the video of someone who actually commits the suicide on camera. And this hypothetical next step should also make clear why "he wanted to share these words" also is irrelevant. He was likely mentally ill, he committed suicide; there's no enczclopedic need put his last (recorded) moments on public display. Huon (talk) 21:43, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

By that logic, no media would be required for anything. We could summarize in our own words what secondary sources reported about a movie poster instead of showing the actual poster. This doesn't make any sense to me. The point of having the video is to show what was going on in his head and allow any reader to draw their own conclusions. I'm not buying your slippery slope argument. A video of someone who commits suicide on camera doesn't add any insight into someone's thought process or personality. Volstra (talk) 13:13, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Well the video is back so. VinnieBat1 (talk) 04:53, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Volstra, VinnieBat1, and Huon:There's the moral component. It's one thing to show video evidence of MLK's "I have a dream speech". It's another thing to show footage of rape or involuntary castration/genital mutilation. He's absolutely correct in the fact the internet consumes people and puts too much stuff on display. So unless we can have a private backlog of videos for the sake of "Knowledge" I also support the video's removal. 2604:2000:1107:A0DA:7594:FACD:FA9:34BF (talk) 22:14, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Volstra gives a good analogy with the film poster. When secondary sources discuss a film poster, an image of the poster can clarify what they describe in a way that mere words cannot. For a similar example, compare Barack Obama "Hope" poster#Concept and design:

Fairey has said, "My historical inspiration was the well-known JFK portrait where he is posed in a three-quarters view looking slightly upward and out into the distance. The image of Lincoln on the five-dollar bill has a similar feel."

Images of that JFK portrait and a $5 bill obviously help our readers tell what Fairey is talking about in that quote. Here, however, there is nothing in secondary sources discussing Etika's suicide that would possibly be clarified by the video itself. As I said, no sources discuss style or maturity. Huon (talk) 00:11, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Volstra, VinnieBat1, and Huon:Very few sources on the subject of rape of castration talk about it as a violent attack on a person's gender, at least none that wouldn't be clarified with live footage. So what better way to show it off than to upload that shock footage on Wikipedia?... Or you can cut the shit. Plenty of sources either have the video or explain the contents of the video. The page for the porn anime Boku no Piko has a video where a man decribes what it's like to watch it on archive.org. The video is summarized on 2 sentences on the page itself, and cited as normal

The series gained a niche following in the Anglophone world after a viral video called "Don't watch an Anime Called Boku" was posted on YouTube circa 2010. In the video, a male viewer is heard describing the three episodes of the OVA and comparing the experience of watching them to selling his soul to Lucifer. It has since evolved into an Internet meme and a copypasta.

Why can't we just upload Etika's suicide note on Archive and cite it like a normal source, then describe what happens in the video? We're bascialy confirming everything he said about he internet being a voyeuristic hub, we're spitting on his corpse dude. 2604:2000:1107:A0DA:2869:A9D4:8FFB:3828 (talk) 18:56, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Per the above and the lack of an explanation of what this video adds to the page beyond the summary of its content already present, I have removed it (again). Huon (talk) 00:02, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@Huon: You’re gonna have to remove it a third time... check the page history. 2603:7000:1F00:6B91:7451:57D1:C907:3442 (talk) 22:22, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Since it's not currently in the article I don't have to remove it, but I still stand by the reasoning I provided above and would ask those who want to add the video to explain how it improves the article. Merely it being freely licensed doesn't mean we have to put it in, and as far as I can tell, it's not an example of the kind of video Etika is notable for. Huon (talk) 23:23, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

@Masem: This is the thread I was referring to. I recommend you read it before adding the clip again. 2603:7000:1F00:6B91:D925:BF08:3205:4E21 (talk) 00:18, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough, but I think comparing a final video (which had absolutely nothing graphic at all, just concern) to something like a rape video is extremely the wrong way to say why to remove it. If (however it was recorded) someone actually had their "moment of suicide" video up, that absolutely would not be allowed for the same reasons that we'd not have the rape video. But we're talking a video of someone saying some lines that yes, are concerned that are related to being suicidal, but are not at all morally offensive. There are fair reasons that this may cause others who are on the verge of suicidal to be drawn that way if they see that, and that's valid to remove, but the video isn't anywhere close to "snuff" or the like that was suggested to demand removal for that reason. --Masem (t) 21:09, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

References

Requested for indefinite extended confirmed protection

I have requested for indefinite extended confirmed protection due to childish vandalism coming from multiple IP's. That way users that have a 30-day-old account with over 500 edits can only make edits. This will prevent persistent vandalism. VARNAMi (talk) 09:21, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Adding a footnote about Etika misremembering his age around Sonic Battle's release date in regards to the origin of the Etika name?

Etika was born in May 12, 1990 and Sonic Battle was first released in Japan on December 4, 2003 and January 5, 2004 in North America according to the game's Wikipedia article. Etika states in a tweet that he came up with the Etika moniker at the age of 12 after a cheat code with the letter combination of "EkiTa" from the game Sonic Battle, but Etika was only 12 in 2002 and Sonic Battle was released at the end of 2003 and beginning of 2004 which would make Etika around 13 at the very earliest known age if he happened to obtain and playthrough Sonic Battle immediately after its release date. Uuruuseiyo (talk) 14:24, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Good Article Status

Hi everyone,

Just to let you know, the past few days I've been reworking this article by cleaning up citations, removing less reliable sources and replacing them with new reliable ones. I did so because I'm planning on getting this article to Good Article, and eventually Featured Article status. My plan is to get it to GA Status by mid-April so I can have a DYK fact from this article appear on May 12, 2023 - Etika's birthday. Depending on how much time I have after that, I would also consider making this a Featured Article in the near future. If any editors wish to help me bring Etika's article to GA status, please let me know. Thanks, PantheonRadiance (talk) 05:00, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

thx for all your hard work :)

joyconboyzforever HappyBoi3892 (talk) 05:55, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

@Masem, HappyBoi3892, L ke, and VARNAMi: I'm pinging several of the contributors to Etika's article because I want to get some feedback before sending it to an official GA review. Seeing as how the GA nomination process takes a while for reviewers to start let alone complete, the large length of the article will only make the process longer, and as of today there's only a little over a month before May 12, I decided to nominate it a bit earlier than I originally planned. I'm planning on nominating it either this Friday or Saturday after I make a few last minute changes. For the most part I think it's really close to GA (or at least much closer now than it was several months ago), but needs a few extra edits in terms of sourcing and copy editing to really push it over the GA barrier. To the contributors of the article, I have two main questions. One, do you have any feedback? And two, when I nominate it for GA, will you possibly have any free time this month to work on the article in a timely manner, especially if a review occurs earlier than expected?

Also, one last note. I know that the GA and DYK processes generally take a long time to complete, both for reviewers and major contributors to the article. So in light of these issues with time, if there's a possibility that it may not reach GA status in time for the article to appear on DYK by May 12, then I'm considering a new goal for the article to appear on DYK around June 19 to the 25th, roughly the four year anniversary of his passing.

Anyway, thanks, and Joycon Boyz forever! PantheonRadiance (talk) 18:00, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

EDIT: I have decided to nominate this article for GA status. For anyone who reads this talk page, I would still appreciate any feedback on the article's status so it can improve to GA status as quickly as possible. Outside of minor copy edits and statements that can be fixed easily, I personally believe this article meets all of the criteria. Virtually every pertinent statement is accurately sourced, and the sources in the article come from either reliable sources per WP:RSPSS and WP:VG/RS, or sources that are situationally reliable but used appropriately in certain contexts (such as Newsweek, Heavy and Mashable). Along with this, the article covers Etika's life, career and impact broadly; the article covers all significant perspectives on Etika per WP:NPOV; there hasn't been any stability issues outside of me performing source maintenance and copy editing these past few days; and the article is illustrated properly per the 6th criteria. I take it that the silence indicates that the article doesn't have any glaring issues that would necessitate a quick fail of the criteria, so I'm confident in bringing this article to GA. Once again, thanks. PantheonRadiance (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

hey, it seems like the "About EWNetwork" YouTube reference (the source thats next to his subscribers and total views) links to a 404 not found page. HappyBoi3892 (talk) 19:09, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

HappyBoi3892: Yeah, I think that it has to do with YouTube infoboxes automatically adding the channel link, even when the channel isn't available anymore. I don't know how to fix that, but perhaps someone could post an archive link or leave a note for the stats on all of his channels. Thanks, PantheonRadiance (talk) 22:40, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I think the lead paragraphs could be revised to be four compared to the five right now, slightly reducing the details on his decline in mental health and moving around sentences of his overall YouTube history. Half of the lead is otherwise fine. Carlinal (talk) 19:56, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

@Carlinal: Decided to trim the lead to make it four paragraphs - hope the changes are okay. At this point I don't want to make too many more edits until the GA review actually starts, so we can keep the page stable. PantheonRadiance (talk) 09:00, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

The last two lead paragraphs look great. The details of his mental decline are easier to understand in their conciseness, and merging the disappearance/suicide with its aftermath removes the fragmented nature of before. Well done! I wish you good luck when this GA review finally starts. Your work is very honorable to Etika himself, speaking as a fan. Carlinal (talk) 07:26, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Carlinal Thanks so much. I'm sorry I didn't get to work on getting this article to GA status earlier; if I had known it would've taken this long to wait for a review I would've started in January. But if it does pass GA soon, I'll start work on getting it to FA status for Etika's birthday. If anyone also wants to help bring it there, please feel free. PantheonRadiance (talk) 20:20, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Deep Web/Gordon Ramsay

HappyBoi3892 I'm thinking of removing that paragraph on the deep web and Gordon Ramsay. Besides the NY Times article which explained that Etika was a fan of him, I couldn't find any sources that discuss that Ramsay followed him on Twitter outside of an actual tweet, which potentially violates WP:SPS. I also couldn't find sources for the deep web stream either outside of other SPSs. Unless you come across any reliable sources discussing this, I'll omit it for the time being. Also, thank you for your edits. PantheonRadiance (talk) 20:20, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

I couldn't find anything for Gordon Ramsey other than YouTube and Twitter posts, and I only found one article for the deep web (https://www.talonmarks.com/arts-entertainment/2021/05/13/remembering-desmond-etika-amofah/), although I have no idea if this website is considered "reliable" by Wikipedia's policy.

Also, do you have an update on the Good Article Status? I appreciate all the work you've done to try and get this done. HappyBoi3892 (talk) 23:11, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I guess that's a usable source per WP:RSSM, but regardless, it's not a big deal if we can't find better sources for the paragraph; if we can't still find any better ones, I'll just delete it when the reviewer notices it.

Also, I'm pretty much done with everything until the review. Even though I messaged the YouTube project I still haven't gotten anyone to review it in the past month. It's a shame it's not gonna reach DYK on Etika's birthday and Tears of the Kingdom's release, the main reason why I wanted to bring this to GA status. But maybe next year I can try to bring it to WP:FA status on Etika's birthday. PantheonRadiance (talk) 23:40, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Remove last video

I don’t want to be rude, but i think it’s very disrespectful to have his last video posted in the page. I think it should be removed. It does nothing than being more trauma to this story. Just transcribe it in text. 2600:1003:B124:F415:94DB:849C:7769:B960 (talk) 17:30, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Its inclusion has been discussed in this manner before, and it has been kept. Masem (t) 18:43, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Unless I'm reading it wrong, the consensus from that discussion was to remove the video. It adds no value to the article and is best left as a sourced link to an external site.

Probably worth opening another RfC as the arguments in the original discussion are not entirely sound (e.g. "we should keep it because he wanted it to be seen" (failing relevance) vs "we should delete it because it's disturbing" (failing NOTCENSORED). Couruu (talk) 15:53, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Etika/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Vaticidalprophet (talk · contribs) 17:02, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I've been mulling for a couple days now about picking this one off the GAN list. My first comments will probably be in a few days. There's obviously some tricky subject matter here, and I respect the effort that's been made around it (especially in such a high-profile article and for a newer editor), though there are very much areas I think need work. I also notice from XTools and Who Wrote That? that the article has more authors than is common for quality-assessed articles/is less 'cohesive', which is a bit visible in the text. That's not a bad thing -- collaboration is the spirit of the project -- but it does result in some non-ideal ways of presenting facts, writing prose, etc that will come up. Vaticidalprophet 17:02, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

@Vaticidalprophet: Hello, and thank you for choosing to review the article. I'm free this whole week so I'll try to respond to your comments in a timely manner. I do agree that this article involves quite controversial material, which is probably why it has a large number of authors - that and Etika's large following as an internet personality. I mainly focused on cleaning up and rewriting the article with as many reliable (in context) sources as possible while simultaneously trying to retain other editors' contributions as well. In my opinion I felt that prose issues were the easiest to fix, so I admittedly focused a bit more on the other criteria. As for the rest, I'll discuss more in the review. PantheonRadiance (talk) 09:00, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Beginning comments:

Lead

• Date of death is problematic. I've seen the discussions on the talk page, and understand it's hard to pick a date here without introducing some issues. "Circa" is obviously indicated and correctly used, but the 19th seems like a poor date to pick, considering it's before even his final upload.
  • NY Times and Daily Dot pointed out that the video was scheduled to upload at midnight, with both suggesting that he had jumped before the video was released (YouTube allows users to schedule video uploads). I feel the 19th is appropriate, but would a refnote on the dates work better?
    • Yo. An article from ABC News states that "Amofah, 29, was last heard from on June 19 around 8 p.m., the New York Police Department tweeted last week." I added a refnote next to the infobox's death date to clarify the circa. Does the date in the beginning paragraph of the lede also need the note, or is it fine as is?
      • Thank you for this HappyBoi3892. Hope you don't mind but I moved the note down to that section and added EST to clarify the time zone. But if you're both okay with it, it can go in the lede. PantheonRadiance (talk) 08:21, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
        • The note looks fine, and having it in the lead is probably the best place to put it (statistically, around 60% of readers only read the lead of an article). Vaticidalprophet 08:25, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
• I'd drop 'best known for', which is a common enough opening, but not an uncontroversial one. It's frequently understood as non-neutral in tone, and in many articles -- with this unfortunately being one -- it's open to debate what the subject is actually best known for.
  •  Partly done - rewrote to "became known online" for now until I find a better phrase. I assume you mean that it's debatable whether he was more notable for his internet career or his struggles with mental health, which is quite perceptive - thank you. Virtually every reliable source about him states he was best known as a Nintendo YouTuber/internet personality, but much of his media coverage did come from his breakdowns and death.
• He was a son of Ghanaian politician Owuraku Amofah is an awkward phrasing. "The son of of Ghanaian politician Owuraku Amofah, he lived in Brooklyn, New York, for most of his life" is more natural -- while he had many siblings, this is still generally understood as a phrasing that allows for siblings.
  •  Done
• The third paragraph seems slightly too detailed at parts for the lead, which should be a relatively general overview, especially when dealing with such complex details as this. The amount of details also creates some problems, such as Following a suspension from Twitter, Amofah uploaded pornography to the EWNetwork channel in October 2018, resulting in its termination; he then posted statements on social media alluding to suicide leaving the implication that this termination directly encouraged his suicide.
  •  Partly done - I wouldn't say the Twitter suspension directly encouraged it, but sources did consider it as sort of the catalyst for his first breakdown, as he uploaded a video reacting to the ban while showing erratic behavior. Regardless, I removed it and made the paragraph a bit more general.
• would also be terminated should just be "was terminated" -- "would be" is sometimes indicated as a phrasing, but a lot of the time, such as here, it sounds stilted.
  •  Done.
• You have a lot of bolded channels named in the lead. It's worth thinking about how many of these you need to mention in the lead, and how many of them are significant enough names (not just channels, but names people think of when they think of Etika) that they should be in bold.
  •  Partly done - unbolded channels, but kept them in the lead because a big aspect of Etika's story includes his YouTube terminations. Multiple sources pointed out that he switched channels following his main account, EWNetwork, being terminated (NYT, Power Unlimited, The Verge, etc.) and it's a fairly non-trivial aspect to include in the lead.
• On June 20, 2019, Amofah was reported missing after an apologetic video was uploaded to his TR1Iceman channel, in which he admitted to having mental health issues -- is 'in which he admitted to having mental health issues' a necessary addition to this sentence? I'd be very careful in general with phrasing like this (I see it repeats in the "Disappearance and death" section) -- it's easily understood as specifically referring to e.g. psychiatric diagnosis, which we should not give the impression of if it's not actually said. In the lead specifically, I think "was reported missing after an apologetic video" gets the idea across more than well enough.
  •  Done - removed sentence, but sources do point out that he does say he believed he was mentally ill. I'll rewrite that part when we get to it.
• many observers have commented that the signs of Amofah's mental deterioration were either downplayed or ignored prior to his suicide This is followed by three citations...in the lead. If you need to have something not only cited but cited that heavily in the lead, it's questionable whether you should in fact have it. The "indifference" phrase before this gets the idea across more than well enough.
  • Actually, I intentionally left those three there for two reasons: one per this guideline - I think that the public perception of Etika's actions were a bit too exceptional to be left without a citation. And two, because I felt those were the strongest sources in the article. Each source covers Etika's story in detail that conveys his career, mental struggles and public reactions comprehensively. I intended it such that if the average reader decides not to read the full page, they would at least read the lead and (hopefully) those sources together. If you still believe otherwise, I'll move them.

Early life

• You don't need to explicitly specify which parent was which -- it's clear from context.
  •  Done.
• Do we have additional details on any profession, background, maiden name, etc of his mother?
  • Not much besides Daily Dot and Insider, so she's fairly low profile. I omitted that info as a result, and I don't believe the article loses much without said info regardless.
    • Your call, but I know more than a few editors (including more than a few at FAC) who bristle at the 'father has significant mention of his career, mother is just a name' phenomenon. If the sourcing exists, it might still be worth balancing that, especially given his father is himself notable, so cutting down mention of him is the wrong balance. On that note: it's a little difficult to figure out some early chronology from Owuraku Amofah's article. Do we know if Etika ever lived in Ghana as a kid, or otherwise why his father was a politician in another country while he was growing up in the US? Vaticidalprophet 05:30, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
      • Yeah, I do wish I could come across an extra good source about her that slipped past me, but so far I've come up empty - if I do find any I'll add it ASAP. As for his father, the closest I could find about such info was this video, but in it Desmond said that he didn't really "talk" to him because of his political position. Plus, most other sources say he was a New York native and never mentioned him living in Ghana.
        • I think it's within reasonable discretion to say something like "His father was based in Ghana in the 1990s[secondary source confirming that] and Amofah said they [were relatively distant/rarely interacted/something that's well-supported by the source] when he was a child[primary source]". Regarding sourcing, one thing I'll note is that you're not restricted to online sources. For Etika's life proper they tend to be the best ones, but around his parents and some other details, you might find significantly more in archives of pre-internet sources (e.g. newspaper archives) than you can from just Google. You'll have access to some of them through WP:TWL, though unfortunately a basic search for me on them didn't find much either. Ghanaian archive sources in particular might be tricky, but should exist and be findable somewhere. For GAN rather than FAC, though, I think the sort of structure I mention in the first sentence is enough; seeking out offline sources is something you want to do in the time between the two. Vaticidalprophet 10:02, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
          • Added your suggestion. I also spent the day on TWL too, but still couldn't find much for his parents, especially his mother; I'll keep looking however later on.
• If possible, can we get an actual number of siblings?
  •  Done - Only found his older brother and half-brother, removing "several".
• Heavy is a pretty bad source (many of their articles are heavily recycled from us or from social media). Is Randy discussed in any other sources?
  •  Done Power Unlimited and Newsweek* mention him, but I kept the Heavy source because I assumed it was situationally reliable. Added better sourcing for the time being.
• I'm also curious if there are better sources than Insider for Valery, though I'm willing to accept a lower bar for 'citing that he exists' than for citing pretty much any of the claims the Insider article makes.
  • It's the only source I could find. Insider is considered reliable for culture however and it's only used for this small instance.
    • I'm willing to take it, especially here, and I think it's worth having. Having said that, I'm noting you've talked about taking this article to FAC. FAC can be very strict on sourcing even for pop culture -- it's worth reading a few pop culture FACs and getting a sense of what people expect. I don't know if some of the sources in this article would pass a stricter reviewer, though it's very individual and arguable. Vaticidalprophet 05:30, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
      • Noted. If I do take it to FAC and it's held up to scrutiny, I'll have to omit it unless I somehow find another source.
• I'm not sure about the editorial judgement re. mentioning his high school...club? videos? It's more interesting if there are any sources available about why he ended up at that school, rather than what's honestly kind of trivia about his time there. The two paragraphs about different schools can probably be cut down and consolidated. From where I'm standing the implication seems to be that he was sent to that school because of the fighting, though I'm not sure if any sources explicitly say this.
  •  Partly done Yeah… that was one of the few parts of the article I was fretful about with this review. I never added this, but I didn't remove it because I loosely followed WP:SPS and WP:BDP. Didn't find anything else besides his videos, so I trimmed the fat here. I'll continue to work on this section tomorrow or so.
• Watch out both here and in general for MOS:LQ -- you mostly have punctuation inside quotes, whereas by the Manual of Style it should be outside. (Probably worth just going through the article find-replacing ." to "., outside blockquotes.)
  •  Done - fixed all quotes in article.
• Amofah started modeling in his early twenties and continued until 2015. Any clarity on why he stopped?
  •  Done - Comicbook, Vox and Heavy didn't mention it, but the video source stated that he became less passionate about it (see 1:40). Added this.
• Probably worth adding a bit of context about what Model Mayhem is.
  •  Done + agreed. Explained it was a social media website for models.
• One of the best pieces of advice there is on writing Wikipedia articles is "assume the reader is an intelligent fourteen-year-old who doesn't have any prior knowledge of the topic". On modern pop culture articles like this, I'd propose a corollary: if the reader is a parent or grandparent trying to understand what their kid/grandkid is talking about, how good is the article for them? With this in mind, I want to query two things, does Etika detail what the cheat code he's named after did, and is there any more detail on what he was inspired by in San Andreas (e.g. a particular character)?
  •  Partly done - He explains that the music and hairstyles in the game influenced him in the Twitter clip, but not CJ or any character; I'm considering removing it as there are better sources that talk about his hair ("Guile-kun" in Career). 4Gamer and NYT only mention it's a Sonic cheat code without any explanation, but only unusable social media posts state it. But since this site isn't a game guide, I figured omitting what the cheat code does isn't too important. However, I can revise this later on too if needed. PantheonRadiance (talk) 01:45, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
    • That's fine. I note now from the talk, though, that there's some dispute over whether it was actually possible for him to have been 12 when he picked the nickname, which should probably be fixed in the article text. This should be fine once that's resolved. Vaticidalprophet 10:02, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
      •  Done - Decided to remove age part; hope that's a fair compromise.

YouTube career

• Here is the biggest issue: I do not like the "Mental decline" subsection header. I think it's the one seriously bad call in an article that otherwise handles the issue reasonably well. It's a very harsh, presumptory phrasing. You could pick something relatively nondescript like "Later career", or remove the header and treat it all in one section. You could also try for a milder phrasing of the same idea (something like "Erratic behaviour"), but I'm not super sold on this, because it raises questions of editorial judgement -- the decision to include or exclude things from a section with such a heading is going to be pretty big. Again, a few ways to handle it, but it needs to be handled.
  • Wholeheartedly agree. Would this work: "Origins and popularity (2012–2018)" and "Channel terminations and breakdowns (2018–2019)"? The latter sans the dates was the original section name before "Mental decline." If not, I'll rewrite it to "Erratic behavior" based on your suggestion.
    • I saw in the edit history that "Channel terminations and breakdowns" was the previous heading, though I'm not super sold on "breakdowns". I think a consolidation to something like "Channel terminations and erratic behavior" gets the idea across well without going too hard on it. Vaticidalprophet 05:30, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
      • I like that too. Are the dates okay as well? If so I'll mark it done.
        • Dates are fine. Vaticidalprophet 10:02, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
          • Then  Done.
• The "November 2016" and "June 2017" mini-paragraphs should probably be scrapped entirely. They're the kind of WP:PROSELINE minor-controversies that tend to populate pop culture articles without ever being of much value; on something like this, they're just bathos when offset by actual, huge controversies later.
  •  Partly done - Actually I rewrote both in order to show their encyclopedic value. The fake Switch incident was the origin of the "JOYCON BOYZ" phrase that reliable sources noted, showing it did have an impact to his career. For the donations I appended it after the $300k statement because of how it relates to his finances, and the Kotaku source was quite comprehensive and factual. Also, the fake Switch event was one of my ideas for a DYK quote.
    • Good to see :) Vaticidalprophet 05:30, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
• Initially centered around gaming news, Amofah's video output consisted of Let's Play videos of Nintendo games alongside reaction videos of gaming announcements, mainly of Nintendo Direct presentations. Many of his reactions to such presentations usually involved him screaming and falling out of his chair in elated shock and tossing objects around his room. While this is trying admirably for a show-don't-tell phrasing of 'exaggeratedly upbeat reaction videos', it sounds a bit...jarring. Amofah's video output, initially centered around gaming news, evolved over time to a focus on Let's Play videos of Nintendo games alongside reaction videos of gaming announcements. His reaction videos, mainly of Nintendo Direct presentations, were noted for their characteristic exaggerated and energetic style; they featured elements such falling out of his chair in elated shock and tossing objects around his room.
  •  Done - prefer this much more :)
• Amofah's channel garnered popularity in 2014 due to should in this context have a comma before 'due to'.
  •  Done.
• Amofah's channel continued to grow in popularity as he made more videos centered around his reactions to gaming news and YouTube drama, and according to him, he was earning over $300,000 a year through stream donations. Given that this is multiple clauses that could be multiple sections, 'and according to' might read better as '; according to'. Having said that, perhaps more importantly: any specific dates for when he said this?
  •  Done for the most part. Revised with your suggestion, but the NYT source doesn't give a specific date sadly. Would it still be okay to include?
• Despite focusing on Nintendo-related content, Amofah also made playthroughs of various video games "Also" is usually superfluous, and "despite" a bit presumptory, with weird "did he have a non-compete clause or what?" implications to a reader not super-familiar with fandom YTers. Though he primarily focused on Nintendo-related content, Amofah made playthroughs of video games from multiple publishers, such as [examples].
  •  Done - initially wrote "Despite..." to contrast how he was typically more recognized for his Nintendo-based content as opposed to playing other games, but I prefer your change.
• I linked WP:PROSELINE above. In the "mental decline" section (pending section retitle): read this essay, and internalize it. This is an article for which PROSELINE styles are kind of understandable, because we're often talking about things that happened in quick succession, and unlike many other situations a lot of those things do remain individually relevant; nonetheless, there's work that can be done here to restructure this section in a more cohesive manner. I'll be able to make more detailed comments on it later, but it needs at least a first pass to see what can be done to make it less PROSELINE-y and not so much of an "on date X, Y happened and people got mad about it". We can present this as a cohesive 'thing that happened', and not a series of actions and reactions.
  • Thank you so much for linking this essay. I'll try to keep this in mind when revising this section, but this portion will admittedly take a bit of time for me to revise so I can do this as properly as possible. I'll start work on this tomorrow. PantheonRadiance (talk) 03:10, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
    • Started a little on fixing the prose tonight, but I'll take care of it tomorrow (it's almost 1 AM PST for me). PantheonRadiance (talk) 07:40, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
    • EDIT: I tried to reduce the PROSELINE today but came up a bit short; a bit harder than I anticipated. I think that I would definitely benefit for your feedback on this, so I'll await your comments on the rest of the article. PantheonRadiance (talk) 04:45, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

More to come. Vaticidalprophet 12:13, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Origins and popularity (2012–2018)

Just looking back over this part before continuing.

• I'm not going too hard on minor prose errors, because I anticipate doing some copyediting myself in the post-GAN pre-FAC phase. Having said that, for the Despite his earnings, Amofah had revealed in a June 2017 video that he had dealt with multiple "chargebacks", or "fake donations" of large amounts of money sent to his PayPal account via stream donations, which would jostle Amofah with hundreds of dollars in processing fees sentence -- is 'jostle' really the best word here, and is 'via stream donations' a necessary addition given it's known to be his primary income source?

Channel terminations and erratic behavior (2018–2019)

• This section is tricky for sourcing. Of the various sources used in the article, the hardest sells at FAC will be Heavy and Newsweek. Heavy seems mostly excisable, but Newsweek is used a few times in this section for fairly important content. In an article on a living person currently embroiled in such a controversy, this would be full-stop inappropriate -- the exact reason people oppose Newsweek is because it tends towards a lot of "insensitive celebrity gossip". However, in this context, I think at least minor use is arguable; the same in-depth coverage of controversy that makes it an unusable source for negative claims against living people means it provides useful detail here. (FAC reviewers may disagree. I'm less strict than some of them are.) Having said that, it should really be kept to a minimum, so it's worthwhile going through this and seeing what can be re-cited to a better source.

I'm leaving just that comment for now -- it's a fairly big one in terms of the section's structure, so it'd be more worthwhile seeing if anything noticeably changes before commenting further. Vaticidalprophet 17:33, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I trimmed down Newsweek usage to only two instances, using sources like Vox, HuffPost, and People to replace such sources. Also, I CEd the "chargebacks" statement. PantheonRadiance (talk) 09:20, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Continuing this section. The proseline copyedits have really improved flow and readability -- good job on that :)

• The link to anxiety in "anxiety medication" is not ideal. We have an article on those drugs at Anxiolytic, so instead 'anxiety medication' should be a piped link to it, especially to clear up to readers that this describes many different classes of drugs.
  • Wikilinked.
• I absolutely understand the sources might not specify, but...is 'pornography' ever called out further? Like, did he upload 'nudes' or 'screwed up possibly illegal porn' or what? Those have pretty different implications. Again, definitely get this might not be sourcable, but it's weirdly general. (I was aware of all the Etika drama when it was ongoing, but didn't follow close, and he's not the kind of YTer I watch otherwise.)
  • Power Unlimited says hentai, but regardless I personally think just pornography gets the point across (banned for posting inappropriate content). I can add later though in my next edit. PantheonRadiance (talk) 09:25, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
• In the quotebox -- I mentioned this as the one kind of quote where MOS:LQ doesn't apply, because it's a large paragraph offset by quotation marks, rather than the relatively short quotes in the article text. I also vaguely wonder if the image and quotebox should switch places, but this is arguable either way.
• The (that were promptly deleted) parenthesis is of unclear relevance -- it's best not to have parentheses in articles too much anyway. Is the implication meant to be that he deleted them himself, implying regret or similar, or that they were deleted by Twitter's moderation team? The latter is probably too trivial to include. The former might be worth clarifying. If the sources don't specify, we should probably remove.
  • Specified that he deleted them via Daily Dot source.
• alarmingly erratic may be editorializing. (We say the exact words 'erratic behavior' a lot in this section, which is probably worth looking over, but also understandable as a least-bad phrasing giving the issues with calling people 'mentally ill' in wikivoice. I'll expand on that in the next section, given it comes up again.)
  • Removed and rewrote.
• Him being detained on livestream just kind of...sneaks in there. Given so many of the sources are about this specific incident, and it was so much of a Big Deal, it's probably worth making more prominent -- its own paragraph, detail if applicable, etc. In terms of WP:DUE, if it comes down to it, trimming down the 'other things that happened' to write more about this is probably the better balance in a zero-sum situation.
  • Expanded a bit more on it, but decided not to make into separate paragraph.
• Following the interview, Amofah was detained again that week for assaulting a police officer. This paragraph as a whole is very strong, but 'that week' is a bit superfluous/drags a little. It's clear from the rest that the second detainment happened shortly after.
• Did he ever have charges pressed against him for assaulting a cop?
  • Clarified that he was not arrested but taken to the hospital as stated in the sources.
• symptomatic of genuine mental ailment is sort of awkward (especially given the aforementioned 'tricky to call people mentally ill in wikivoice'), but...understandable. "Symptomatic" is probably the word to strike there, given it again implies specific things we really don't want to imply (e.g. having any particular diagnosis of a specific mental illness with known symptoms).
  • Would "indicative" work better?
• During the majority of Amofah's livestreams in 2019, a large cohort of viewers would frequently spam clown emojis as a way to mock his behavior. This is overwritten. During Amofah's livestreams in this period, many viewers mocked his behavior by spamming clown emojis.
  • Sorry for the late reply (4th of July), but I believe that all above are for the most part  Done. PantheonRadiance (talk) 09:25, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I'll come back to the mental illness point, which again, the next section deals with a lot. Etika described himself as 'probably mentally ill', and acted in ways that people informally ascribed labels to, but saying much more than that becomes tricky real fast. Wikipedia is, for better or worse, authoritative; saying 'in wikivoice' that Etika 'had mental health issues', 'was mentally ill', etc. strongly gives specific impressions. In particular, the most problematic impression is that he was diagnosed with a specific psychiatric label, or needed specific treatments. The article never says as much and I'm certainly not accusing you of that, but this is something many readers come away with when they read those, and it's very difficult to write these articles in a way that doesn't give such impressions.

I recently wrote Marie Sophie Hingst, which is a GA with some similar qualities (internet-culture person who committed suicide around the same time and age, with lots of speculation about her mental health) that I'm preparing for FAC in the near future. The contexts are very different, but you can see from that article the caution I've used around terminology. Outside the lead -- which I'm still trying to find the right phrasing for -- I've been very careful about not saying things that imply Hingst was mentally ill, or could be diagnosed with a specific label. (German Wikipedia and Wikidata have been less cautious, but that's their problem.) Even the lead just says 'her mental health', without going into further detail. It might be useful to go through and see the ways I've tried to handle that problem myself. Part of why I picked up this review was the firsthand experience writing around similar subjects of "people coded as 'mentally ill' by most sources and their actions, but never actually openly diagnosed with anything or otherwise able to be called such in wikivoice". It's hard, and you've done a pretty fantastic job of it for a first major article contribution, but it still needs some work in the next section especially. Vaticidalprophet 15:50, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

• Fair enough; I'll try to keep this in mind when editing, but I do wish to note that a few articles in the section include mental health researchers and journalists who weighed in on Amofah's behavior and perceived that he showed signs of struggling with mental health (but of course not diagnosing him with any label). I believe it should be due weight to keep such perspectives in the article, but I'll definitely revise based on your suggestions. Already rewrote parts of what Amofah said in the video based on the sources. PantheonRadiance (talk) 09:25, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Disappearance and death

• Recording for posterity that I'm aware of the disputes surrounding the video inclusion and have no particular opinions on it.
• stated that he was dead at the point of recovery -- 'discovery' is less awkward here than 'recovery'.
  •  Done
• sent information to Amofah's account which related to national suicide hotlines Did they do this before (when he was visibly behaving oddly) or...after he uploaded the suicide note?
  • The NYT source said YouTube typically sends an email that includes hotlines to channels that post videos which express suicidal ideation, after removing such videos per their policy. Partially rewrote to make it more verifiable to the source.
• The "list of people who reacted" paragraph is a little stilted. Partially this is a matter of overuse of 'also'; partially it's the combination of extensive quoting with a sort of random-seeming selection of people involved. 'Also' is a frequently superfluous word, so maybe just pass over here quickly to check the phrasing.
  • Copy edited, I think it should be good now but I'll revise just in case.
• The aforementioned mental health researchers stressed the need to inform more people on social media about the signs of mental illness, depression, and suicidal thoughts so that they can better recognize when people in a mindset similar to Amofah's are in danger and need support is probably the part of the article that crosses most problematically into "strong impression of a specific diagnosis". I'm not really comfortable with the way it alludes to a specific authority quoting specific symptoms and making specific comparisons. In general, I think you could more naturally combine the paragraph including this and the one that follows it, and omit the parts (like this) that make the most specific statements about information we don't actually have. Things like the quote from his friend, and the quote from Patricia Hernandez (that link might be warranted here), get the idea across more than well enough.
  • Hmm, I would've thought to add a bit more commentary from the mental health researchers, such as those in the NBC article, but I can see how it could be construed that way. In the process of rewriting it. EDIT: Combined paragraphs together and rewrote based on NBC source that they emphasized the need for more research on social media's effects on mental health. Marking as  Done for now.
• I worry that this section is absolving Keem of responsibility a little/strays out of NPOV. I'm not saying he's responsible, but many sources and many reactions represented him more negatively than this. You've got, for instance, this article in Persona Studies (a fairly legit academic journal) mentioning Klein's coverage of the situation and how it impacted Keem's career.
  • Pardon my language, but... LMFAOOOO. When I submitted this to GA, I was actually worried about the exact opposite - whether it was worth keeping info about Keem's backlash in the first place and if it veered too much into non-NPOV and undue weight (not to mention the scope of the article too). But I decided to keep it because there were some reliable sources that discussed it, and even more that described Keem's interview. I've added info from the journal into the article now.
• I'm not sold at all on the relevance of the Ouija board bit -- it feels like a holdover from the "written in real time during ongoing dramatics" stage.
  •  Done - Decided to remove for now unless anyone objects to it. PantheonRadiance (talk) 09:10, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Legacy

• Jamie Lauren Keiles has an article and can be bluelinked.
  •  Done - Thanks HappyBoi3892 :)
• I am not sold on the relevance of the last two paragraphs, especially the last paragraph. (This was going to be 'last three', but I think something got removed.)
  • I actually moved the "2021 Nintendo Direct" statement to the third Legacy paragraph to avoid PROSELINE once more. Also, I had an extra source from Multiplayer.it (reliable per VG/RS) that wrote about the NFT incident, but I'll remove both paragraphs if they seem too trivial. PantheonRadiance (talk) 09:15, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

See also

• List of solved missing person cases is a bit, uh, blunt. A see-also section might be indicated here, but that doesn't seem like the right inclusion.
  • Removed. Couldn't think of any other article to link so I left "List of YouTubers" there. PantheonRadiance (talk) 09:50, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

That should be...much of it? I'll do another pass-through for things I missed. Vaticidalprophet 08:30, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

• At this point, I think I got almost all of your suggestions added, but in the meantime I'll do some more CEs while awaiting your final comments. Please let me know if there are still any issues with the article and I'll fix them ASAP - I'm going to work on this all day tomorrow (7/9). PantheonRadiance (talk) 09:50, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

  It's in pretty good shape now! (And yeah, I suspected the Keem paragraph might have been a "tried not to go anti-POV, accidentally skewed the other way" situation.) I still don't think the NFT thing is relevant -- consider the ten-year test, another essay people bring up a lot in recent-events articles. I'm honestly 50-50 on whether NFTs pass the ten-year test at all, let alone for this specific article. It's probably worth looking a little critically at the legacy section thinking about what will stand up as really relevant in a few years, even if it received short-term media coverage.

  Otherwise, I think my only remaining comment is up in "Early life" -- his date of birth is also cited in Obituaries in the Performing Arts, so with the secondary source to confirm it, we don't need the primary source. Vaticidalprophet 10:05, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

  I think that's all she wrote. Removed the extra primary source, decided to add some Social Blade sources to the infobox, removed the last two legacy paragraphs for the time being, and made some more slight copy edits. If there's anything else I need to fix, once again, please let me know. Otherwise I hope it's finally ready for GA status! Thank you so much for dedicating time to review this article. I know that Etika's story touched upon sensitive topics, some of which I still struggle to cope with to this day, so I empathize with other editors who may have felt uncomfortable with reviewing the article. That being said, I genuinely appreciate all the advice you've given me throughout this review! :) PantheonRadiance (talk) 09:45, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

  I'm very happy to pass this. I think in the long term FA is both possible and worthwhile (this would be the first FA on a Youtuber in the project's history, putting aside all the other good reasons it's desired here), but I'll have a lot more to say about getting there later. For now -- congratulations on your first GA, especially on such a complicated topic. Vaticidalprophet 13:52, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Date of discovery of Etika's belongings

Hey @PantheonRadiance. You've done an incredible job so far. I noticed in your recent edit that you changed the date of when Etika's belongings were found from June 19 to June 22. I've seen some conflicting articles that state his belongings were found on the same night of his disappearance (e.g., The Daily Dot states the 19th), while others say the 22nd. I remember when this was all going down that the NYPD revealed on the 22nd that they found his belongings, but it's still unclear if they had already found them on the night of his disappearance and waited to inform the public, or if they genuinely found his stuff three days later. HappyBoi3892 (talk) 19:05, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

@HappyBoi3892: I admittedly wondered about this too, but I also found another Kotaku source published on the 23rd that states they found it a day before in addition to the Digital Trends source. Perhaps we could leave another refnote, or per WP:SOURCESDIFFER we could use in-text attribution? ex. something along the lines of "The Daily Dot stated that the police found his belongings on the 19th, while Kotaku and Digital Trends claim his belongings were found on the 22nd"? @Vaticidalprophet: would this be a suitable compromise? PantheonRadiance (talk) 18:50, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

That would be fine. Vaticidalprophet 08:08, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

EDIT: The Verge also stated that the belongings were found on "Saturday night", and June 22nd, 2019 falls on a Saturday. PantheonRadiance (talk) 18:55, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Post-GAN, pre-FAC

This is now one of very few articles on all Wikipedia about a Youtuber to reach GA status (and I'd make that list even shorter if I reclassified it as "person is actually best-known as a Youtuber and article is actually GA-quality"). It has the potential to be the first at all to reach FA. This is uncharted territory, which means there's a lot we just don't know about what the best sources for a Youtuber article at FAC are yet, or what FAC reviewers will expect to see.

I plan to look through and copyedit by section sometime in the next few days; there are also a few more points not resolved at GAN that should probably be reiterated, like how statistics about what parts of an article readers read means we really should be putting the date-footnote in the lead. (It's possible to 'name' footnotes to use them multiple times in an article, which I'm willing to do at the copyedit if there's appetite to have it appear twice.) Outside of that, the big thing to resolve is sourcing and information density -- I've mostly mentioned what FAC reviewers will be wanting to see sourcewise (e.g. not much use of Heavy/Newsweek), and the point I've made about non-online sourcing is still worth thinking about. Non-online sourcing is obviously less important for this article than for most articles, but it's still where we're likely to find some of the unclear details about e.g. his parents' careers. I notice Lentz (writer of the Obituaries in the Performing Arts series) referred to his 'parents' generally as figures in Ghanaian politics, and it might be worth seeing what led him to that phrasing rather than just talking about his father -- if you could get the book itself, you could check its bibliography and see if he uses any sources worth looking at. Physical copies are expensive (par for the course with academic publishing), but if that's too prohibitive, we have some articles that might be of interest to you.

Also: now that you've had an article reviewed at GAN and are getting a feel for the process, why not pay it forward? GAN functions on people reviewing at least as often as they nominate, and it's a fascinating way to expand your horizons and learn more about a subject while improving the encyclopedia. For newer editors it can be a little scary to look at a list of articles that aren't always in your comfort range, but as someone who's reviewed a lot on many topics I can provide any advice and mentoring necessary to start doing GAN reviews yourself. It's an important part of keeping the process working, and an easy way to contribute to the improvement of our articles. Vaticidalprophet 16:11, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Hey Vaticidalprophet, once again, thank you so much for reviewing the article and taking the time to leave such helpful comments! I do agree that this also has strong potential to reach FA status, but it will definitely take a lot of work.

Speaking of sourcing, I actually forgot to mention this in the GA review. Both the Newsweek and The Daily Dot pieces were written at a time when Wikipedia considered them fully reliable, with their only issues regarding the IBT acquisition and due weight, respectively. Personally I still consider DD reliable for internet culture, as several writers have written for other reliable sources (ex. Josh Katzowitz wrote for NYT, WSJ, WaPo and LA Times). Not to mention, they're cited by numerous other RSs too. As for Newseeek, each source came just right after IBT left - late 2018-2020. Heavy is also only cited twice for fairly benign info, but I agree it'll be questionable in the FA review. I acknowledge that consensus can change and I do admit I struggle a bit with judging source reliability, but I still feel they're used appropriately within certain contexts. I think the sources would definitely benefit from more discussion in the RS noticeboard, specifically whether they would be suitable for FAs. I'll try to do so in the near future, along with finding more solid sources to minimize the use of Heavy and Newsweek, if not replace them entirely. For non-online sources I'll continue to search for as many as possible along with getting that book, although my ability to find them may be limited. I appreciate the library link you sent me by the way.

Tomorrow I'm going to start the DYK nomination, then assuming everything goes well, I'm going to take a little break from editing the page and hopefully start work on FA in a couple weeks or so. I'd definitely appreciate your CEs within the next few days. And finally, I left a little "special" surprise on your talk page :) PantheonRadiance (talk) 03:00, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Peer review

Hey, Vaticidalprophet, long time no talk! I wanted to let you know that I'm considering opening a peer review this week so I can get guidance for the best courses of action to get it to FAC. My intent is to pre-emptively fix any issues beforehand so the FAC process goes as smoothly as possible. I'm inexperienced when it comes to this, so I figured that having some outside help would accelerate the progress of this article. So, I was wondering if you had any concerns or changes you want to make to the article in advance, or if you even recommend me doing this at all. Also, I'm still seeking sources for their parents too but school has admittedly limited my time a bit these past few months. Thanks, PantheonRadiance (talk) 23:40, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Comment - Decided to go ahead with it. PantheonRadiance (talk) 23:45, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 09:54, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

Amofah in May 2019

• ... that YouTuber Etika named his fanbase the "JOYCON BOYZ" after the controllers for the Nintendo Switch? Source: Kotaku
  • ALT1: ... that in Japan, American YouTuber Etika was nicknamed "Guile-kun" after the character Guile from Street Fighter? Source: ITMedia, Automaton
  • ALT2: ... that YouTuber Etika's reaction to the announcement of Mewtwo in Super Smash Bros. 4 led the game's creator Masahiro Sakurai to retweet it? Source: Power Unlimited, ITMedia (same source as above)
  • ALT3: ... that in 2016, YouTuber Etika streamed himself with a Nintendo Switch months before its release, only to be revealed that the Switch was 3D-printed? Source: Polygon, Kotaku
  • ALT4: ... that a mural created to honor the late YouTuber Etika was added as a PokéStop in the mobile game Pokémon Go? Source: Polygon, BBC
  • ALT5: ... that fans of late YouTuber Etika noticed that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s second Fighter Pass DLC contained characters Etika liked, such as Pyra and Mythra from Xenoblade Chronicles 2? Source: Insider, Den of Geek
  • ALT6: ... that the YouTuber Etika was the son of Ghanaian politician Emmanuel Owuraku Amofah? Source: GhanaWeb, Daily Graphic (online)
  • ALT7: ... that after the late YouTuber Etika's death, Kotaku listed him as one of the top gamers of 2019? Source: Kotaku
  • Reviewed:
  • Comment: I know this is a bit unorthodox, but I had quite a few ideas for DYK and a hard time narrowing it down. So to make it a little fun, I decided to make a Strawpoll for voting - I hope that’s okay. If I'm forced to decide however, I'd go with either ALT1 or ALT2. Also, the image is just in case the “Guile-kun” one gets chosen. My only regret is that I didn’t get this to GA Status in time for Etika’s article to appear on the main page on his birthday - May 12, but I’ve come to terms with it. #joyconboyzforever

Improved to Good Article status by PantheonRadiance (talk). Self-nominated at 09:00, 12 July 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Etika; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: @PantheonRadiance: Good article. Onegreatjoke (talk) 21:36, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

The final video

Re-opening an old discussion as to the presence of his final video on the page. It is my opinion that this video is best sourced rather than included in-line on the page; while undeniably valuable to wider society, isn't really relevant to an encyclopedia. I believe the paragraph beginning "At midnight on June 20..." does a sufficient job of describing it.

I'm also not convinced as to the copyright status of the video; as I understand it, YouTube videos are subject to copyright of the original creator. Etika's death was unlikely to release his works into the public domain as US copyright law states it lasts for seventy years after the owner's death (unless in the video he asks for it to be shared?) The Commons page says "CC-BY-3.0, as stated in the archived page source code" but I believe this is discussing Wayback Machine's policy, not the content therein.

If it is copyrighted content, it would fall under WP:NFCCP where it fails contextual significance (the reader's understanding is not substantially improved by the the video, nor would it be significantly damaged should it be removed).

TLDR: support deletion of "I'm sorry" due to copyright and significance questions. Couruu (talk) 16:18, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

EDIT: Removed the copyright complaint, but the relevance of the video question still stands. Couruu (talk) 16:27, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Youtube has an option to release videos CC-BY 3.0. This video was so licensed, as can be seen on its archived page (see License: Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)). Vaticidalprophet 16:22, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Ah, thank you, I was unaware of that method! Still new to this. Let me edit my initial response. Couruu (talk) 16:23, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Retiring

Hey everyone, thanks for reading and editing Etika's article. I just wanted to let you know that after today's FA, I wish to retire from editing this article. Part of the reason I wanted to edit his page, and edit on Wikipedia in the first place is to get closure. After this past year, I feel I finally achieved this, while also giving back to both this website and his community. For all present and future editors reading this, all I ask of you is to please maintain this page as much as possible. Make sure to keep it up to Wikipedia's standards, and resolve all issues cordially and peacefully.

One last thing: if anyone's interested, I wrote a piece on Etika that I hope gets accepted to the Signpost this week. Here it is if you want to read it.

Thank you, PantheonRadiance (talk) 23:30, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

Congrats bro! I watched your progress from afar starting with GA status and you never gave up. Even though no other article similar to Etika had ever reached FA status, you still persevered and got it done. Major respect to you. HappyBoi3892 (talk) 04:59, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

HappyBoi3892: Thanks for the respect, and also for all your hard work on this article too! #joyconboyzforever PantheonRadiance (talk) 07:05, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much for this article. I had a great time narrating it. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 09:52, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Thx for getting this article to FA status and a prominent spot on the Main Page today, PantheonRadiance! I also enjoyed listening to it. Alexeyevitch^(talk) 11:15, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

@Howardcorn33 and Alexeyevitch: Thank you both, I appreciate it! That recording is such an amazing gesture too! 😊 PantheonRadiance (talk) 06:40, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Holy shit, Etika's Wikipedia article not only has FA status but is also on the front page now!?

Damn, never expected that. This is the world we live in now, lol. Zakawer (talk) 02:14, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Zakawer Yep lol. Hopefully this will inspire more FAs on YouTubers in the future too! PantheonRadiance (talk) 07:25, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 June 2024

Change "and that he hit had the police officer in self-defense" to "and that he had hit the police officer in self-defense". 84.35.17.96 (talk) 10:51, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done Skyshiftertalk 11:00, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

MOS guidelines

It seems to me that the description of his disappearance, and what happened before and after that, is too detail, and may violate one of our MOS guideline. This may result in people copying the behaviour of killing oneself. This needs to be fixed ... (my comment perhaps is too late, as this article is the TFA yesterday, with over 120,000 pageviews; but I think there will still be some "residual traffic"..) --Dustfreeworld (talk) 08:45, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Hey, Dustfreeworld. You may be thinking of MOS:SUICIDE, which is a part of MOS:MED, a "style guide for editing medical articles". As far as I'm aware, the MOS does not refer to suicide explicitly elsewhere. Do you have any other part of the MOS in mind?

I understand wanting to excercise some caution when it comes to a sensitive topic like this, but what part of the description is specifically objectionable to you? (I.e. what do you want to change and how do you want to change it?). To me, it looks like a fairly standard description of the events that led to his death, though the video does seem a bit voyeuristic to me. ArcticSeeress (talk) 10:04, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Wrong year for JOYCONBOYZ

There is no possible way that is fanbase could have earned that nickname based off of the Nintendo Switch controller... IN 2012! HOW ON EARTH IS THAT MISTAKE EVEN IN THE ARTICLE HOLY COW

tldr: This article uses the wrong year 66.244.122.53 (talk) 19:11, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

The article does not make any claim when he started using "JOYCONBOYZ". So there's no issue. Masem (t) 19:25, 13 October 2024 (UTC)