This is why it's important to have a clear black and white definition of who and isn't famous enough. Every pick is either qualified or disqalified, and worrying about other people making picks that are "too obscure" is unnecessary.

If everyone has Bill Clinton and GWB just because they're afraid to make a pick that's too obscure then the game is no fun at all.

an example of someone who could be properly disqualified is someone who is famous only for being sick and whose death gets covered by major media. for example, there have been human interest stories about people who raised lots of money to fight cancer on gofundme and then died.

put me down as a yes vote for the Wild Card and unique pick bonuses.

Also, I don't think unique picks will necessarily mean obscure or marginally famous people. Without even trying about 50% of my list this year ended up being unique picks.

Let me put this another way:
There's nobody from 2017, going over the entire list, who would merit disqualification, although I had to Google a dozen or so names.

Does that set your mind at ease at all?

===

Also, on the question of joker and/or loner bonuses.

Is there anyone who is with me on abolish-these-two-bonuses island? I see support for keeping one/the other/both, and was thinking about polling everyone who participated this year to decide.

But if I'm more or less alone, we can just keep them both and move on to other things.

If you're opposed to keeping or the other (as opposed to indifferent) do speak up now.

I like the joker bonus more than the loner bonus. But either way, my view is that whoever organizes this sets the rule and I’ll be happy with it either way.

Joker bonus is fine.

here's a good test case for qualification:

Anthony Senerchia, early inspiration for ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, dead at 46

http://www.wtsp.com/news/nation-now/...t-46/495740525

I would vote no on that one.

1st I would question if he qualifies as famous. Having a relative who started a viral video craze/charity drive in their honor does not qualify as fame imo. If the ice bucket challenge was commonly referred to as the Senerchia challenge then a case could be made for it. As was posted earlier, a person whose claim to fame is their illness should not count, however, someone such as Steve Gleason (check out the amazing doc about him btw)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Gleason would count because of his prior fame as a football player.

On top of those reasons, I don't think the link you posted would count as a qualifying reporting source according to this year's rules.

Qualifies IMO without much doubt. The bucket's in the Smithsonian. Did a quick search of news articles excluding the death notices and there was quite a bit.

I‘m with Diddler on this one.

Yours and Diddler's thoughts here are completely understood.

But I do mean it when I say I'd use *extreme* discretion in disqualifying people pre-emptively and let the rule around outlets do a most of the work in sorting out who's famous and who's not.

The guy's claim to fame is tenuous, yes, but it's discernible. (And the Ice Bucket thing was a widely-covered national phenomenon.)

===
That said: So far as I can tell, there has been no obit for this guy from a qualifying publication yet; diddler's 100% right on that score.

So thus far, it would still be a wasted spot on the list. And the outlets rule does our work for us.

I'm with Howard. I like the joker better than the loner but I am ok with both.

Also if your only claim to fame is an illness, that should be a disqualification.

Senerchia story has been picked up by Fox News

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2017/1...ead-at-46.html

But he's still basically known because of a life threatening illness, right?

Yes, but that wasn't a disqualifier this year. Nor did I propose it to be one next year.

All's I'm trying to do with this rule is prevent an entry full of someone Googling "GoFundMe cancer campaign" and picking a bunch of folks ages 18-23 with absolutely nothing else next to their name.

If there's a reasonable claim to fame, I won't get overly involved in sussing out who has it and who doesn't.

Again: someone picked a video game competition commentator this year. I would absolutely scream NOT A CELEBRITY. But the guy has a Wikipedia entry, I think - on that alone I'm willing to pass it off to the AP and #failing New York Times to adjudicate his level of celebrity.

Otherwise, we all wind up in morasses such as this one.

--

PS. Nobody had Jim Nabors, in case you wondered. ("PRIVATE PYLE!!!!!!!")

Scoring system for deaths still the same?

If someone objects to a "celebrity" within the first say 7 days of the competition we could have a vote. If the majority votes against the "celebrity" then it will be replaced by the top alternate. Having a person on the list rejected isn't a huge disadvantage to that player.

---

What about the number of nominees per player? Should it stay at 20 or should we increase it to have more action in the thread?

According to the article, no. He was famous for being associated with starting a very popular worldwide social media campaign to raise money for a charity. If his death was reported just because he had ALS, then why don't we read about randoms dying of ALS every day in the news?

I like the voting idea.

I'm fine with 20, but wouldn't mind it being 30 or even 50. I remember last year having a list of like 27-28 and having to decide who to take out (and of course I took out Ralphie May).

+1

I wouldn't go too high with list size but bumping to something like 25 is a good idea

At its heart, yes. 110 minus age. Go up a few posts if you didn't read about the bonuses. It's looking like we'll keep loners and jokers.

And I must say you did great with the rules given the first year of a pool. Many of the things you have in there took my longtime pool three or four years to figure out. Props.

No votes. They don't work. People are usually somewhere between holiday and digging out from work that first week. Plebiscites don't apply well to this. Trust me. I've tried.

20, full stop. We have enough players that there are plenty of names as it is, have reason to expect more players in '18. I'd like to be able to celebrate on New Year's Day rather than go blind on building some spreadsheet.

Thanks mate. I was inspired by deathlist.net and the pool based off of that site when creating this. I just wish I dedicated myself to maintaining it.

Farewell, King Michael

http://abcnews.go.com/International/...es-96-51583609

And hello to 425kid, who dodges the shutout!

KM was your joker, econophile - so double-points there. Updated leaderboard, scorers in bold:

Punctually, 385
Tokyo!!, 351
ham on rye, 311
PyramidScheme, 239
econophile, 190
Howard Treesong, 152
True North, 133
Banned4lyfe, 132
Louis Cyphre, 132
Umcle Diddler, 114
JDiamond364, 106
krunic, 78
toedder, 72
SuperUberBob, 65
Loden Pants, 56
golfnutt, 39
ScreaminAsian, 39
ntanygd760, 19
housenuts, 19
425kid, 14

I'm having problems with the spreadsheet, but hope to have it up and posted tonight. Will link when I can.