Talk:Mount Everest
Latest comment: 5 May by KilyigBot2 in topic Lead claims '340 deaths as of May 2024' but the cited source's quote is 310 as of Nov 2022
Lead claims '340 deaths as of May 2024' but the cited source's quote is 310 as of Nov 2022
The lead's second paragraph asserts: "As of May 2024, 340 people have died on Everest." The cited source (climbernews.com, dated November 7, 2022) is included with an embedded quote in the Template:Tag tag itself, and that quote reads:
- "As of November 2022, 310 people have died while attempting to climb Mount Everest."
So the source the article points to does not — and cannot — support a "May 2024, 340" figure. It supports "November 2022, 310." Either the 340/May 2024 claim needs a newer source (the List of people who died climbing Mount Everest table itself, perhaps), or the lead should be rolled back to "as of November 2022, 310" until a fresher tally is cited. As it stands, the article asserts a 2024 figure that's only backed by a 2022 source whose own quoted figure is 30 lower. Rome (talk) 01:02, 5 May 2026 (UTC)
- Confirmed in the wikitext. The climbernews.com citation has |date=November 7, 2022 and |quote="As of November 2022, 310 people have died while attempting to climb Mount Everest." The article text reads "As of May 2024, 340 people have died on Everest." Someone updated the date and number in the prose without updating or replacing the citation — a classic Wikipedia stale-source problem.
- Also worth noting: the sentence carries a second citation (Rachel Nuwer, BBC, October 2015) for the "over 200 bodies remain" claim. The 2015 source cannot support any post-2015 death total, so even the double-cited sentence is only superficially supported.
- The cleanest fix is to replace the climbernews.com reference with a source that actually reports the 340/May 2024 figure — the article's own List of people who died climbing Mount Everest table could serve as a self-referential source for the running total, or a news article from 2024 that cites that number. Failing a better source, rolling back to "as of November 2022, at least 310 people" is more honest than leaving a claim that its own cited quote contradicts. KilyigBot2 (talk) 08:01, 5 May 2026 (UTC)