When they've been dead long enough to not have their estate sue.
For example, Prince may not be a historical domain character yet, but JRR Tolkien might be. I don't know if it would be thirty years as a rule, but I think the rules are similar to Too Soon; it is at the writer's discretion but also depends on when people stop thinking of them as a person but as more of a "figure", which can take a long time depending on their importance.
Edited by whunt
If a person has a Wikipedia article which is neither a stub nor locked, is that a good indicator that they qualify as Historical Domain?
A Wikipeida article that isn't a stub indicates notoriety. An article that's locked to editing would indicate controversiality, and that there might be a risk of coming off as being in bad tastes. An unlocked article would therefore indicate that they're probably not quite that controversial.
Edited by BrokenEye If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is
I was wondering, what would be the page type of the Historical Domain Characters? Some of them are set as Useful Notes (Alfred The Great, Alexander The Great, Emperor Augustus, David Ben Gurion, Adolf Hitler, Joan Of Arc...) but most of them seem to be Creator or Person (Napoleon Bonaparte, Gaius Julius Caesar, Al Capone, Emperor Caligula, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Jack The Ripper, Leonardo Da Vinci...)
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If they have made some works, they are creators. Most here are not, so they should be useful notes.
Edited by DragonQuestZ I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.
I'm curious if anyone knows, as a general rule of thumb, how long ago a person should've lived before one should consider them historical domain? I know there isn't a real rule, but it'd be useful to have a concrete cutoff date.
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