Has this always been a feature on artist pages that I've never noticed, or is this a newer feature?

Most likely. I just found out today from Mark Reale's page.

It was just implemented yesterday.

How long before someone starts putting "still alive" in living musicians' pages for points?

Only mods can access the field, so I doubt that'll happen.

Not the case. I've entered a number of causes of death today for obscure artists I've processed reports for. Not sure if it's supposed to be open for everyone, or if that's a slip-up on somebody's part.

Huh, you're right, I just updated one myself. But Evenfiel said here:

Oh, well.

Well actually, only mods can enter the date of death, but afterwards anyone can enter the cause if the date is set. Just a precaution so that someone doesn't go around declaring random artists to be dead.

I'm pretty sure trusted users can add R.I.P. dates too - I've added quite a few while adding legacy lineups.

Yeah, I think trusted users can edit it too, but otherwise, what HB said.

In relation to the message on the front page: when entering causes of death, would using "suicide by hanging" or "murder by shooting" be acceptable? It just seems a little redundant for some of the lesser known artists to put "Murdered" in the C.O.D. field, and then "Shot to death" in the trivia section.

Yes, that's fine.

For mods and trusted users, you can use this list to properly tag artists as deceased;
http://www.metal-archives.com/todo/dead

Have fun.

Done. Are there any artists with "RIP" as well?

Nope, Morri already cleared them all... there were about 50.

Actually no, I cleared those that had "R.I.P." in the trivia field (as opposed to biography). Searching for "RIP" without the dots is a pain in the ass because that word can appear as part of many other words.

Oh yeah, sorry... forgot.

Maybe just perform a case sensitive match?

Yeah, I didn't know you could do that with a LIKE match so I was gonna check about regex, then I learned about a LIKE BINARY that I didn't even know existed... >_>

Some more on that list:
http://www.metal-archives.com/todo/dead

"RIP" appears for other reasons sometimes, but we can just ignore those artists and focus on those who are clearly shown as deceased.

Edit: hmm, I noticed a few people writing "RIP" in the lineup field for the instrument just so that the RIP tag shows up on the band line-up. That's... bad. I changed one such cases, but I'll be checking if there aren't any more of those... Edit 2: there's over 100. Another list to clean...

I've added a second tab regarding the "RIP" in line-up fields. Sadly it's slow to load, but once it's all cleaned up it shouldn't be an issue later.

On that second tab, if there's an edit icon next to the artist's name, it means the artist isn't tagged as deceased, so s/he should be edited. The edit icon at the end of the line is there to clean up the lineup field and strip out the "RIP" text from there. It's very important to edit the artist page FIRST, because if you clean-up the lineup and don't tag the artist, then the artist won't show up on any list.

Edit (lots of those today): I've also adjusted the first tab list, because I noticed that sometimes people entered not "R.I.P." or "RIP", but they entered, "R.I.P" -- yeah, no trailing period. Argh.

I cleared out the first list - all that's left are "R.I.P." notes for disbanded bands and words like "ripping".

EDIT: Second list clear.

Good job, thanks.

Ok. Last thing. Should we be striving for any sort of uniform look to this? Should all cases of murder or suicide follow the same "Murder by <insert manner of death here>" (i.e. "Murder by stabbing", "Suicide by gunshot"?) Would it look better to list them as "Murder (<manner>)" or "Suicide (<manner>)" (i.e. Murder (stabbed), Suicide (hanging), which personally gets my vote) to be more uniform? And what about diseases? Do we do "Heart attack" or "Lou Gehrig's Disease", or should we be scientific and use "Cardiac arrest" and "Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis"?

That's much better.

The "vulgar" (non-scientific) terms are fine. If the cause of suicide/murder is known, it's okay to write "Suicide by hanging" or something, but I don't really have any opinion on one way or another.