Jump to content

Wikipedia coverage of death

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

Sydwhunte was the first to update the Elizabeth II Wikipedia article following her death.[1][2]

Editors of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia tend to update Wikipedia articles with information about deaths quickly after people die.[3][4] Web developer and Wikipedia editor Hay Kranen coined the term "deaditor" to refer to these editors.[5] Articles about people often have large spikes in views just after they die. For example, the article about designer Kate Spade averaged 2,117 views in 48-hour periods before her death. In the 48 hours after her death, it got 3,417,416, an increase of 161,427%.[6][7]

Media have remarked on the site's quick updates after the deaths of people such as Michael Jackson,[8] Elizabeth II,[5][9][10] and Henry Kissinger.[11][12]

In January 2009, in response to false death reports on the English Wikipedia articles about Robert Byrd and Edward Kennedy, the site's co-founder Jimmy Wales proposed that pages be moderated using Flagged Revisions, a form of protection under which certain revisions of a protected page must be accepted by an experienced editor before becoming visible to readers.[13] The feature, known as "pending changes" on English Wikipedia, was first implemented in 2010, though by 2021 it was not widely used on biographies of living people and was unmaintained.[14][15]

When a subject of a biography dies of a disease, its progress may also be described.[16][17]

References

  1. ^ Rauwerda, Annie (9 September 2022). "Who the hell updated Queen Elizabeth II's Wikipedia page so quickly?". Input. Archived from the original on 20 October 2022. Retrieved 20 October 2022.
  2. ^ Mannix, Liam (13 September 2022). "Evidence suggests Wikipedia is accurate and reliable. When are we going to start taking it seriously?". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 6 March 2023. Retrieved 20 October 2022.
  3. ^ Harrison, Stephen (16 August 2018). "Meet the People Who Quickly Update Wikipedia Pages When a Celebrity Like Aretha Franklin Dies". Slate Magazine. Archived from the original on 1 November 2022. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
  4. ^ Thomas, Rhys (5 October 2022). "Inside the world of Wikipedia's deaditors". The Face. Archived from the original on 2 February 2023. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
  5. ^ a b McNamee, Kai (15 September 2022). "Fastest 'was' in the West: Inside Wikipedia's race to cover the queen's death". NPR. Archived from the original on 15 January 2023. Retrieved 22 January 2023.
  6. ^ Samora, Russell (August 2018). "Life After Death on Wikipedia". The Pudding. Archived from the original on 23 February 2023. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
  7. ^ Rosen, Rebecca J. (6 February 2013). "If You Want Your Wikipedia Page to Get a Ton of Traffic, Die While Performing at the Super Bowl Half-Time Show". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 27 February 2023. Retrieved 19 December 2022.
  8. ^ Steiner, Thomas; van Hooland, Seth; Summers, Ed (13 May 2013). "MJ no more: Using concurrent wikipedia edit spikes with social network plausibility checks for breaking news detection". Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on World Wide Web. pp. 791–794. doi:10.1145/2487788.2488049. ISBN 9781450320382. S2CID 15540545.
  9. ^ Lukpat, Alyssa (18 September 2022). "When Queen Elizabeth II Died, Wikipedia's 'Deaditors' Were Ready". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
  10. ^ Parsons, Jeff (9 September 2022). "How Wikipedia responded when news of the Queen's death broke". Metro. Archived from the original on 17 December 2022. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
  11. ^ Huggins, Katherine (30 November 2023). "'I'd put that on my resume': Wikipedia editor brags she was 'the girl' who changed 'is' to 'was' on Henry Kissinger's page". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on 1 December 2023. Retrieved 1 December 2023.
  12. ^ Rose, Janus (30 November 2023). "Wikipedia Editor Who First Noted Henry Kissinger's Death Has Become an 'Instant Legend'". Vice. Archived from the original on 1 December 2023. Retrieved 1 December 2023.
  13. ^ Snyder, Chris (26 January 2009). "Jimmy Wales Pushes For Flagged Revisions After Fake Death Reports". Wired. Archived from the original on 30 December 2012. Retrieved 1 December 2023.
  14. ^ phoebe and HaeB (7 June 2010). ""Pending changes" trial to start on June 14".
  15. ^ Legoktm (31 January 2021). "The people who built Wikipedia, technically".
  16. ^ Mahroum, Naim; Bragazzi, Nicola Luigi; Sharif, Kassem; Gianfredi, Vincenza; Nucci, Daniele; Rosselli, Roberto; Brigo, Francesco; Adawi, Mohammad; Amital, Howard; Watad, Abdulla (June 2018). "Leveraging Google Trends, Twitter, and Wikipedia to Investigate the Impact of a Celebrity's Death From Rheumatoid Arthritis". JCR: Journal of Clinical Rheumatology. 24 (4): 188–192. doi:10.1097/RHU.0000000000000692. PMC 9915341. PMID 29461342. S2CID 3442166.
  17. ^ Naik, Hiten; Johnson, Maximilian Desmond Dimitri; Johnson, Michael Roger (15 June 2021). "Internet Interest in Colon Cancer Following the Death of Chadwick Boseman: Infoveillance Study". Journal of Medical Internet Research. 23 (6): e27052. doi:10.2196/27052. PMC 8277405. PMID 34128824.


Stub icon

This death-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Stub icon

This article related to the Wikimedia Foundation is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_coverage_of_death&oldid=1254340279"