While the Crown’s social media managers are busy these days keeping millions of followers up to date with live videos, special content, historical photos and insights that tell the fullest and most comprehensive way about the ceremony envisioned for Queen Elizabeth’s death. one wonders how it happened that the update of the Wikipedia pages of the sovereign and the new king occurred in a few seconds from official announcement Buckingham Palace. While BBC announced Her Majesty’s disappearance at 5:31 pm local time, user Sydwhunte made the first change to the Queen’s Wikipedia page at 5:32 pm. This editor, otherwise unknown and usually concerned about player pages, received a number of praises from fans during these hours for the timeliness with which he removed the queen from the list of “living people”.
Of course, the death of a sovereign, unlike the death of an actor or any famous person, entails a number of changes that go far beyond the conjugation of verbs from the present to the past. After Sidvhant entered the date of death, article on Elizabeth II has undergone more than 55 changes in the next 15 minutes, with a series of updates concerning the use of tenses, the length of his reign, and the list of sources. Shortly thereafter, the page of his son Carlo, no longer a prince, but a king, was viewed. While he waited to figure out which name he would take, his article was changed five times: official confirmation was required before Charles III’s name could be correctly entered. The same diligence was required for additional pages for William and Kate, Prince and Princess of Wales starting this week.
In such situations, it is understandable that the editors behave like journalists who are asked to prepare a crocodile several weeks in advance for a character who, for reasons of age or health, should soon disappear. Similar the so-called “deeditors”the neologism coined by Dutch editor Hay Cranen already knows what posthumous changes they will bring to the article: from the choice of a photo to the death of a public figure, Wikipedia generally uses a good historical image instead of a recent photo in old age – to mention the former Commonwealth kingdoms that he rules, in the case of the royal family.
But why go to extreme lengths to update page content in real time? After all, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a source of news. There are already newspapers, television, Internet sites and social networks for this. The answer is given very well by Kobi Potishman of Northwestern University, who completely changed Wikicode ahead of time to include it when the news of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory comes in: it’s a source of pride for him. and satisfaction. And it doesn’t matter that it happens completely anonymously and for free. This is done for the glory. In short, the largest available body of knowledge the world has ever had is supported by a team of nerds. God save the Internet, this really needs to be said.
Source: Elle