[HN Gopher] What went down on Wikipedia after Queen Elizabeth II...
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What went down on Wikipedia after Queen Elizabeth II's death was
announced
Author : raybb
Score : 89 points
Date : 2022-09-10 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| jrockway wrote:
| I was perusing Wikipedia as the news broke and was most amused
| how quickly the national anthem changed from "God save the queen"
| to "God save the king". But, the filename and "subtitles" still
| referred to the queen. I checked today, and indeed the file has
| been renamed and the embedded lyrics have been updated. Very
| impressive, honestly.
|
| I hope there's a third version of that sound file floating around
| where it claims to be "My country, 'tis of thee".
| Hamuko wrote:
| I was also pretty impressed at the speed of which edits were
| being added. I opened the Poundbury article
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poundbury) and even though the
| news had just broken and it was a tangentially related article,
| the opening paragraph already said "keen endorsement of
| Charles, King of the United Kingdom".
| akolbe wrote:
| All the more remarkable is that all of this is done by unpaid
| volunteers.
| Macha wrote:
| The discussion on photos seems strange to me. Obviously I'm not
| fully up to date on wikipedia policies, but the comparisons to
| Reagan or actors using photos from their prime rather than their
| later years seems a bit misleading. US presidents and actors both
| are much less active at the end of their life to the peak of
| their age so people remember what they looked like at that peak
| (I remember being surprised at W's current appearance in his
| post-election video with Obama and Clinton), but the Queen was
| active and old for a long time.
|
| Similarly, even on actors, I'd kind of expect a photo of an older
| Morgan Freeman or Ian McKellen to continue to be their picture
| even post-mortem, while I wouldn't expect the same for, for
| example, Mark Hamill.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Interesting. If we posit that the age representation on
| Wikipedia someway not only reflects but perpetuates the
| "normal" canonical age of someone's memory, then we might ask
| if they need to follow neutrality policies (random age in
| pictures) or try to find sources for what ages are used
| commonly elsewhere.
| ordu wrote:
| It is sad when people die, and I'm feeling guilty laughing at
| people fighting for the right to write history at the same speed
| it happens.
| sdssdfsdf1 wrote:
| netsharc wrote:
| It'd be interesting if Wikipedia had a git-style interface where
| someone can just "git push" and hundreds of articles get updated
| (any one that mentions The Queen, Prince Charles, even Harry's
| children now get Prince and Princess titles.
| raybb wrote:
| That would be pretty cool. As far as I know the closest they
| have are bots but the bots mostly do super simple things. Then
| other less common tasks people will write their own little tool
| for to go manually fixup all the instances.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bots
| akolbe wrote:
| Proper write-up by the Depths-of-Wiki lady here:
|
| https://www.inputmag.com/culture/queen-elizabeth-ii-death-wi...
|
| Copied by Gizmodo and Metro:
|
| https://gizmodo.com/queen-elizabeth-ii-died-wikipedia-deadit...
| https://metro.co.uk/2022/09/09/how-wikipedia-responded-when-...
| Oarch wrote:
| With all the times the Internet has declared her dead over the
| years, the deaditors must be used to false starts.
| [deleted]
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| The girl that runs this account, Anne Rauwerda, is great. I only
| just found out she has a twitter account after watching her on
| tiktok for a long time. Apparently she does live shows even!
|
| You can tell she really loves talking about these topics, she
| seems to really enjoy herself.
|
| Her coverage of the death of Elizabeth II has been no exception.
| blondin wrote:
| the general news media was very impressive to me as well. i
| hardly knew the queen. but within hours were many articles and
| documentaries covering her lifetime. i had this sad nagging
| feeling that they had them ready for the moment. and things would
| have been different if the situation was not expected.
|
| i learned so much about her in the following hours...
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Large news outlets generally have these sort of obituaries
| prepared for all relevant heads of state, famous actors or
| authors, etc.
|
| That's why occasionally they will declare someone dead who's
| very much alive, because the publish flag on the article
| accidentally got set.
| yesbabyyes wrote:
| Believe it or not, this is the back story of the Nobel Prize.
| A Parisian newspaper published Alfred Nobel's obituary and,
| as he wasn't dead, he read it. It wasn't very flattering, to
| say the least; I believe it began something like: The
| merchant of Death is dead.
|
| This experience made him take a deep look at his life and
| legacy, and he decided to will his fortune to the development
| of science, peace and literature.
| chki wrote:
| While that is a nice story, there are apparently not many
| actual records supporting this.
| https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/43461/is-
| there-a...
| Symbiote wrote:
| Newspapers have obituaries ready years in advance.
|
| https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/times-insider/20...
| rospaya wrote:
| Relevant Onion parody:
|
| https://www.theonion.com/note-do-not-run-until-fucking-
| queen...
|
| > LONDON--After 70[?] years as the ruling monarch of the
| United Kingdom and [CHECK HOW MANY COUNTRIES SHE'S IN CHARGE
| OF OR ELSE TWITTER PEDANTS WILL GET MAD] Queen Elizabeth died
| [PEACEFULLY OR PAINFULLY--COPY WHATEVER BBC OBIT SAYS] in [TK
| LOCATION] at the age of 89
| dottrap wrote:
| Major news outlets usually have a pre-prepared article for
| deaths of notable figures and celebrities. Then they can just
| fill in remaining blanks and publish quickly. On occasion one
| of these pre-prepared articles gets accidentally leaked, or
| sometimes a news outlet mistakenly thinks somebody died and
| runs with it.
|
| There is an SNL segment with Dana Carvey where he plays Tom
| Brokaw pre-taping all sorts of variations of Gerald Ford dying.
| (Dying at 83, 84, shot dead, overdose on crack, chopped by
| plane propeller, eaten by wolves, mauled by lion in convenience
| store.)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tX6jdoruH8
| Ekaros wrote:
| I would expect them to have something done as they have had
| what 70 years plus to prepare for this eventuality. And it is
| not that the things change too much with her.
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(page generated 2022-09-10 23:00 UTC)