Thread by @depthsofwiki

lots of memes about speedy wikipedia editors — quick thread about what went down on wikipedia in the minutes after her death was announced

at 17:31 UTC, the first reputable sources reported queen's death. and BAM, just like that, edit conflicts ensued grafana.wikimedia.org/d/000000213/ed…

her page had been pretty exciting the whole day, though. here's a post from hours before where people are deciding which historical pic is best (once someone dies, wikipedia generally uses a good historical pic instead of a recent elderly pic)

the FIRST editor to update her death was Sydwhunte, whose edit came in at 17:32 — seconds after the first sources broke the news. Sydwhunte now has bragging rights and a talk page full of fans en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk…

but there was more to do! the Queen Elizabeth II article had more than 55 edits in the next 15 minutes — changing verbs to past tense, updating categories, updating the infobox, etc

A six-membered task force called WikiProject London Bridge cropped up to maintain the following articles. reminder that everyone is doing this for free. they just think it's fun an important en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia…

Note that there's separate article "Death of Elizabeth II"! Two hours before her majesty’s death, user Thriley created a draft article. ~3 minutes after the official death announcement, it was moved from draft to mainspace article
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and…

and then 10 minutes after the death announcement, the article "Reactions to the death of Elizabeth II" hit the mainspace and immediately there were reactions to "Reactions to the death of Elizabeth II." editors are discussing a merge with "Death of Elizabeth II"

Charles' article changed titles five times while people waited for his official regnal name (it's — surprise —Charles III). Charles, Prince of Wales --> Charles III --> Charles, King of the United Kingdom --> Charles III --> Charles, King of the United Kingdom --> Charles III

btw, Dutch Wikipedian @hayify coined a name for the people who race to change the tense: "deaditors." in a blog post, he discusses that deaditors are more likely to be anonymous users and smartphone editors haykranen.nl/2018/06/15/the…

also heads up that if you're brand new to editing, news topics are not the most beginner-friendly places — they're a bloodbath

one of my favorite data viz projects ever is this @puddingviz project about how public figures' articles get huuuge pageview spikes when they die pudding.cool/2018/08/wiki-d…

it takes some hours for the pageview stats to update but you can already see how much they spiked on September 8th!
that's all I have for now. sorry if this isn't "funny" or "depths" but I think it's cool to see how editors write history in real time! pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wi…