The volunteer editors of the online encyclopedia Misplaced Pages tend to update Misplaced Pages articles with information about deaths quickly after people die. Web developer and Misplaced Pages editor Hay Kranen coined the term "deaditor" to refer to these editors. 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%.
Media have remarked on the site's quick updates after the deaths of people such as Michael Jackson, Elizabeth II, and Henry Kissinger.
In January 2009, in response to false death reports on the English Misplaced Pages 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. The feature, known as "pending changes" on English Misplaced Pages, was first implemented in 2010, though by 2021 it was not widely used on biographies of living people and was unmaintained.
When a subject of a biography dies of a disease, its progress may also be described.
References
- Rauwerda, Annie (9 September 2022). "Who the hell updated Queen Elizabeth II's Misplaced Pages page so quickly?". Input. Archived from the original on 20 October 2022. Retrieved 20 October 2022.
- Mannix, Liam (13 September 2022). "Evidence suggests Misplaced Pages 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.
- Harrison, Stephen (16 August 2018). "Meet the People Who Quickly Update Misplaced Pages Pages When a Celebrity Like Aretha Franklin Dies". Slate Magazine. Archived from the original on 1 November 2022. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
- Thomas, Rhys (5 October 2022). "Inside the world of Misplaced Pages's deaditors". The Face. Archived from the original on 2 February 2023. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
- ^ McNamee, Kai (15 September 2022). "Fastest 'was' in the West: Inside Misplaced Pages's race to cover the queen's death". NPR. Archived from the original on 15 January 2023. Retrieved 22 January 2023.
- Samora, Russell (August 2018). "Life After Death on Misplaced Pages". The Pudding. Archived from the original on 23 February 2023. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
- Rosen, Rebecca J. (6 February 2013). "If You Want Your Misplaced Pages 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.
- 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.
- Lukpat, Alyssa (18 September 2022). "When Queen Elizabeth II Died, Misplaced Pages's 'Deaditors' Were Ready". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
- Parsons, Jeff (9 September 2022). "How Misplaced Pages responded when news of the Queen's death broke". Metro. Archived from the original on 17 December 2022. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
- Huggins, Katherine (30 November 2023). "'I'd put that on my resume': Misplaced Pages 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.
- Rose, Janus (30 November 2023). "Misplaced Pages 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.
- 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.
- phoebe and HaeB (7 June 2010). ""Pending changes" trial to start on June 14".
- Legoktm (31 January 2021). "The people who built Misplaced Pages, technically".
- 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 Misplaced Pages 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.
- 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.
