There seems to be a certain type of person who, when they hear of the death of a celebrity, don’t think “Oh, that’s a shame.” They think “I wonder if anyone’s updated their Wikipedia entry yet? Maybe I can be first!”
It happened with Steve Irwin, of course – looking at the history of his Wiki entry, there more than 1,000 edits within the first 12 hours of his death being announced.
Yesterday it happened with the Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond. Only, he’s not dead. And his death was never even announced, but still several people edited the article to say he did.
What’s up with that? Hoping he’d die so they could be First With The News!?
But, actually, seeing Wiki evolve into a site that can (hopefully) be trusted as a source of up to date news, still edited by Joe Blow, in pretty interesting.
The other day I was looking for information about this big Amaranth hedge fund collapse, and I went to Wiki first. It wasn’t a news story, but I knew they’d have links about futures trading, and crap like that.
I agree that Wikipedia is great, but not for “breaking news”. Edit wars, fighting to be the first to report someone’s death – and just inventing their death if they have the temerity to hang in there and you get bored waiting – seem in pretty poor taste to me.
Damn, I came in to mention the same thing. I find out about more deaths from the Dope than CNN.com now.
Most people seem to like to discuss a celebrity’s death and on Wikipedia or a message board, this is made more obvious as you are more likely to interact with other people that cared for the now departed celebrity. I think it makes sense and it is not at all ghoulish, it is just the reality of modern humans.
BTW: Not to long ago a poster here put up an Op saying Wil Ferrel was dead.
Bob Hope was famously reported dead to a full session of Congress.
False reports happen.