Was Wikipedia updated with time of Sushant Singh Rajput’s death even before he had died?

[Poetlister]

Sushant Singh Rajput’s death has become a topic of discussion for many. While a group of fans is trying to get ‘justice’ for him, those who ‘rule’ the film industry have taken a step back and completely stopped talking about him or problems with the industry. Amidst all this, various social media users have come up with another conspiracy theory revolving around Sushant’s death. They claimed that the actor’s Wikipedia page was edited, and someone added the information of his suicide much before he committed suicide.

Op India

[WanderingGuest]

SYAC: no it wasn't. Wikipedia by default displays UTC time on page history no matter where it is accessed from. Indian Standard Time is 5 hours and 30 minutes ahead of UTC, creating an illusion that it was updated before the incident.

[Poetlister]

SYAC: no it wasn't. Wikipedia by default displays UTC time on page history no matter where it is accessed from. Indian Standard Time is 5 hours and 30 minutes ahead of UTC, creating an illusion that it was updated before the incident.

Don't ruin a good conspiracy theory!

[Ming]

What the history also shows in too much detail is the race to get these deaths recorded in WP. The first edit was at 2:29 PM IST, starting a barrage of mostly mobile edits which included a lot of trivial vandalism as well as people placing the suicide claim in various places in the article. In the midst of this Synoman Barris (T-C-L), a new page patroller who Ming believes is a woman in the US, noticed things and started reverting. Forty-six edits in, someone else stepped in and page-protected it; this was at 2:31, so no more than three minutes had passed. Two minutes (or so) and five edits later, we finally see an edit with a citation (to this article, which apparently was updated about 45 minutes later). People were making changes about as fast as possible, at fifteen edits a minute or more, working out to four seconds or less between edits. Ming has to think there were many more edits that failed due to conflicts. This included six reverts, btw, five done manually through Twinkle and one by ClueBot. Yet another reason why all BLPs should page-protected as a matter of course.

[Giraffe Stapler]

In the midst of this Synoman Barris (T-C-L), a new page patroller who Ming believes is a woman in the US...

Or they could be a sockpuppeting paid editor from India. Specifically, Delhi. Who knows?

[Poetlister]

Yet another reason why all BLPs should page-protected as a matter of course.

They should certainly be protected when someone dies, but of course this is rarely known in advance, as this case proves.

[Ming]

In the midst of this Synoman Barris (T-C-L), a new page patroller who Ming believes is a woman in the US...

Or they could be a sockpuppeting paid editor from India. Specifically, Delhi. Who knows?

No, she's an aspiring American wikinerd. For one thing, she writes idiomatic American English. It's moderately likely she's the reincarnation of someone who has been around, but it's possible that the level of polish on her first article (Genneya Walton (T-H-L)) merely represents copying from another actress article as a template. At any rate there's nothing about her contribs that has the least suggestion that she is particularly interested in anything Indian; she just happened to be the first person to stumble across the update-storm.

[Poetlister]

The Wikipedia Battle Over the Tragic Death of a Bollywood Star

When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September, her Wikipedia article rocketed to the top of the “Top 25 Report,” a weekly list of the most popular articles on English Wikipedia. That week, Ginsburg’s article received more than 4 million page views. But the most-trafficked English Wikipedia page for a deceased celebrity in 2020 was not that of the “Notorious RBG,” but rather an Indian movie star who was relatively unknown outside his own country.

That would be Sushant Singh Rajput, a 34-year-old Bollywood actor who died of apparent suicide by hanging on June 14. The week SSR—as he was and is known to fans—died, his page received 11.5 million page views. According to the Wikipedia volunteers who compile the Top 25 report, only five other articles have ever seen weekly page views pass the 10 million mark—those of Prince, David Bowie, Kobe Bryant, and Stephen Hawking after their deaths, and Donald Trump’s after the 2016 election.

Slate

[Poetlister]

Sushant Singh Rajput's friend Smita Parikh wants Wikipedia to change SSR's death from 'suicide' to 'murder'

While it has been four months since Bollywood’s young and talented actor Sushant Singh Rajput left for his heavenly abode, his die-hard fans and friends are still grieving his loss. The actor was found dead under mysterious circumstance at his Bandra residence on June 14. The news of his death was followed by a spate of vicious rumours and conspiracy theories on social media, Meanwhile, the late actor's his friend Smita Parikh has demanded that the Wikipedia status be updated from 'suicide' to 'murder'.

Times of India