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Comment by rjtobin | Hacker News Reader

I'd think that after a celebrity does, there would be an increase in the number of edits / length of an article. Wouldn't this skew the numbers, increasing the "celebrity" statistic for everyone that has died that year (and hence making the year seem more extraordinary than it is)?

It would be interesting to do the same analysis for 2015 and previous years, using wikipedia snapshots at the end of each year, and see if those years also appear extreme.

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Why would that necessarily be true? After a celebrity dies, a short amount of text is expected to be added about the death, but beyond that, why would you expect the length to increase?

Generally increased media attention?

Heck, even the simple increase of eyes on article seems like it'd increase the edits. Then there is the potential for reporting on something to cause people to add / amend the relevant articles.

You can make the case for increasing the number of edits (although I doubt there's really that much of an effect; anyone who has to visit the Wikipedia page to find out about the person just died isn't likely to be someone who already has a vested interest in putting some information on that page), but my comment was arguing against the idea that the article length would increase (beyond the small amount of text regarding the celebrity's death).

That's a fair question, and I have no hard data to back it up. Seems to me like it would be true (as another poster said, mostly number of edits, due to increased attention), but of course my intuition could be wrong.

Still, since it plausibly could be a factor it is something that should be ruled out.

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