Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 October 21

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October 21

Who was the first person to die after their Wikipedia article was created?

This is a question I've been idly wondering about for a couple of days, apropos of nothing. I guess it will be someone in Category:2001 deaths but there are almost 5000 pages there and most will have been created post mortem. So who was the first person to die after their Wikipedia article was created? Thryduulf (talk) 03:04, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Do we have an exact date for the very first Wikipedia entry? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:10, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia's article on itself says it was launched on January 15, 2001. Note however that the keeping of revision histories wasn't reliable in the early days, so it may not be possible to evaluate candidate answers by that method. (Sorry, I don't have a source to cite for that; I forget where I came across the information or which old article I was then looking at.) --174.88.134.156 (talk) 03:25, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

So it's basically all of 2001. And you're right. As I recall reading about somewhere, and before my time here, some sort of disaster occurred around 2005 which wiped all or most of the history. So without proper creation dates for articles, it would be impossible to figure out. The best anyone could do is guess. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:33, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

No disasters around 2005, the problem was that the original software on which Wikipedia ran didn't - it was thought - keep all the history. Fortunately, it turned out later that it did (see below). Warofdreams talk 19:07, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Jack Lemmon is the oldest one I have noticed so far. With a first surviving edit summary of "Put the verbs in past tense (with sadness)." I suspect Douglas Adams was an earlier one but the history of that article is also mangled by the 2002 conversion which messed up many article histories. Rmhermen (talk) 04:40, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Morton Downey Jr. died on March 12 and the earliest surviving revision is from two days later, by Jimbo, with the edit comment "R.I.P.". But this could have been a new article based on an obituary. The case for Jack Lemmon is stronger (here's the revision). George Harrison (died November 29) seems to have the earliest surviving death edit. The only other case I found from 2001 is Jacques Mayol (died December 22, edit). I used the Wikipedia API to find pages from Category:2001 deaths that were created in 2001 and checked early revision comments and text. -- BenRG (talk) 05:06, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Jimbo also wrote the earliest surviving edit of Dale Earnhardt which might have been a new article after his death. Rmhermen (talk) 05:27, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

• In all three cases of Downey, Lemmon, and Earnhardt, if you go to the oldest version accessible through the edit history, you will see a link that allows you to step back one or two versions more (but only one or two). On the earliest versions accessible this way, in each case you can see the edit summary for the previous edit, which is no longer itself available, so none of them was a new article. But also, in each cases, that earliest-available version already said that the person was dead; so it's possible that these articles were created after death. --174.88.134.156 (talk) 08:21, 21 October 2015 (UTC), revised 08:24, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

• Whoops, the software lied to me. In all three cases the "previous version" link actually goes to a later version, which I didn't notice before posting the above. Obviously another aspect of the history being screwed up. --174.88.134.156 (talk) 08:29, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

The earliest revisions aren't all on Wikipedia, but User:Tim Starling found them, so it's possible to search through. Surprisingly, the Douglas Adams article wasn't created until after his death (I'm not sure how the timestamps on the early articles work, but the first version states: "A great Author, suddly died. Read more about him on his page."). The first versions of the Downey and Earnhardt articles also state they have died. Quite a few people who died in 2001 received articles soon afterwards, the first being Earnhardt, but I can't find anyone before Lemmon who already had an article. Lemmon's article was originally in the present tense, with no mention of his death (text of original version: "In a career spanning five decades, Jack Lemmon has carved himself a niche as cinema's neurotic Everyman, and as one of the most versatile actors of his--or any--generation. Equally at home in comedy and drama, he has a unique combination of intensity and vulnerability that can break your heart one minute, and have you doubled up with laughter the next. Whether he's clearing his sinuses as Felix Unger in The Odd Couple, or clearing his desk as the slumping salesman Shelley Levene in Glengarry Glen Ross, Lemmon commits himself totally to his roles.", plus a filmography). Warofdreams talk 19:03, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Where did Tim Starling report the details when he found the articles? And when was Jack Lemmon's article actually created? He died on February 25 that year, by the way, and the "put the verbs in past tense" edit was on February 28. --70.49.170.168 (talk) 06:06, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Jack Lemmon died on 27 June 2001, and the edit was on 28 June, not February. The logs are available at [1], and if you can figure out the datestamps, you're doing better than me! Warofdreams talk 17:21, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

The time stamps are POSIX times. You can convert them to human-readable form with the Python code print(time.strftime('%c', time.gmtime(#########))). (Replace ######### with the time stamp, and replace gmtime with localtime if you want the output in your time zone instead of UTC.)

If Wikipedia had only just started in early 2001, it wouldn't have had much content, so it shouldn't be surprising if a lot of posthumous articles were created, as a recent death would impel someone to write an article. It's fair to say that Jack Lemmon was a much more accomplished public figure than someone like Downey, so it wouldn't be a surprise if someone wrote an article about him early on. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:44, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Italian gesture

There’s a disrespectful gesture in Italy that involves pointing the elbow at somebody, and maybe with the fingers touching it. I don’t know what it’s called and what exactly it looks like. --Romanophile (talk) 17:57, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Here's a video [2] (see ~1:35) where they say it means "fuck off", and here's an explanation in words [3]. It seems a little similar in meaning to the the finger in many other countries. I can't find a name for it. This site [4] says that it is accompanied by "Vaffanculo!", i.e. "fuck you!" The gesture is curiously absent from included in our article on Obscene_gestures. But hopefully that's at least a decent start. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:39, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

See also our article on bras d'honneur (gesto dell'ombrello). ---Sluzzelin talk 18:47, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Is the famous poster "We Can Do It!" an example of the gesture, or is it necessary to actually grip the arm with the other hand? Tevildo (talk) 19:07, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

No, I think it's pretty clear that that is not Rosie's intent. She's rolling up her sleeves and getting ready to build guns, while inviting you to admire her guns. It's not inconceivable that there's a subtext in there somewhere, but it's not the surface meaning of the gesture. --Trovatore (talk) 19:09, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I have no reason to disagree with Trovatore, but will admit that I've always seen it there too, and you will find some online texts who analyze and suggest this in various languages. An observation worth considering, in any event! ---Sluzzelin talk 20:38, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

To me, it's pretty clear she's just rolling up her sleeve. Note the exact same left hand placement in the following poster in We Can Do It!. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:14, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

It was and probably still is a common G-rated gesture to grip the biceps with the elbow bent, to show off one's muscles. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:58, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Aha, thanks! I missed that section in our article on obscene gestures. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:35, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

(I, too, only noticed that later ;-) and here's the famous scene from I vitelloni where Alberto Sordi's character insults the workers with this gesture (and then is forced to run away when the car he's riding in breaks down a few seconds later). ---Sluzzelin talk 20:21, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Are we sure we are talking about the same thing? The OP seems to be describing something different from the bras d'honneur. I never saw the bras d'honneur to be "pointing the elbow at somebody". Also the OP mentions touching the elbow, whereas for the bras d'honneur, all the fingers are laid out flat on the biceps (granted, closer to the elbow than to the shoulder). --Lgriot (talk) 11:43, 22 October 2015 (UTC)