Reports of Wikipedia Editors Are Grossly Exaggerated

The Wikipedia page for John Updike claims to have last been modified today, on February 9, 2009. While Wikipedia allows unique disclaimers for subjects recently deceased—Updike died January 27th, of lung cancer—is there any merit to proposing some stronger editorial controls in those cases of major changes to certain noteworthy entries?

Or, said another way, when a legend like Updike leaves us, should Wikipedia provide some editorial assistance in how to sort through otherwise non-value-weighted facts on a person’s life?  The same could be true of an entry who wins, say, Wimbledon. Or becomes President. News last week indicated that Big Think expert Jimmy Wales was contemplating using editors to actually fact check the notoriosly unreliable encyclopedia that one website calls Wackypedia. But this article reminds us that actually using real editors would be to take the wiki out of Wikipedia.