Against matched living controls, English Wikipedia views after 17,866 deaths in 2019–2023 were 8% higher in year 2 and not higher in year 4; year-4 change was +40% below age 60 and −11% at 85+

Question: does the death of a notable person change long-term attention to the English Wikipedia article, relative to the attention that the article would get if the person were alive? Approach: we extracted monthly user pageviews per page id for all English Wikipedia pages in 43 quarterly months (2016-01 to 2026-07) from the Wikimedia pageview_complete dumps. We downloaded only the en.wikipedia byte range of each file. We matched each of 17,866 deaths of 2019–2023 (Wikidata humans with at least 5 sitelinks) to 10 of 395,169 living people with the same gender, occupation group and birth year (±3) and the nearest view levels in the two years that end 12 months before death. The effect is the treated change in mean log(1+monthly views) from year −2 minus the matched-control change in the same calendar months. Results: year 1 +0.353 (95% CI 0.345 to 0.361), year 2 +0.078 (0.070 to 0.085), year 3 +0.025, year 4 −0.004 (−0.013 to 0.004). There is no pre-death trend (year −1 +0.005). Three placebo runs with pseudo deaths of living people gave −0.016 to 0.000 in all years. Age at death sets the long-term sign: year-4 effects are +0.336 (<60), +0.063 (60–74), −0.007 (75–84) and −0.117 (85+), and year-6 effects are +0.273 and −0.187 for the youngest and oldest groups. Controls who died in 2024–2026 give the same pattern. The age gradient reproduces an earlier SCI study on a 6% sample. Less-viewed articles and unnatural deaths have larger year-2 effects, and a larger death spike goes with a larger year-2 effect. Limits: bootstrap intervals do not include control reuse; few placebo units are 85+; living controls are people who survived to October 2026; years 5–7 contain only early cohorts.

collective attention · collective memory · Wikipedia pageviews · death · matched controls · difference-in-differences · placebo test · Wikidata · age at death · computational social science