Screenshot of the beginning of the Wikipedia article “Riots following the death of Nahel Merzouk”
The 2005 riots in French suburbs, following the deaths of two teenagers on October 27, 2005, were covered by a French language article in Wikipedia the following November 2. They are now the subject of articles in 28 languages in the encyclopedia. Almost 18 years later, the current riots, following the death of Nahel Merzouk, 17, killed by a policeman, are now already the subject of an article in 7 languages (French, Russian, English, Spanish, Basque , Turkish and Hebrew).
Name changes
The young man was killed on June 27: the article in French was created on the morning of June 29, at 8:37 a.m., after a second night of incidents. The one in English preceded it, started on June 28 at 3:32 p.m. However, the latter is about homicide (it is titled “Killing of Nahel Merzouk”) and the riots are integrated into it, whereas in French it exists – for the moment? – a separate article on this death.
These very recent articles have a number of footnotes in references: 67 for the English article, 63 for the French one. The latter changed title very quickly: first called “riots of 2023 in the French suburbs”, it was renamed this June 30 at 11:47 a.m. “riots following the death of Nahel”, then at 5:03 p.m. “riots following the death of Nahel Merzouk” once the surname of the teenager was known.
The box “Ongoing events” in the French home page of Wikipedia this June 30
Also on June 30, the French article was semi-protected at 10:14 a.m., after a series of edits without sources. The semi-protection of a page “prevents any modification of this page by a user contributing under IP address or whose user account was created for less than four days”, an anti-vandalism and anti-spam measure.
At 9:30 p.m. this Friday, the article in French has 69 contributors, of which the first three have written nearly 53% of the text. The English one has 81 contributors, of which the two largest alone wrote 73.5%.
Read also
Wikipedia: the movement against pension reform is covered in 14 languages - March 31, 2023
Multilingual Encyclopedia: Express Translations in Wikipedia for Rishi Sunak – October 26, 2022
The Yellow Vests are also in Wikipedia (even in Picardy) – November 24, 2018