The Wikipedia page for legendary actress Doris Day was defaced with a graphic image after her death was announced on May 13.
Someone edited the page and replaced the main image with a graphic image, which stayed in place for at least several minutes. NTD will not describe the image or link to screenshots of the image due to its disturbing nature.
The image was later removed.
Social media users slammed Wikipedia’s editors and policies for allowing the image to stay in place shortly after Day’s death was announced on Monday.
@Wikipedia users updating your website are a disgrace. The Doris day page has been violated within minutes of her death. I am disgusted. Your update policy needs a serious review.
— Jodie Vale (@JodieRus) May 13, 2019
“@Wikipedia users updating your website are a disgrace. The Doris day page has been violated within minutes of her death. I am disgusted. Your update policy needs a serious review,” one Twitter user wrote.
“Get that vile picture sorted @Wikipedia on Doris Day’s page, how anyone could think of doing such a thing is beyond me. Sickening,” added another.
“I will never understand why people do things like this. Could we all just act with some basic decency?” added another.
“Wow. So I see the news about Doris Day—so it goes—and, as I so often do, decide to look her up on Wikipedia. And immediately discover that some blot on their entire ancestry was banking on people doing this and had vandalized her page,” added another.
Good bye, Doris Day. BDE.
(And do NOT go to her Wikipedia page. DISGUSTING picture.)
— MamaDeb ✡ דבורה פייגע (@_mamadeb) May 13, 2019
“Someone’s violated Doris Day’s Wikipedia. The image they’ve added is disgusting,” added another.
“[Expletive] people on Wikipedia. I went to look up Doris Day and they changed her picture to something so [expletive] disgusting,” added another. “I hate how anyone can edit it even if it’s only up for a short time. Like have some damn respect.”
Wikipedia has increasingly come under fire from some quarters for being vulnerable to users who publish false, defamatory, or misleading information, as the Day scandal illustrates.
A note on the Wikipedia page stated: “This article is being heavily edited because its subject has recently died. Knowledge about the circumstances of the death and surrounding events may change rapidly as more facts come to light. Initial news reports may be unreliable, and the last updates to this article may not reflect the most current information. Please feel free to improve this article or discuss changes on the talk page.”
A list of the edits of the Day page appeared to show a struggle between one user, who posted the picture, and several other users. After the user posted the picture, it was removed as “a disturbing photo” by another user. The former then re-uploaded the picture, which was removed once again by another user, who labeled it as a “vulgar picture.” The picture was again placed by the user who originally placed it, only to be removed yet again.
Finally, an editor changed the page to protect it from some users due to “persistent vandalism.”
It wasn’t clear if the user who kept changing the main photo back to the vulgar picture would face repercussions.
The website has not commented on the disturbing picture.
Day, best known for her films in the ’50s and ’60s, died at age 97 at her home in Carmel Valley, California.
The Doris Day Animal Foundation confirmed her death with The Associated Press.
“Day had been in excellent physical health for her age, until recently contracting a serious case of pneumonia, resulting in her death,” the foundation stated.
