how the count is made
Each figure is counted from Wikipedia’s own lists by a small compiler that runs on this site’s server once a
day. Where a month has a page of its own — Deaths in March 2020 — every top-level list entry carrying a
bolded or linked name is read straight from the page source. Years kept on a single annual page —
Deaths in 1994, say — are split out month by month from their section headings. Nothing is estimated and
nothing is sampled: every cell in the ledger links back to the exact list it was counted from, and each day’s
compilation is archived on the server.
read with care
These lists are curated, not exhaustive — they record the deaths that editors happened to catch and write up.
Coverage thickens toward the present, a recently closed month may still be settling, and a thin early year says
as much about the record-keepers as about the record. Trust the shape of the curve more sternly than its height.