Vatican's prescient Web masters

Reproduced without permission from the Risks-Forum Digest Monday 18 April 2005 Volume 23 : Issue 84. By Diomidis Spinellis

The "Vacancy of the Apostolic See" Web page appears to have been prepared one day BEFORE the Pope's death.The page's HTML markup contains the following meta tags:

Meta name="title" content="vacancy of the Apostolic See"
Meta name="creator" content="Vacancy of the Apostolic See"
Meta name="subject" content="Vacancy of the Apostolic See, death of John Paul II, Holy Father"

Meta name="date.created" content="2005-04-01"
Meta name="date.issued" content="2005-04-03"
Meta name="date.expires" content=""

Thus it appears that the web page was created on April 1st, yet the Pope's death certificate clearly indicates that the Pope died on April 2nd. "His Holiness John Paul II (Karol Woytyla) born in Wadovice (Crakow, Poland) the 18th of May 1920, resident of Vatican City, expired at 9:37 on the evening of April 2, 2005".

It is a well-known fact that journalists prepare in advance obituaries of public figures that appear to be nearing their life's end. See for example the article "Quirk in British Computer Privacy Laws" (RISKS-11.63). Nevertheless, for the Vatican's content creators to advertise the fact that they were creating the "Vacancy of the Apostolic See" Web page while the Pope was still alive and struggling is at the very least a sign of poor taste; worse, the fact will now provide food to conspiracy theorists who thrive on these details.

The risk: accurate metadata is not always appropriate.