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Wikipedia's Lamest Edit Wars
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Who says Wikipedians don't have a sense of humor? While perusing Wikipedia I recently came across an article documenting the lamest examples of wikipedia edit wars over the most trivial things. As one wikipedian says: 'Some discussions are born lame; some achieve lameness; some have lameness thrust upon them.' A few of the most amusing examples include: Was Chopin Polish, French, Polish–French, or French–Polish? Can you emigrate from a country of which you are not a citizen? Can you receive citizenship if you already have it? The possibilities for intensive study are endless. Next up, Are U2 an 'Irish band' or simply a band that happen to be from Ireland, since two of their members were born in the UK? A heated discussion took place for over two-and-a-half weeks that resulted in at least one editor getting blocked and many more getting warnings. Next, should members of the Beatles be listed in the 'traditional' order or in alphabetical order? Another edit war which flares up continuously in The Beatles involves whether to identify the band as 'The Beatles' with a capital T or 'the Beatles' with a lower case t. The issue became so contentious it merited an article in the Wall Street Journal. One such installment of this saga was brought before the arbitration committee (by an administrator, no less) where it was quickly declared 'silly.' Next, Is J. K. Rowling's name pronounced like 'rolling' or to rhyme with 'howling'? Rowling is on record claiming she pronounces her name like 'rolling'. An irate editor argues that this is a 'British' pronunciation and the 'American" pronunciation of her name should also be noted. 'This is slightly ridiculous as she is English, and therefore of course will pronounce it in an English manner. Perhaps it rhymes with "Trolling"?' Finally did Jimmy Wales found Wikipedia or co-found it? 'Not surprisingly, those who actually were around at the time and know the answer stayed far away from this one. The casualty list has yet to be compiled, but no doubt editor egos will be among the worst hit.'"
Or do we really not have that kind of time?
Sometimes people don't think too far past the end of their noses. I mean they don't pronounce bowling like howling in the U.S. so it shouldn't be much of a stretch to pronounce Rowling like bowling instead of howling. sheesh.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
I regularly replace misspelled "aluminum" with the correct "aluminium" whenever I see it in an article, but backwards people just revert my changes.
Signature intentionally left blank.
I'd been contributing to an article on a film. We'd sourced plenty of material and it was a really in-depth affair.
Then some ding-dong undergraduate deleted it and substituted his own 35,000 word essay. This boring shot-by-shot description written in stiff prose and sprinkled with gems from the thesaurus undid a year of work and good luck trying to get it repealed because his school buddies have plenty of time to wage an edit war when the rest of us are at work.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
It's got nothing to do with Wikipedia and everything to do with
1. How people how argue and more specifically
2. What pedants argue about.
You want to argue about who's going to win the Super Bowl or be purged next in North Korea? Lots of good arguments and at the end, there is an actual measurable outcome.
Want to argue about which is the best operating system? Lots of arguing there but no measurable outcome. You can measure which is the most popular but that's like saying the most popular music is the best music. We argue about music and art.
But the arguments over word use and definitions of fact are the most vociferous because they are the most picky. And only picky, anal retentive types will argue so the arguments get more and more precise each time. When done well, we call it science.
But it's hard to use words and syntax well when arguing about word definitions and syntax. If you see no difference between French-Polish and Polish-French, well then there's no difference between African-American and American-African. It actually is debatable. Uninteresting to most but debatable to many.
Your right about that. I always corrected minor errors and its really annoying when people keep on changing them back irregardless of weather their correct or knot.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
1. Chopin was Prussian.
2. You can only emigrate from a countrybefore receiving citizenship while already being a citizen.
3. U2 are a UK band with Irish members.
4. It should be capitalized with a capital T as such: "the BeaTles".
5. J.K. Rowling's last name is pronounced "roo-ling".
6. Jimmy Wales co-opted Wikipedia.
Now can we finally stop the edit-wars?
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They evade their taxes in the Netherlands, so it's a Dutch band.
Privacy is terrorism.
Just try editing a Wikipedia article introduce a deliberate mistake and see what happens :)
Worth mentioning that, in seriousness, you should never do this. It's Wikipedia vandalism, and waste's everyone's time.
Instead you could just find a Wikipedia edit which corrected an error, and backtrack to see for how long that error was present on Wikipedia. No vandalism necessary.
It's definitely news for nerds though. Only someone truly nerdy enough would actually give a damn.
I stopped giving a damn and I stopped contributing to Wikipedia. The few times I tried to add information, sources and all, my changes got reverted by some wikidiot that didn't like how I changed things.
They're complaining about not having money and begging for it with their own banner ads at the top; stop running the site like an unmoderated debating web forum and perhaps people will be more inclined to participate and to give money. That may mean having *gasp* an actual editorial staff, and cutting the wikidiots from edit privileges when they nitpick things that don't mean anything.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Ask not for whom the wind whooshes, it whooshes for thee.