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Wikipedia Announces Their 10 Longest Featured Articles (wikimedia.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the view-history dept.

The Wikimedia blog shared a list of their ten longest "featured" articles, highlighting their collection of more than 4,700 articles which have rigorously reviewed before being awarded a gold star icon certifying them as "the best articles Wikipedia has to offer." The ed17 writes: Elvis Presley leads the list, coming in at 17,659 words. In today's strangest juxtaposition, 'History of Poland (1945 - 89)' features just behind. A pope, Michael Jackson, and the Maya civilization also land spots.
The third-longest featured article covers the Manhattan Project, with a majority of the article covering the development of the first nuclear weapons, as well as a discussion about their post-war impact. Among all of their featured articles, Wikimedia calls it "perhaps one of the more controversial."

38 comments

  1. Re:My featured article is longer than yours by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    > and it is black and covered in your shit. I am sure you will suck it off.

    [citation needed]

  2. History of Poland is simply amazing! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I stumbled across the History of Poland (actually, the early history, to begin with) after investigating the supposed nationality of Captain Nemo. The Jules Verne article (or was it the '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' article?) mentioned that he originally intended that Nemo was Polish nobility, upset that his nation had been wiped off the map and remained so for almost a hundred years. His editor insisted that he change it because it reflected poorly on Russia, who France was trying to maintain a peace treaty (and where he hoped to sell translation of the book). "What remained in the book from the initial concept is a portrait of Tadeusz Kociuszko, a Polish national hero, leader of the uprising against Russia in 1794, with an inscription in Latin: "Finis Poloniae!" ("The end of Poland!")."
    I started researching the January Uprising and then earlier uprisings and then back to the founding of Poland.
    The whole story is simply amazing. They invented public education (for the middle and upper classes) before anyone else had, and just the idea that the national government operated out of the Hotel Lambert in Paris for many decades. Every few decades the story takes another amazing turn. I was fascinated!!

    1. Re:History of Poland is simply amazing! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes it is. somehow we survived. if you want to learn more, you can read Norman Davies books.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Davies#Books

    2. Re:History of Poland is simply amazing! by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      yes it is. somehow we survived.

      Pity your knowledge of plumbing and driving didn't.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    3. Re:History of Poland is simply amazing! by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      I stumbled across the History of Poland (actually, the early history, to begin with) after investigating the supposed nationality of Captain Nemo. The Jules Verne article (or was it the '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' article?) mentioned that he originally intended that Nemo was Polish nobility, upset that his nation had been wiped off the map and remained so for almost a hundred years. His editor insisted that he change it because it reflected poorly on Russia, who France was trying to maintain a peace treaty (and where he hoped to sell translation of the book). "What remained in the book from the initial concept is a portrait of Tadeusz Kociuszko, a Polish national hero, leader of the uprising against Russia in 1794, with an inscription in Latin: "Finis Poloniae!" ("The end of Poland!")." I started researching the January Uprising and then earlier uprisings and then back to the founding of Poland. The whole story is simply amazing. They invented public education (for the middle and upper classes) before anyone else had, and just the idea that the national government operated out of the Hotel Lambert in Paris for many decades. Every few decades the story takes another amazing turn. I was fascinated!!

      You want to talk about being way ahead of the rest of the world in political system, check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    4. Re:History of Poland is simply amazing! by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      yes it is. somehow we survived.

      Pity your knowledge of plumbing and driving didn't.

      And yet, they never solved the problem of periodic maintenance of illumination fixtures without excessive staffing requirements.

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    5. Re:History of Poland is simply amazing! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...according to (more expensive) competition.

      But seriously, just look up terms like 'battle of Kircholm', or 'Shuysky Tribute', check how many refugees from all over the Europe we accepted through the ages (they never left and became Poles for good), and perhaps you will begin to understand why our 'good' neighbours Germans and Russians so fiercely try to turn us into some third-grade and meaningless nation.

  3. Elvis? Seriously? by nbritton · · Score: 1

    Glad to know Elvis Presley is more popular then the Poland and the entire Maya civilization.

    1. Re:Elvis? Seriously? by Rei · · Score: 2

      Maybe we should jazz up the titles of the other ones to get more people to read them. May I recommend "Harry Potter and the History of Poland (1945-89)"?

      --
      Monkeywrench Ex Machina.
    2. Re:Elvis? Seriously? by shoor · · Score: 1

      Size doesn't necessarily reflect popularity, or importance for that matter. How much documentation still exists for the Maya Civilization for instance? Their writing system was only recently deciphered, and tomb raiders have destroyed or disturbed a lot of archeological material.

      Elvis Presley is well documented and a lot of people liked Elvis Presley and may have wanted to contribute. (I haven't read the article, maybe it was only one person who wrote it all out. Ditto for Poland.)

      The Polish wikipedia may have a longer article about Poland than about Elvis Presley. (I haven't checked that either. This reply is, to be honest, rather casual on my part.)

      Also some writers are just more verbose than others. Being longer doesn't mean more information is conveyed, or that it is conveyed as well.

      --
      In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
    3. Re:Elvis? Seriously? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Size doesn't necessarily reflect popularity

      You're saying size doesn't matter?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:Elvis? Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Congratulations, you are retarded.

    5. Re:Elvis? Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      towards the end there, he was also physically bigger than Poland and the entire Maya civilization!

    6. Re:Elvis? Seriously? by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      towards the end there, he was also physically bigger than Poland and the entire Maya civilization!

      mod up mod up mod up mod up

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
  4. Re:Change of opinion by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If I want information on a free software project, Wikipedia is almost always a better source of information than the project's official website. Wikipedia will give an overview of the project, a short history, and list some applications. The project's home page will have the changelog, recent project news, and press releases, none of which is useful to a potential new user. Most software project websites are even worse than university websites.

  5. I'm starting to be ashamed to post here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even as AC!

    Well, with the risk of continuing the trend, it's not size what always matters most (I see a commenter there talks likewise about length).

    Sometimes articles bring essential facts -- e.g. a graph depicting the various resolutions according to their aspects, or a comparison of office suites so that we can judge them based on some personal need (again, *sigh*, it was size: I needed to find a lighter alternative to Libreoffice).

    Also, all these articles seem to be in the English Wikipedia. While arguably having most of the longer topics, it is possible that a non-English article in another language's Wikipedia hold the "record" by being the longest (again, not a virtue by itself).

    Perhaps a better metric would be a like button or "was this useful? yes / no" toggle at the margin of the article...

    1. Re:I'm starting to be ashamed to post here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hi, on wikis this button is called 'edit'.

      Sites with 'was this useful' buttons are full of shit and cannot be edited by anonymous cowards.

      Why does it matter what matters?

      They just presented a list with the longest articles, nothing else.

    2. Re:I'm starting to be ashamed to post here. by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      Even as AC!

      Well, with the risk of continuing the trend, it's not size what always matters most (I see a commenter there talks likewise about length).

      Sometimes articles bring essential facts -- e.g. a graph depicting the various resolutions according to their aspects, or a comparison of office suites so that we can judge them based on some personal need (again, *sigh*, it was size: I needed to find a lighter alternative to Libreoffice).

      Also, all these articles seem to be in the English Wikipedia. While arguably having most of the longer topics, it is possible that a non-English article in another language's Wikipedia hold the "record" by being the longest (again, not a virtue by itself).

      Perhaps a better metric would be a like button or "was this useful? yes / no" toggle at the margin of the article...

      but how would you compare the length of an article in English to that of one in Chinese, for instance?

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    3. Re:I'm starting to be ashamed to post here. by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      Hi, on wikis this button is called 'edit'.

      Sites with 'was this useful' buttons are full of shit and cannot be edited by anonymous cowards.

      Why does it matter what matters?

      They just presented a list with the longest articles, nothing else.

      Wikipedia and lists are like America and food.

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
  6. Other top tens... by Dan+East · · Score: 2

    I'm also pleased to announce that, in addition to there being 10 longest featured articles, there are also 10 shortest featured articles. There are 10 longest non-featured articles and 10 shortest non-featured articles too. There are 10 articles with the most pictures, and I would dare say there are at least 10 articles without any pictures at all! There are 10 articles containing the longest average word length, and 10 articles containing the shortest average word length. And, if you find all that fascinating, there are also 10 articles with the most edits, and 10 articles with the least edits.

    --
    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:Other top tens... by gzuckier · · Score: 2

      I'm also pleased to announce that, in addition to there being 10 longest featured articles, there are also 10 shortest featured articles. There are 10 longest non-featured articles and 10 shortest non-featured articles too. There are 10 articles with the most pictures, and I would dare say there are at least 10 articles without any pictures at all! There are 10 articles containing the longest average word length, and 10 articles containing the shortest average word length. And, if you find all that fascinating, there are also 10 articles with the most edits, and 10 articles with the least edits.

      I'm most interested in the shortest of the longest five of the shortest ten articles.

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
  7. "rigorously reviewed" ?! by sittingnut · · Score: 3, Interesting

    " 4,700 articles which have rigorously reviewed before being awarded a gold star icon certifying them as "the best articles Wikipedia has to offer."
    this includes english article on 'british empire', a poster child for bias among entrenched editors at wikimedia

    attempts to include the factual cited details about british empire's mass murders and genocides, ethnic cleansings(well in to 1970s), regime sanctioned slavery and bonded labor, preventable famines that killed millions(in to 1940s), large scale land and resource grabs, destruction and looting of cultural treasures, regular revolts and protests against regime ( both violent and non violent) in almost every colony, and their brutal suppressions, are censored(except for a unavoidable line or two). people who attempt to include any of that are regularly banned from wikipedia .

    ironically some, not all, of the censored material in this article is accepted and available in wikipedia's specialized articles on the subjects like slavery, famines, war crimes, etc. however even parts of sentences with links to specialized articles are censored. contrast this treatment to inclusion of such details in main wikipedia articles about equally horrible actions by similarly brutish regimes like on ussr, communist china, nazi germany, etc. .

    even discussion page for british empire article is censored to prevent discussion of sources.

    careful examination of history pages, of both the article and discussion page, in date sequence changes will confirm this.

    1. Re:"rigorously reviewed" ?! by Avarist · · Score: 1

      Thank you for bringing this to light. Sincerely.

      --
      In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
    2. Re:"rigorously reviewed" ?! by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      Well said ! That is precisely why Wikipedia is shit. Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away. This delusion of censorship just makes them look like a tool. The only sensible approach is to boycott Wikipedia over its retarded policies(*).

      A fantastic movie is the 1970 iconic Soldier Blue (starring a young Candice Bergen before she was the famous Murphy Brown). It is available on Amazon Prime (but not Netflix.) The trailer does a great job of showing the brutality that both sides engaged in.

      It definitely raises some interesting question: Your land is being threatened by (British and American) foreigners who believed in the delusions of "Might makes Right" and won't stop at anything; they make treaties and go back on their word; they brutally kill and genocide anyone who disagrees with their politics. Seriously, WTF were the Indians supposed to do? Sadly, nothing has changed for the USA. :-(

      I guess they say History is written by the Winner(s). It is sad that people have no respect that they feel they must censor the truth of mass genocide the British Empire engaged in.

      (*) Note: Another example of Wikipedia's dumb policies is "No Trivia". Hey dumb-fuck-wikipedia-administrators: Just because the information has no value to you, doesn't imply it has no values to others. Oblg. /sarcasm Oh noes! We might have useful information for (some) people! The Horror!

      --
      In this life, or the next, you WILL answer for the consequences of your relationship with a) your family, and b) God.

    3. Re:"rigorously reviewed" ?! by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      Seriously, WTF were the Indians supposed to do?

      Engage in "Bigger Army Diplomacy"...

      The idea that somehow we all will hold hands and sing peace and love is a delusion by people who don't know how things really work.

      The Indians lost and white-man won because we had a better version of BAD (yes, the irony of that acronym does not escape me).

      If anyone in the world wishes to be free from outside influence, they need their own BAD.

      North Korea's leader may be nuts, or he might be saner than our media gives him credit for. He can be sane and still evil of course. :)

      But then, him being evil doesn't automatically make us good, just less evil.

    4. Re:"rigorously reviewed" ?! by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      further reading, if you wish to understand how it really works...

      I guess they say History is written by the Winner(s). It is sad that people have no respect that they feel they must censor the truth of mass genocide the British Empire engaged in.

      It is "mass genocide" when the "other guys" do it, not when you do it.

      No one is the villain of their own story. :)

    5. Re:"rigorously reviewed" ?! by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 3, Insightful

      attempts to include the factual cited details about british empire's mass murders and genocides, ethnic cleansings(well in to 1970s), regime sanctioned slavery and bonded labor, preventable famines that killed millions(in to 1940s), large scale land and resource grabs, destruction and looting of cultural treasures, regular revolts and protests against regime ( both violent and non violent) in almost every colony, and their brutal suppressions, are censored(except for a unavoidable line or two). people who attempt to include any of that are regularly banned from wikipedia .

      What part of "history is written by the victors" is so hard to understand?

      The United States has killed millions of people in its existence, and continues to do so to this day. This isn't even history, it is current events.

      https://youtu.be/K4NRJoCNHIs

    6. Re:"rigorously reviewed" ?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So before getting too carried away with believing sittingnut has a legitimate gripe, let's have a look at why his edits are most likely being rejected.

      But first some background, sittingnut is Sri Lankan, he regularly blogs about his political views, and has stated them here on Slashdot more than once before.

      Sri Lanka was a British colony until 1948, at which point it became a self-governing dominion of the British empire. There are two major ethinicities on Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese, and the Indian Tamil's. Upon achieving self-governance, the Sinhalese leadership of the time chose to disenfranchise the Tamils and subsequently create a two-tier society where the Sinhalese gained increasing power such as making their language the official language of the nation and the Tamils became increasingly sidelined. As a result of this the Tamil's eventually ended up creating a rebel group to try and seek independence from the rest of the country in which they had for decades been so heavily sidelined and persecuted in, this group was known as the LTTE.

      The LTTE was responsible for many terrorist attacks and atrocities, but were driven by the continue persecution of their people. They were backed by India due to their historical ethnic ties and were engaged in a war with the Sri Lanka military until 2009 when the leader of the day finally took a gloves off approach to dealing with the Tamil insurgency once and for all.

      Some may argue that that in itself is a reasonable step, but unfortunately gloves off meant war-criminal type events. The president of the day Mahinda Rajapaksa oversaw a military campaign that saw countless atrocities against the Tamils (many of which are well documented with video and photographic evidence which I wont link to here because it frankly is far too graphic and NSFW) but there were key events that amount to clear war crimes. One example was a situation where civilians were told to go to a no fire zone so that the Sri Lankan military could focus on the Tamil soldiers and eliminate civilian casualties, except it was a trap, and the Sri Lankan military subsequently shelled and murdered hundreds of civilians whom they'd told to enter this no-fire zone.

      So what does this have to do with sittingnut? well, on his blog and in past posts here he's regularly called the Tamil's "racist" even though it was they who have long suffered racism at the hands of the rest of the country. He supports the actions against the Tamil's and believes that the war crimes and massacre of civilians was acceptable. He actively campaigns to have Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president responsible for the war crimes reelected, and claims the election of other more moderate leaderships who have sought to try and rectify the horrors of Sri Lanka's past would be a tragedy.

      So when sittingnut tells us that he's not able to edit the British empire Wikipedia entry to talk about atrocities commited by it, what he's really saying is "The Wikipedia editors wont let me edit wikipedia to try and rewrite history to lay the blame of my own country's failings on it's imperial past even though things only went south as soon as we got independence". What he's saying is that he's upset that he can't push his own nationalist revision of history, and that he can't deflect from his own support for atrocities and war crimes a mere 7 years ago by trying to blame the British empire of many years gone by. What he's really telling us is he hates Britain because Britain chastised Sri Lanka over it's actions alongside other Commonwealth nations such as Australia and Canada.

      So frankly, when sittignut claims Wikipedia editors are engaging in censorship, what's really going on is that they're doing an excellent job in not letting nationalist trolls such as himself justify his own support for warcrimes by doctoring the history of others as justification.

      sittingnut is a war crime supporter who justifies his support of the massacre of thousands of civilians by simply branding them "racists" as if that somehow makes it acceptable. Anything he says on the topic of racism, war crimes, and so on and so forth isn't worth the weight of the bits that came down your internet line.

    7. Re:"rigorously reviewed" ?! by sittingnut · · Score: 1

      obviously my comment, based on verifiable facts and reason, touched a nerve of somebody enough for him/her to go researching about me, distort my views, and on that write a lengthy AC ad hominem attack on me.
      my comment on specific subject is not countered with rational arguments and relevant facts, but an attack on me personally, on off topic subjects.

      yay! i must be doing something right to get so much wasted effort from someone very confused and irrational.

      anyway, anyone objecting to my views on other subjects (my views are quite open and linked through my profile here or through web search, i am no AC,) if there are any objections, can openly refute them wherever i (not others) have stated them. i don't censor.

      wikipedia should contain well rounded view of the subject. instead there is bias and censorship, as i pointed out in my comment above with a verfiable example. whatever views i hold on other subjects (which are utterly distorted in this attack) are irrelevant to that.

  8. Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "In today's strangest *juxtaposition*, 'History of Poland' features just behind."

    Citation please.

    (Hint: try 2.2 in en.wiktionary.org/wiki/juxtaposition )

  9. Next year by WaffleMonster · · Score: 1

    Half the featured articles will have been deleted.