Wikipedia Announces the Most Edited Articles of 2016 (npr.org)

Wikipedia has revealed its most edited articles of 2016. Believe it or not, the two most edited articles of the year were for Deaths in 2016, which was edited 18,230 times, and Donald Trump, with 8,933 edits as of December 21. NPR reports: Some are completely unsurprising -- like the articles about Brexit, the Panama Papers, the Orlando nightclub shooting, and other recent and controversial news topics. The popularity of editing others is somewhat more mysterious: like the article for RuPaul's Drag Race, and one for a fictional character named Beverley Gray -- the subject of a series of 26 mystery stories written between 1934 and 1955. The article on Vincent Van Gogh was also edited thousands of times in 2016, as editors reportedly sought to clarify misunderstandings about the artist in hopes of achieving "featured" status for the page. The most edited article by far was for Deaths in 2016, which was edited 18,230 times. David Bowie, Janet Reno, Gwen Ifill, Leonard Cohen, Fidel Castro, Muhammad Ali, John Glenn and Prince are among the notable people who died this year. Donald Trump's entry was second, with 8,933 edits as of Dec. 21. If history is any indication, there's a good chance the president-elect's Wikipedia page will come under even more scrutiny: The Wikimedia Foundation revealed earlier this year that George W Bush's article has the most edits of any article in English in the history of the site, with 45,862 revisions at last count.

Comments

What I love

[ckatko]

Is that just because something is edited the most, doesn't mean the article is of high quality, or importance. It seems far more likely that Donald Trump's wiki is more of a proxy war for people's frustrations with politics, and the "Weapons" are cleverly twisting Wikipedia's rules to get what you want.

I'll be surprising nobody but the most staunch biased people, that Wikipedia has plenty of great articles but you NEVER go to the "dark side" of Wikipedia... which is anything hardcore liberals might find interesting and worthy of "parking"--sitting on an article, watching any changes, and ferociously fighting any changes you don't like. As long as the parking-person is more willing to fight than you are to see the truth (almost always), then they win. And Wikipedia becomes this world of dicks fighting turf wars over control of mere words.

I'll never forget reading the article on "Political Correctness." It was horrific. Like entering a completely different (hence "dark") Wikipedia. It called PC a "pejorative" word (you know, like a hate word used to hurt someone). It argued that PC didn't actually exist AND that it was actually a good thing at the same time. It didn't even try to be rational and in the the talk pages? They "ruled" that any professor, article, or idea they didn't like was "violating Wikipedia's rules". Rules they didn't apply to their own links to radical blogs with readers in the dozens.

I'm no fan of that conservative wikipedia (ew...) but man, it sure would be nice if people were as fair and rational as they claimed to be. It doesn't help when the heads of the project at Wikimedia don't call them out and try to stop it. You know, "it's only 'wrong' if the dicks are saying things you don't agree with." Which strikes me, as an adult, and an outsider, as rather sad. A willful corruption of a wonderful idea "for the greater good."

And I say all of this AS A LIBERAL. But I'm honest first, and political second. I honestly don't understand why people are so willing to obscure facts, and twist Wikipedia guidelines to push their agenda. It's like trying to put my head into that of a serial killer, or an alien. I can't even begin to figure out why people do it. Isn't the truth a noble goal in, and of, itself? And wouldn't you want to be on the side of the truth, even if it goes against your preconceived ideas about the world? Oh well...

Re:What I love

[DonaId Trump]

...sniff...

WRONG

Re:What I love

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is a conservative site, you need to leave.

Re:What I love

[Anonymous Coward]

> just because something is edited the most doesn't mean the article is of high quality, or importance

I'll say, just a quick glance at the top edits shows that most concern movies and other pop culture detritus.

captcha: insipid

Re:What I love

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked at the article on political correctness, It doesn't seem nearly as bad as you say.

Also, PC is a pejorative term for a lot of people. I don't think you really understand the meaning of "pejorative". The fact that you are focusing in on that single word, you don't know what you are talking about, you don't even understand how to use the english language... makes me want to just tell you to fuck off.

Re:What I love

[ClickOnThis]

I'll be surprising nobody but the most staunch biased people, that Wikipedia has plenty of great articles but you NEVER go to the "dark side" of Wikipedia... which is anything hardcore liberals might find interesting and worthy of "parking"--sitting on an article, watching any changes, and ferociously fighting any changes you don't like. As long as the parking-person is more willing to fight than you are to see the truth (almost always), then they win. And Wikipedia becomes this world of dicks fighting turf wars over control of mere words.

I'm not sure why you're calling out "hardcore liberals" here. I have no doubt that hardcore conservatives also "park" in the way you describe.

I'll never forget reading the article on "Political Correctness." It was horrific. Like entering a completely different (hence "dark") Wikipedia. It called PC a "pejorative" word (you know, like a hate word used to hurt someone). It argued that PC didn't actually exist AND that it was actually a good thing at the same time. It didn't even try to be rational and in the the talk pages? They "ruled" that any professor, article, or idea they didn't like was "violating Wikipedia's rules". Rules they didn't apply to their own links to radical blogs with readers in the dozens.

I just did a quick read of the Wikipedia article on Political Correctness. It's an exhaustive (exhausting?) historical and academic treatment of the term, but I don't see that it's "horrific." The supposed inconsistencies are easily seen as the various contradictory uses of the term in various historical contexts. I didn't see anything about the supposed controversies in the talk pages. Care to enlighten us with links?

Re:What I love

[Crashmarik]

Maybe in the old days. It seems the last thing the left who have colonized slashdot want is spirited discussion.
It's similar to what happens with Wikipedia. The ends justify the means even when or perhaps especially when the people pushing for a particular end can't properly articulate their positions.

Re:What I love

[Mashiki]

You should check out the gamergate page. Not only have dozens of editors been banned for edit warring, but the entire thing is a complete mess where even factual information is removed because it's contrary to the people who are pushing a narrative. That's the same article where a dozen hardcore feminists were banned for edit warring, and it's gone to abcom at least 3 times because of progressive parking and edit warring. It's pretty sad when "know your meme" and "encyclopedia dramatica" have more factual articles.

Re:What I love

[zuxun]

a proxy war for people's frustrations with politics

The only one frustrated with politics is Donald Trump.

Re:What I love

[Opportunist]

It's worse than that.

I am not a big Wikipedia contributor. But an avid reader. It's fun to spend a few hours reading and eventually wondering "now how the fuck did I end up here?". Same happened recently when I ended up on the page about a certain style of the top ornament of certain Greek pillars. Probably not the page too many people will go to, and certainly the pet project of someone since, let's be honest here, who the fuck gives a shit about the style of Greek column top ornamentation in a certain period in a certain area of the classic Greek times?

Now, this page had been vandalized and, being as popular as it is with probably 2 hits per decade, had not been spotted yet. Somewhere inside the 3-4 screens worth of wall of text, it informed in no uncertain terms about the sexual preferences of some gentleman that I never heard about but now know a lot about his favorite bedtime pastimes. Considering this at least slightly off topic for Greek columns (ok, not completely, to be honest, but still... probably not too appropriate at least) I dared to do the unspeakable: Revert a vandalism attempt. Marked it as such and went on, merrily thinking I finally gave something back to the community that provided me with many hours, if not months, of enjoyment, entertainment and information.

I returned there a day later, mostly for egosurfing to be honest, and to pat myself on the shoulder, only to find it vandalized again. Actually, my revert had been reverted. To make a long story short, after another revert of mine, and the ensuing revert of my revert, I was informed that I should please refrain from "edit warring" and that I better leave the article alone now if I value my account.

So I have concluded that it is highly relevant for the understanding of Greek column design that a certain person in Maine is really into buttsex.

Re:What I love

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The same problem is why I never really got into contributing to Wikipedia.

In the earlier but not early days, I would occasionally fix obvious minor errors -- spelling mistakes in someone's name, one technical term written when another similar-sounding or similar-looking term was obviously intended, that kind of thing. After the first few such changes were reverted, apparently (semi-)automatically with no justification given, it became clear that whatever Wikipedia was aiming for, accuracy wasn't one of the things it was actually set up to achieve.

What really wound me up, though, was seeing a few technical articles about mainstream subjects in computing that were not just slightly wrong but completely misrepresenting the topic. More specifically, they were taking an established technical subject with many years of history and development behind it, and instead of describing all of that, they merely described some modern bastardization that had become popular with the young, enthusiastic, but inexperienced crowd. Usually that seemed to happen after someone abused terminology in the recent past in connection with some new product or service that had become the current hyped thing, and a handful of editors within the related community who maybe just didn't know any better then appointed themselves the custodians of that page.

Sometimes, more knowledgeable people would try to correct some of the errors, or at least raise the issue of the overall distortion on the talk pages. Those talk pages would then exhibit the most absurd rationalizations for why the new, distorted version was right. They'd argue that the meaning of terminology established for decades had changed almost overnight. They'd point to numerous sources all from within that same very new community, and refuse to see or accept that there was already a much larger community with a much longer history using the term another way that hadn't suddenly disappeared. It was like a real-time demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which was particularly ironic, because that was sometimes a favourite cliche to throw at people who had probably been using the ideas under discussion since before the unhelpful editors had been born and who probably knew more about the subject than all of those other editors put together...

Re:What I love

[TuringTest]

Talk pages are your friend in these cases. If you post a rationale for your correction there, some experienced editor might be able to intervene and set things straight, or at least start a resolution procedure to gather opinions from more people.

If you're editing as an IP without a user account, this will also make less likely that the spambot will revert your anonymous contribution (although in the case you describe, it might have been an asshole editor instead; the only solution for it is to ask for a third opinion or other conflict resolution procedure).

Re:What I love

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I suppose my disappointment is not so much that I spent five minutes trying to help and my help was then rejected, it's that if that happened to me on something where I know WP was wrong before and my change was right, then clearly I can't trust other articles on subjects where I'm not an expert in case the same thing happened. I imagine those operating WP would be the first to say you shouldn't trust WP as a primary source anyway, as I think they always have, but still, rejecting objectively correct changes damages the credibility of WP as a whole.

Re: What I love

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is a site not totally owned by leftists. That makes it a conservative site to those with closed minds who only ever even brush up against different ideas here on Slashdot.

Re:What I love

[TuringTest]

My point is that, if you say "this is vandalism" at the talk page, someone else may find it without having to review the full history of article edits.

There's no requirement that you have the lengthy discussion yourself. Wikipedia is a collaborative project after all, and surely there will be someone else willing to spend the time fighting the vandal.

Re:What I love

[AthanasiusKircher]

I suppose my disappointment is not so much that I spent five minutes trying to help and my help was then rejected, it's that if that happened to me on something where I know WP was wrong before and my change was right, then clearly I can't trust other articles on subjects where I'm not an expert in case the same thing happened.

Yeah, spend a few years editing on and off (as I did, several years back), and you'll realize how common this problem actually is.

I imagine those operating WP would be the first to say you shouldn't trust WP as a primary source anyway, as I think they always have, but still, rejecting objectively correct changes damages the credibility of WP as a whole.

The problem isn't just the rejection -- since you CAN usually fight enough and escalate the situation enough to get the correct information into the article. Depending on who you're fighting, this might be rather simple or could take a detailed knowledge of Wikipedia procedure and many hours of time investment.

That's all problematic in and of itself... but the larger issue is that even if you fight to get something corrected, there is absolutely NO guarantee it will stay that way. This is a particular issue with stuff where there's a popular "consensus" on an issue, but the subject experts realized that was wrong decades ago. (This is particularly true in many humanities disciplines, like history, where stuff "everybody knows" is frequently wrong. And there are often plenty of non-specialist sources written by otherwise reasonably reputable people where you can still find the old "myths" propagated.)

So, you spend a few days and a lot of effort to get the "right stuff" in, but then a year from now some idiot comes along with some popular citations, rewrites the article, and throws out that stuff you fought so hard to get in. It's not just wasting your effort to get stuff in -- it's then committing to perpetual policing of the content. (And thus it's no wonder why many editors start getting attached to pages -- they themselves probably made some improvements over whatever idiots they kicked off years ago, so they get overprotective.)

Say what you will about the reliability of old paper encyclopedias or their bias or errors too. Sure, that stuff existed. But they didn't spontaneously generate new errors on your shelf so that you never knew whether a given article got better or worse since the last time you opened the book.

Deaths page is a perennial

[ZipK]

Death wins every year.