 | This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous. Such material is not meant to be taken seriously. |
| “ | What mighty contests rise from trivial things. | ” |
| — Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock | ||
Occasionally, even experienced Wikipedians lose their heads and devote every waking moment to edit warring over the most trivial things, wasting time debating topics of no practical value, or wrestling over questions whose answers hold no practical consequence. This page documents our lamest examples. It isn't comprehensive or authoritative, but it serves as a showcase of situations where people lose sight of the big picture and obsessively expend huge amounts of energy fighting over something that, in the end, isn't really so important.
Edit warring is believed by some to be important, possibly due to the historical regularity and frequency of the occurrence of these wars. A careful and scholarly study of available archeological evidence has even suggested that edit wars may have recurred on a regular basis going back all the way to the beginning of recorded history, even before the advent of proper writing circa 2001 C.E. (see Wikipedia). In some earlier instances of edit warring, dating back from before the good old days, participants would simply brandish their swords and fight a battle, or later, their guns and fight a duel.
In modern times, physical combat has been outlawed and replaced by the careful citing of personal attacks, strategic 3RR templating and canvassing, timely notices on WP:AN/I, accusations of incompetence, and (in some cases) marking the changes as a minor edit. Truly, the revolutionary Wikipedia outlook has changed the way things get done. It has changed them from actually getting done to never getting done. On the other hand, nobody gets dispatched (so far!).
Guidelines on how to create lameness
 | This section is intended as humor. It is not, has never been, nor will ever be, a Wikipedia policy or guideline. Rather, it illustrates standards or conduct that are generally not accepted by the Wikipedia community. |
Some discussions are born lame; some achieve lameness; some have lameness thrust upon them. Upon coming across a discussion that is borderline lame, some Wikipedians may be tempted to go do something useful. This is a big mistake. Left to its own devices, the discussion might inadvertently become useful. What's the fun in that? It is essential that as many editors as possible chime in, not adding to the discussion at hand but pointing, LOL, and lamely commenting about how lame it is and how it's a big waste of time (See Self-fulfilling prophecy, Positive feedback, and Exponential growth). Merely stating the discussion is lame is frequently not sufficient; every opposing statement must be denied with increasingly vehement assertions of the lameness. While at first blush, wasting time whining about what a waste of time something is may seem illogical, the inherent irony just magnifies the lameness. An additional step to increase lameness is to include repeated links to this essay, which is WP:LAME. Administrators have a special role to play; proposing and implementing topic bans on lame participants is doubly effective: it not only increases the present-day lameness, but, by quashing debate, helps ensure the lame issue remains unsolved for future generations of Wikipedians to go on about. Lamely.
The best way to begin a lame edit war is to change a large number of articles based on your interpretation of minutiae in the manual of style. If this does not work, try changing the MOS itself; that always works.
Guidelines on how to add an entry to this guide
If you want to add a "lame edit war" to this page, keep the following in mind:
- It must have been an actual edit war. Discussions on talk pages, even over trivially lame details, are not "edit wars" and are, therefore, NOT suitable for this page: we want to encourage such rational debates between users/viewpoints (as opposed to actual edit warring). Note that pithy quotes on talk pages may be suitable for Wikipedia:Talk page highlights.
- It should truly be amongst the lamest edit wars. Not just garden-variety lame.
- Unless a participant is banned for their part in the edit war, do not give the names of participants or link to their userpages. People have lapses in judgment, and some end up edit warring; they shouldn't, however, be stuck with that for the rest of their on-wiki careers for no reason. This is absolutely not the place for harping over someone's past editing.
- Be careful to avoid even the semblance of taking sides in the war. If one version was more or less accepted afterwards, it's OK to note that, but the fact that an edit war occurred means that neither side was "in the right all along".
- Be bold! If you feel that an edit war was truly lame, add it! You don't need to ask on the talk page. The lameness of it should speak for itself. Of course, editors with a more experienced eye for lameness may disagree with your claim to the "lamest", which may just result in yet another lame edit war!
- Note that the no original research and verifiability policies are meant to apply to the article namespace, not necessarily on pages like this in the Wikipedia (project) namespace. This is intended for the community rather than your average readers. Humorous, insightful commentary is encouraged here.
Ethnic and national feuds
People
Was Chopin French, French–Polish, Polish, or Polish–French? For years, there has been a low-level (and at times high-intensity) conflict about which country can claim Chopin as its son. Or was it Szopen? The observer learns a lot about the Napoleonic code, about the nuances of "citizenship", "nationality", and "ethnicity". Students of law can argue the finer points of jus sanguinis and jus soli. The use of "Polish-born" is branded as a racist slur. There is spirited debate about whether the citing of a passage of law is considered original research, tantamount to "dropping Mentos into a bottle of Pepsi to see if it will explode". 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. Celebrity witnesses such as Obama, Churchill, Sean Taro Ono Lennon, and Dr. Seuss are pressed into making appearances. Collateral damage even reaches right here, where the Chopin entry is removed because of an alleged lack of lameness. And then there are the trolls. Even Chopin's remains are divided: the body rests in Paris, the heart in Warsaw.
He is considered both by Hungarians and by Slovaks to be the unsung father of the dynamo and electric motor. But what was his true ethnicity, Hungarian or Slovak? At one point, the score in this heated battle was 16 citations to 4 in favour of the Hungarian side, with the Slovak side being handed both {{Dubious}} and {{Verify source}} tags. It appears that the dust has settled and the Hungarian side won, but at the cost of nine citation numbers immediately after "Hungarian".
Are they a British or an Australian group? How about Manx? Tempers flared to the point of an RfC to settle the disruptive behaviour in 2017. Artefacts resulting from years of edit-warring have resulted in this helpful comment in the "origin" section of the infobox: PLEASE, DO NOT ADD ANYTHING IN THIS FIELD TO AVOID EDIT WARS. The most recent revision side-steps the issue and simply says "The Bee Gees were a musical group". (Or is that "was a musical group")?
There was a feud that was going on for a long time on this one concerning Freddie Mercury's true ancestry. Is he the most famous Iranian rock star? Indian? Parsi? Azeri? You'd be surprised how many people get this annoyed, to the point that it is still a hotly contested item over there. Just one example can be seen is this edit of his Gujarati name. Oh, and this one, like all the others, had its share of random vandals, people leaving unmarked anonymous insults, and gnashing of teeth. Let's just say for now he's a Parsi whose parents originated from India! Just don't even think of suggesting he's "left" Queen or is an "ex-member" of the band, though, or you'll really get people's hackles up...
...in 2018, a new edit war cropped up on Freddie Mercury's song "Love of My Life" - who is the song about? Mary Austin or David Minns? A gay lover? Somebody else? It still flares up going back and forth between those two names and again and again. Jeez, why can't we just all sing along?
But whence came this great beauty? Is she a "Bosnian actress of Croatian descent/ethnicity" or a "Croatian actress"? Should she be called American without sourcing because she's resided in America for nearly 30 years? Is she "Bosnian" because she was born in Sarajevo or "Bosnian-born" because Bosnia did not exist as a nation when she was born there? Go ahead and edit the article and see how long your version lasts before someone reverts you!
Is she American or American-born? Is she Greek-American? Is she English-American? Is she Greek-and-English-American? Does she need all-those-prefixes-in-front-of-her-nationality-American? Did Kiriakis mastermind the entire affair?
Born in what was then Hungary but is now part of Austria to ethnic German parents whose families had lived in Hungary for a long time, and we had all thought it was common knowledge that Liszt claimed Hungary as his homeland and Hungarian as his nationality. Er, didn't he? Cue the largest and most acrimonious war in recent memory! It was mercifully confined to the talk page, but what a talk page it was. What was Liszt's real name, Franz or Ferenc? (It was actually Franciscus.) If he was such a Hungarian patriot, why didn't he fight in the war of independence in 1848? If he was really Hungarian, why is his "Hungarian"-style music actually based on Romani music? If he really thought he was Hungarian, why did he spend so much time in France? Why couldn't he write better lyrics for the Krönungslied (which was actually Ungarisches Königslied)? What is the significance of the Chopinesque left hand octaves in Funerailles, Octobre 1849? What event of October 1849 was he referring to, the crushing of the Hungarian rebellion or the death of Chopin? Or was it the publication of Heinrich Heine's rude poem about him? Why couldn't he learn to speak Hungarian better? Did he like goulash? Could he dance the csárdás? The farce was compounded by the occasional appearance of anonymous trolls who insisted that Liszt was, in fact, a Slovak.
Is he American or American-born? Is he Chinese-American? Is he Taiwanese-American? With Chinese and Taiwanese Chinese-Taiwanese and Americans Mainland Chinese and Taiwan Chinese Real Chinese and Chinese who had forgotten their ancestors Freedom fighters and threat to humanity Mao Zedong worshippers and modern Chinese "Unionists" and "Independencrats" reviving arguments that once almost sabotaged Chinese Wikipedia, this article has the (mis)fortune to have a lengthy FAQ which uses statements like "Chinese can also be Taiwanese just like Chinese can also be Beijingers" and "Jeremy Lin's maternal grandma lives in Zhejiang and thus he has undisputed Chinese descent" to satisfy both sides.
Was he Polish, German, or Prussian? Or did he have no nationality at all that bears mentioning? If Copernicus were around today, he might have suggested that he would be satisfied to be remembered as an astronomer, but we will never know. Was he ever married? What is his middle name? No one knows exactly. Whether this edit war will spread to the page on his memorial on the periodic table is unknown.
Born of Serbian parents in a part of the Austrian Empire, which a short time later became a part of the Hungarian half of Austria-Hungary and is now in Croatia. He eventually became a naturalized citizen of the US. So was he Serbian? Croatian? Austrian? Austro-Hungarian? Istro-Romanian? Jewish? American? Martian? There's even a specific sub-talk page just for this! You decide! But don't forget to leave an edit summary saying how pathetic it is to choose any other version.
Who said the English-speaking world was immune to inane ethnological disputes? This debate, over a single word in the article, consumed most of the month of September 2007. The key question is: is he an English writer or is he a British writer of English origin? Can we add "American" in there somewhere because he moved to America at age 74? Well over half the talk page is dedicated to this one issue. The two editors warring over it filed simultaneous 3RR reports against each other and an RFC. Accusations of weasel wording appear in the talk page. Fine points of policy debated: does reverting to prevent a revert war constitute a real revert? Does it count as a revert if you call it vandalism, even if it is a content dispute? Is it bad faith to remove HTML comments from the page if only editors will see them, or do such invisible comments constitute a vandalism of their own? Is it a bad thing to use the "minor" tag to "conceal" changes?
Is this porn star Italian? Native American? Puerto Rican? Cypriot? Does she have Indian blood? Who cares? But make sure that, when you change it, you don't even think about citing any source; please feel free to insult whoever put in the previous ethnicity. IP editors: be sure to insert multitudes of her different "real names", with no sourcing whatsoever.
Born in Germany, supposedly of a German mother and a Yugoslav father, and raised in Bavaria, Germany. Does that make Herzog: a) Croatian or b) Serbian? How about the fact that his relatives live in Bosnia-Herzegovina? Use edit summaries to publish interviews that you conducted – or heard rumors about. Mirrors and forks are great sources too. After consulting a printed source, it turns out that it was the mother who was from Croatia. Ouch.
Biographers who knew him said his family was Kurdish. But was he a Kurd, Arab, Turk, Persian, Armenian, some combination of these, or something else? Were his father and uncle Kurds, or Arabs, or Kurdicized Arabs, or Turks, or Kurdicized Turks? Does it depend on the ethnicity of his mother, about whom we know literally nothing? He definitely spoke Arabic, but did he speak Kurdish too? Or Turkish? He was born in Tikrit, so does that make him Iraqi? Syrian? Mesopotamian? Kurdistani? If he is ethnically Kurdish, is the Ayyubid dynasty that followed him a Kurdish dynasty? Does modern Kurdish nationalism have anything to do with the Kurds of the 12th century? (This spills over into various articles about the Ayyubid dynasty too.)
Is Милица Наташа Богдановна Јововић/Milica Jovović Serbian/Montenegrin or only Serbian? Montenegrin became the official language of Montenegro in 2007 and received a new standard on 10 July 2009, but it has been promoted by the Montenegrin community since 2004. Montenegro legally seceded from Serbia and Montenegro in 2006, but Milla was born in Ukraine in the Soviet Union in 1975 to a Russian/Ukrainian mother and father of Serbian (Serbian/Montenegrin?) extraction when Serbia (Serbia and Montenegro?) was still in Yugoslavia. Where do you stand?
Is U2 an "Irish band" or simply a band that happens to be from Ireland, since two of their members were born in the UK? Many discussions have taken place over the course of several years as whether "U2 are an Irish rock band" or simply "U2 are a rock band" should be included in the text. Edit wars continued back and forth, and at one point the article even read "U2 are an Irish and British rock band" (which didn't last very long). A similar compromise could have been "an Irish rock band with two British members". And this was in addition to a debate on whether "is" or "are" should be used! Casey Kasem may have foreshadowed this edit war decades ago when he offered his first impression of U2 early in their career: "This is bullshit. Nobody cares. These guys are from England and who gives a shit!" Eventually, 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, to eventually come to the conclusion that U2 are, in fact, an Irish band. (At least for now.) And why did nobody even edit war over to use "is" or "are"? What is life?
Is she Canadian or Portuguese-Canadian? Editors ruthlessly argue over the formalities of citizenship and nationality. Which country's laws of citizenship should be used? Apparently, she was born to Portuguese parents and has released albums in Portuguese, but "she was born, lives, and works in Canada." Accusations of xenophobia are made. Much like reality television, this could get nasty. Confusingly, she has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame (for Canada) and was awarded Commander of the Order of Prince Henry (for Portugal), extending the edit war well into real life.
Is this Grand Slam-winning tennis player from Scotland, (or Great Scotland) the UK, or Great Britain? Despite the compromise in the lead of calling him both Scottish and British, users and IPs don't realize that they are talking about the same place, so every year, when Wimbledon comes around, you can always see an edit war or talk page arguments about the subject, and like tennis, the final result of this edit war will never be known. Mainly going down the line of Murray called himself Scottish. Murray is anti-English and British after the media misinterpreted a joke with Des Kelly and Tim Henman in 2006 so therefore he must be Scottish. We can't have "Scottish" in the lead; he doesn't represent Scotland, he has to play for Great Britain. Any of which gets shouted down by the other argument and goes round and round all summer until a regular editor reverts it back to the "consensus compromise". Of course, consumers of the British press will be aware that, to those south of the border, Murray is British until he loses a match, at which point he reverts to Scottishness. But the truly lame thing on this page is that's not the only regular edit war. The page also sees an argument of whether Murray was born in Dunblane or Glasgow.
Was his nationality Scottish or British or both? Should the infobox in the article list him as (1) British nationality or (2) Scottish nationality and British citizenship, or (3) Scottish & British nationality (no citizenship) or (4) no nationality and citizenship? Users and IPs relentlessly argue over the formalities of nationality & citizenship in more than 27,000 words of discussion. Editors then adopt a strategy to argue over which of the versions should be in place until the discussion resolves the questions, but it remains a mystery as to whether they did so expecting that the questions will never be resolved.
Was he Jewish through his maternal grandmother or never at all? People who claim his grandmother was Jewish quote an L.A. Times article wherein George Michael himself claims that "His maternal grandmother was Jewish but married a Gentile and raised her children with no knowledge of their Semitic heritage. This was during World War II, and 'she thought if they didn't know that their mother was Jewish, they wouldn't be at risk,' Michael said." They also claim that it should stay in the article because being Jewish (ethnicity) and practicing Judaism (religion) are two different things. The opposition claims that George Michael was simply confused with the name of his grandmother, Daisy Angold Young, and mistook Angold for a Jewish surname. One of the opposition found genealogy for George Michael's grandmother leading back to 1828 in London. The same person linked an article talking about Christmas songs written by Jewish people on an interfaith support website that claims Michael being Jewish is an internet myth. All this arguing led to mass edit warring, accusations of Jews and non-Jews trying to white-wash history, and anti-semitism. The dates on the talk pages span from 2/10/07-12/20/08, 6/25/11-1/11/13, 12/30/16-1/5/17, and 10/19/17-11/14/17. Three of the many examples of 3RR are here:[1], [2], [3].
How many nationalities does he have? A lot. Born to Haitian-Dominican parents in the UK, but raised in Atlanta, Georgia from 7 years old, the citizenship status of 21 Savage has been disputed since his arrest in February 2019. Is he English? British? American? British-American? Or, according to Sir Savage the 21st himself, African-American? Discussion on the talk page included debating his rights to being a British national, noting the nationality laws between the UK and the US differ. As of now, he is described as a rapper who was born in England and based in Georgia. Due to his debated status, should his date be listed as "22 October" or "October 22"? Does he even qualify for DACA protection? Why does he have a 12 car garage? Pronunciation rules on "garage" need not apply.
There was a dispute on the order and necessity of transliteration of the famous actor Rajni Kanth's names into languages like Marathi, Hindi, and Kannada. The people for the inclusion and giving a higher priority believed that the actor has significant history in that state of India, as well as sufficient fan-following to merit a transliteration, while the editors from Tamil origin were of the opinion that they would be surrendering their most prized possession. The talk page had been bubbling with so many threads on this singular issue. In 2011–2012, a consensus was reached after an RfC: All the Indic language scripts would be replaced with the IPA for such articles.
Places and other things
Dokdo → Liancourt Rocks → Takeshima → Dokdo → Dokdo → Liancourt Rocks → ?
No, this is not the title of an album by the band Liancourt, but a group of sinking volcanic rocks that has been claimed by both Japan and Korea since really, really long ago. [4] Evidence of ownership for either side rests on hard-to-read decaying pieces of old paper. This is not a silly dispute as the rocks have important economic and military value, yada yada yada. Serious Japanese or Korean Wikipedians may even choose to make these rocks their place of residence (living there not required!) to bolster their case. This article extensively documents every little factoid that could possibly indicate ownership by one country, with each, of course, having a countering statement. Newspapers and internet forums like 2channel are part of the discussion, yet everyone claims their POV is NPOV. As properly befitting this major political issue, most edit summaries begin with "rv ..." Luckily, at least the title of the article has been settled on ... or has it? See also: Liancourt Rocks dispute.
You'd have thought Counties of the United Kingdom would be a fairly uncontroversial subject, but no – this insider outsider pressure group involving ninety-two eighty-six UK counties (that doesn't involve Government policy) is guaranteed to bring out the red mist every once in a while. One thing's for sure, the edit warring on this article is far from over ...
The "British Isles"
Is this phrasing acceptable? Does it geographically include the entire Northern European archipelago; or is the term inherently anti-Irish? Should it always be "the UK and Ireland" instead? Campaign-like warring removals and reversions on nearly any article containing the words 'British Isles' have resulted in topic bans, grueling skirmishes replete with sock warriors, and general misery over the thing. No consensus has truly emerged as to an ideal term; or even if the existing one is really a problem or not.
Was this marinated raw fish delicacy invented in Peru, or in Ecuador? Or maybe Mexico, Polynesia, Spain, Chile, Granada, Argentina...
Should the article on this city in Northern Ireland be called Derry or should it be called Londonderry? With loyalists and republicans (and even nationalists) on both sides, don't expect an answer soon. *cough*WP:DERRY/WP:LONDONDERRY*cough*
An image on this featured article shows the tiny moon of Saturn superimposed on a map of the British Isles, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands Great Britain and Ireland, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. Cue edit warring, accusations of vandalism, and full protection of the article.
Export House, that internationally renowned tower block in Woking
Multiple back and forth about whether the local nickname for the building is the bat building or the B.A.T building (from British American Tobacco). For a while this was resolved by quoting both, but then further edit warring ensued as to whether it should be followed by '(more commonly known as bat)' or B.A.T. Looking for citations showed that it is mostly referred to as BAT, which led to the absurdity of three versions of the nickname in the lead for this barely notable tower block in a small provincial town. Costumed climbing of said tower now seems inevitable, presumably dressed as an alternative superhero from usual.
Florina and other towns in Macedonia (Greece)
Edit war about whether the alternative name Lerin is Macedonian, Bulgarian or South Slavic (which covers both Macedonian and Bulgarian).
Who first donned a frilly skirt and threatened to kill anyone who questioned his manhood over it? Was he Albanian or Greek? If Albanian, Gheg or Tosk? Thankfully, none of the modern day warriors on this topic have access to real weapons (we hope!)
Was this tasty salad invented in Mexico in 1924, or in ancient Rome? Is it named after Caesar Cardini or Julius Caesar? Is it spelled Caesar, Cesar, César, or Cesare? If you add tomatoes is it still a Caesar or is it something called a "Letchworth salad"? A slow-motion edit war stretching out over one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven years is surely the best way to find out.
Is Niko Bellic (the main character) Serbian, Slovak, Bosnian, Croatian, Russian, or from some unnamed Eastern European country? Normally reliable sources do not agree on the matter (with those written pre-launch suggesting the character is Russian, and post-launch Serbian or Croatian), and the actual game itself is just ambiguous enough about the subject to create dissent (and of course this is a part of the world where nationalist feelings run high, see Balkanization – even the order that Croatia and Serbia are listed also offends some.). At one point, the article contained five consecutive citations, repeated each of the three times the character's nationality is mentioned, totalling a whopping fifteen citation numbers throughout the article to justify the purported nationality of a fictional video game character. The article reached eventual consensus on the nationality issue (unknown) and the name of the war (an unknown war in Eastern Europe) based on the author(s) having not revealed the information about the character. Despite it being over a decade and a half since the game's release, and despite edit notices and warning text in the article body and an FAQ on the talk page, the subject still receives many edits a year, and the subject is repeatedly raised on the article talk page.
Are these beautiful waterfalls on the Kaveri River located in Tamil Nadu – or on the border between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka – or in Tamil Nadu on its border with Karnataka? Or is it really the Cauvery river, and Hogenakal Falls? Do a dispute over water usage, and a separate dispute over access to an island below the Falls, have no bearing on this, or do they prove that the location of the Falls must be on the border? Whatever you believe, be sure to bring a (Google) map to the debate, and point out that your opponent's sources are not RS or NPOV!
Hummus and friends
Hummus: they love it in Israel, so shouldn't it be in Category:Israeli cuisine? Or is it a purely Arab food that the Zionists have illegally occupied?[5] After a related skirmish on Za'atar, the ingredients were listed in alphabetical order, but was this all part of a shrewd Zionist plot? Don't be silly, came the response: and anybody who removes the Hebrew name from the first sentence is a racist vandal.[6] Meanwhile, back at Hummus, an attempt is made to replace a mention that the Oxford English Dictionary says that the word entered English via Turkish with a reference to the Greek name for the dish. Finally, Tabbouleh saw action, this time mercifully free of Arab-Israeli connotations; instead, the question was: can we call this dish a part of Levantine cuisine, or is the very term "Levantine" a European colonial plot to divide the great Arab nation?[7]
In the meantime, another attempt is made to expunge the Turks from description of the traditional Greek (or maybe Arab) dish of pita (or is it pitta?), while controversy bubbles as to whether a photo of an Israeli falafel house constitutes "Zionism".
Conclusion: Tasty snacks in the Middle East are hilariously politicized. As of September 2022[update], the talk page for Hummus states: "The article Hummus, along with other articles relating to the Arab–Israeli conflict, is currently subject to active arbitration remedies."
Is it a lake or is it just a name? Or is it a system? And if it is a system, how is it distinct from the Great Lakes system? And if it is just a name how can it be the largest lake? [8] If it's not a lake, then is it one body of water? [9] Or is it a lake just hydrologically? Should it be called a lacustrine entity instead? Is this a category error or definitional attribute? Or is there simply no such entity? [10] And is notifying any WikiProjects forum shopping? [11] And, most importantly, who should be topic banned?
Why lay bricks when you can edit bits? The headquarters of this British organisation are located in Buckinghamshire. But should it be called "Buckinghamshire, England" or "Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom"? In April 2008, this crucial issue became the focus of an edit war involving no fewer than eight users and one anonymous editor over a period of a week. (This is particularly inexplicable since England is, of course, part of the United Kingdom.) On April 23, the participants finally settled on "England" and the edit war ended – perhaps in recognition of St. George's Day?
Not the dancer, but rather the tasty antipodean dessert, which was invented in Australia, New Zealand, Australia, New Zealand, Rabbit Season, Duck Season, fire!
But surely this is just Western propaganda. The great Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, invented this dessert to make dogs salivate, as we all know, The Truth™.
Does the Šarplaninac (Yugoslav/Illyrian shepherd dog) originate from Kosovo, Albania, Serbia and/or Macedonia? Nobody can agree, but even flags are being hoisted at this point in the infobox.
Should it be called the Sea of Japan, the East Sea, or even the East Sea of Korea? Are both names valid, and if so, should the article be named Sea of Japan (East Sea) or Sea of Japan / East Sea? Or should it be the actual most common English and international name Sea of Japan (East Sea), parentheses and all? Should the dispute page be called the Sea of Japan naming dispute, or the Naming dispute over the body of water between Japan and Korea and the Russian Far East? Given the existence of other names meaning "East Sea" in other languages, should East Sea redirect to the disambiguation page or to the "body of water bordered by Japan, Russia and Korea"?
Which unincorporated (and thus unbounded) hamlet of the town of Colonie north of Albany, New York, is this small Catholic liberal arts college in: Loudonville or Newtonville? The college's website says Loudonville, but how can we trust it when the Colonie Town Hall just across US 9 uses Newtonville for its address? Discussion reaches 30,000 words, reverts spill across all three articles, two get protected, an informal RFC is opened and one editor briefly retires.
No one believes the Hata clan of Asia are in any way Jewish. Yet an edit war still erupted over how to say that, with the book ref from respected author Jon Entine stating the fact that all sides (and sane people) would agree on, right there at the bottom of page 117.
Snakes from the Middle East are hilariously politicized too! This one is found in Syria, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, and either "Palestine" or "the Palestinian territories". Users have been edit-warring for six years now over how to describe it. The opinions of the snake itself on the political status of Palestine are unknown.
Can the Khmelnytsky uprising be described as an "anti-Polish" revolt? Or was it just a revolt that happened to be against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth? Moreover, why is any of this in the lead section of a largely unrelated article about a class of Polish gentry? One editor quits Wikipedia, and another spends multiple days making more arguments on the talk page long after anyone else has presumably stopped paying attention. Hop on over to the talk page to witness some truly remarkable feats of formatting and a case study in how not to use quotes to prove a point.
Names
English names
The Final Fantasy VII character was introduced to English audiences in 1997 as Aeris, but her name changed to Aerith in later appearances. Was the first name a misspelling? A mistranslation from the original Japanese pronunciation? That's how it was when it was first released in English, so that makes it her official name. But the later appearances are official too, right? She was known and referred to as Aeris for years, so that makes it the common name, but she's been going by Aerith since 2002...
With every title in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII (2003) using Aerith, the warring seems to have ended. The lengthy discussions are archived at Talk:Aerith Gainsborough/Name debate archive (page size 113kb).
Should there be a separate page for New Avengers (comics)? Is the name of the team now the New Avengers or is it just a new Avengers? Is it a new comic entirely or just a continuation of the old one? Following a positive merge vote, a series of reverts occurs when an editor "merges" the two by simply pasting the merged information into the article, creating two articles in one. The slow nature of the revert war means that, technically, nobody violates WP:3RR, and requests for help from other admins go unheeded because, well, it's lame. After a series of exchanges on the talk page questioning people's command of English as well as their sanity, the issue appears to have been settled with the creation of New Avengers (comic book) (note the oh-so-subtle distinction) based on the WikiProject Comics guidelines.
The double-feature portmanteau of Barbie and Oppenheimer became notable in its own right in 2023, but what name should we use for the two protagonists in the image caption under their photos? Edit wars, several talk page discussions, and an 18,000-word RfC asked whether they should be called "Barbara Millicent 'Barbie' Roberts and Julius Robert 'Oppie' Oppenheimer" or just "Barbie and J. Robert Oppenheimer". Is providing full names with nicknames useful, precise, confusing, or just trivial "fancruft"? In the end, there was consensus for using the most familiar names, but the photo of Barbie had already been deleted as a copyright violation anyway.
In the name of the programming language C#, is that # thing (octothorpe) after the C a number sign or the musical sharp symbol? What should the wrongname template say? Some argue that a Microsoft FAQ supports the sharp symbol, while others argue that the ECMA standard promotes the # symbol and that it has better browser support. Some propose using # as a superscript (C#), which few editors like. Editors repeatedly reverted between each other, some refusing to discuss the issue on the talk page. The issue was resolved with an e-mail exchange with Microsoft stating that in their view it's an octothorpe symbol representing the sharp symbol, similar to how "<=" represents the less than or equal symbol, and that thus Microsoft does not disagree with ECMA. Written "Netscape" but pronounced "Mozilla", eh? Anyone?
It looks like you're trying to argue on Wikipedia. Would you like some help? You know that paper clip from Microsoft Office in 1997? Of course you do. But what was his name? Extremely obscure Microsoft publications, and extremely obscurantist Wikipedia editors, provide ammunition to both sides. The wrong name is obviously a result of citogenesis: but which was the true name and which was the false one being citogenesized? Forty thousand bytes of debate took place throughout August 2023. Ultimately, consensus was found to include both names, meaning everyone was right (or everyone was wrong, depending on how you look at it).
The creature from the movie Cloverfield was never explicitly named in the movie, or was it? Is "Cloverfield" the name of the military casefile, or the monster, or both? Some reporter referred to the creature itself as "Cloverfield" so let's go with "Cloverfield (creature)" Wait, shouldn't we follow suit with Frankenstein and call it "The Cloverfield creature"? Or wait, maybe it should just be "Cloverfield creature", maybe it should be "Cloverfield (monster)"? No, we can't do that, it shows bias and isn't NPOV. Rumor has it that the production staff just called it "Clover", but that's just a nickname, it doesn't count, does it? No matter, we can't use that until we find a source confirming that they call it Clover ... OK, now we have one. How's about we skirt all naming conventions and call it "The Monster/Clover (creature)" to make everyone happy. Nah, that's no good, back to "Clover (creature)". But wait, that's still not the true name of the creature, so we shouldn't use that. Followed by and interspersed with a cavalcade of "Alright how about we just compromise and set it back to <editor's favorite name>." It's extremely important that an article on a fictional topic which only narrowly escaped AfD be properly named. Rather amusingly, considering how much edit warring there was/is on the page, it's been awarded "Good Article" status! [12] Wait, never mind! It's not anymore! It's now B-class. No, C-class according to WikiProject Horror!
Compact Disc is a tradename, and therefore is capitalised. But the logo says "Compact disc", and the term is now used as a generic term for compact disks or compact discs, depending on where in the world they are. Everyone calls them CDs (or maybe CD's). So, where to put the article? Passions have been raised on this compelling topic on the article's talk page sporadically since 2004, boiling over briefly in 2007 and 2009. Everyone calm down – relax, have a cup of coffee, and listen to your favourite... erm... shiny music circle.
Shockingly, there are multiple locations in the United States with the name "Devils Lake" with and without apostrophes. A very heated war broke out here regarding which one should be featured, whether a disambiguation page was needed, even over the usage of the apostrophe – eventually literally degenerating into "my lake is better than yours!" Solution: RENAME THE FREAKIN' LAKES!!!
Does the name of this band include the definite article? Is it "Eagles" or "the Eagles"? The band's name is "Eagles", yet all former and current band members talk about their tenure with "the Eagles" in published interviews and on the official website. From the very first sentences of the band's biographies on Allmusic, Rolling Stone, and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, we can see how the world outside WP writes about them. Despite these facts, every "tequila sunrise" there appears an odd and concerted effort ([13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]) to erase the... "the" from all instances in the article, (even spilling into a band member's article [22][23]), leading to awkward "bizarro-speak" that even the band members themselves would surely laugh at. Someone needs to tell Don Felder to change the title of his book, because apparently he was wrong.
Was Eris named after the Greek goddess Eris or the Greek and Discordian goddess Eris? Does it matter that the IAU and discoverer Michael E. Brown referenced only the Greek aspect, even though the referenced mythological event was identical with The Original Snub? Is mentioning Discordianism POV because it gives the religion undue weight? Edit war results in loss of good article status and temporary article locking (but it's now a featured article, hurrah!). Hail Discordia! The edit war was resolved by not actually mentioning what type of goddess Eris is. As of 22 August 2023, the article refers to the Greek goddess as the source of the name, but mentions Discordianism as the source of the planetary symbol. See also: Pluto and Ceres (dwarf planet).
A heated debate took place on whether English Robin was an alternate common name for the European Robin, often simply called Robin. One editor persisted[24] [25] [26] [27] in adding this essential piece of information despite opposition [28] [29] [30] until there was a concession of sorts ... Or not. Or does persistence pay off? Maybe not. Is this the last word on the matter? Who knows ... Can it suspend a coconut from its husk? [31]
Should second-season winner "Deelishis" be credited as her birth name, Chandra Davis, or her stage name, London Charles? Months of IP additions and months of "IF YOU REVERT WITHOUT DISCUSSION, YOU'RE GONNA BE BLOCKED!" ensue. In the end, nobody got blocked and the dispute died down on its own, probably because both sides realized they were battling over a woman who willingly went on a reality television show to "fall in love with" Flavor Flav. Yeah, boyeeeeeee!
Does the name of a Canadian TV channel, originally an offshoot of namesake American one, contain the word "Canada" in its official title, ergo it should be parenthesized in the title? It's a terribly important matter, as witnessed by an intense move war and circular discussion on the talk page.
Should this substance be called 'gasoline' or 'petrol'? See the talk page for a debate about the total number of English speakers in the world (and whether Americans should be considered an important part of it); the relative utility of search engines, closely followed by the unleashing of various pie charts and tables; claims that UK-wikipedians are set to re-establish the British Empire by moving pages to British spellings, counter-claims that Americans who want "gasoline" are being their usual nationalistic/culturally-imperialistic selves; RFC nominations, page-move warring and deletion debates, failed attempts to achieve compromise via some truly freaky article names (far beyond the suggested "Gasoline (petrol)" and "Petrol (gasoline)") and even the creation of templates to separate the article into sections individually tailored for both Commonwealth and American English tastes. Gasoline has been settled on for now, in part because that was the article's title originally, but the fallout has yet to settle.
Finally, while not trying to pour fuel over the fire, it should be noted that in Arab countries (its birthplace, after all), and a lot of Europe, people call it "benzine".
Or is it "Gender of god"? How about "Gender of Gods", gotta remember those damn pagans. Or is that "Gender of gods"? Is "sex" more appropriate than "gender"? Is god/God/gods/Gods appropriate at all? How about (d/D)ivine entit(ies/y) ... or (s/S)upreme (b/B)eing(s) ... or some mix of all the above? Meanwhile, this doesn't account for religions with no explicit sex (or is that explicit gender?). We haven't quite decided yet, but rest assured, whilst some silly people are trying in vain to reach consensus, those with the power are proving their point with reverts. There have even been threats of ArbCom.
Alessa was captured, but just how captured do you have to be to be considered "captured"? That "forced medical attention" makes all the difference in the world, so why would we need the word "captured"? While playing the game, a user might get the idea that a character implies something, so does a subtle wink at the camera mean something entirely different; something that could affect the whole plot and our own pride, for going with sourced material? It mattered for some, obviously, as a massive edit war broke out about a few words here and there and the war would be still going on, had it not been for the fact that administrators did some shallow digging and discovered that the instigator of the edit war was a famed blocked user who has been discovered to create no fewer than 23 sockpuppet accounts.
The protagonist from Konami's survival horror video game Silent Hill 3 is known to those who have played the game as "Heather". But what is her last name? Is it Morris after the actress who portrayed her? Is it Mason? Does anyone care? Many sources disagree. A 'my source is more valid than yours' edit war broke out in an unlikely place. It wasn't on the page for the character in question. Certainly not on the page for the game itself. It actually broke out on the Silent Hill 3 blurb on the series overview page and its talk page.
Should there be disambiguation notices on the respective articles of the Halo video games to the band Nine Inch Nails's personal Halo numbers for their albums? Do the numbers' acceptance by Trent Reznor mean anything? Are the Halo numbers notable enough to be disambiguated? Are any people going to search for Halo 2 or 3, not expecting information about a video game? Is the form of the Halo number Halo 3 or halo_03 or HALO 3?
Thankfully it seems like that this debate did not flare up again with the release of Halo 4.
Should it say Hillary Clinton or Hillary Rodham Clinton in the infobox? This long-running edit war since 6 June 2015 has led to two full protections, which at the same time led to the loss of an indefinite semi protection after one expired. This also led to a RFC which stopped the warring. Wait, it's Hillary Diane Rodham now?!
Is the southern terminus of Interstate 75 in Hialeah, Florida, or would it serve the typical Wikipedia reader better if the infobox said "near Miami, Florida", a better-known city with twice the population 10 miles (16 km) away? A discussion followed by a straw vote indicated that the majority of the participants preferred the latter wording, but there was no consensus. The debate (and the edit war) settled down for a few months until someone associated with Miami Dade College, whose Hialeah Campus is, er, near Miami, rekindled the reversions with an insistence that the phrase should be cited with an online reference and that "near Miami" violates WP:NPOV. Since then, the dispute – mainly through edit comments – has spread to a question as to whether a cited "in Hialeah" should be trumped by an uncited "near Miami". The dispute has pitted students and faculty of MDC against a handful of Wikipedians who believe that a precedent should prevail. As the standoff persists, the rest of the world rolls by ... until finally, it seems "in Hialeah, FL near Miami", with cite! gets the nod.
Was she really a Queen of England? Should her page be at Jane of England or Lady Jane Grey? Should she be referred to as Her Majesty Queen Jane? Does her husband merit inclusion in The List of royal consorts of the United Kingdom? (Notice that, until 2006, Royal Consorts of the United Kingdom was a red link, unlike The weather in Liverpool.) Resulted in many cut-and-paste page moves, edit warring across multiple pages and flaming on those talk pages. Warriors did not come to their senses even when it was pointed out how long Jane herself had been dead, though mercifully none of them met the same fate as their subject by having their heads lopped off. Though that would reduce the chatter!
Various supporters of the US Libertarian party (founded in 1971) argue that they own the meaning of the word "libertarian", that placing it next to "socialism" is a contradiction in terms, and hence that libertarian socialism (described circa 1850) cannot possibly have existed. An edit war and request-for-deletion war ensues.
Is her 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. Cue endless spats on talk pages over whose arguments are "more cogent", and multiple reversions. Issue finally resolved (sort of) by very, very, very obliquely implying that she pronounces her name "rolling", rather than stating that that is how her name is pronounced. Edit war was brief, but, astoundingly, other people have since logged on and made the same complaint. Perhaps it rhymes with "Trolling"?
Then again, rhymes themselves are dangerously POV.
Should this article (and other articles and templates that mention this award) use the common name of the award, the official name, Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, the even more official name, Sveriges Riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne, or perhaps a compromise name, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics? The ignoble debate has involved endless discussions, requested moves, revert wars, blocks, and strangely, two (N/n)obel Prizes.[citation needed]
An unseemly brawl over whether the article should name him "Richard Kyanka" or "Richard Charles Kyanka". At least the IP editors insisting on the insertion of the middle name provided good verifiable sources.
Is it a collection of myths or a motif? Should "Sun" be capitalized or not? What about "underworld"? Edit warring here over these and other weighty issues have involved four editors and most of the article's history.
The Pope's title
Is he the Supreme Pontiff or just the Bishop of Rome? Portal:Pope/Intro says the latter for a year and a half after its creation; then in December 2008 the reverts to "Supreme Pontiff" start, along with deletions of the "Roman" in "Roman Catholic Church", and continue in bursts from a number of different anons for several months until it's protected. Proof of lameness: a screenshot of the page's history is now the lead image at the edit warring page.
Two months of edit war on whether the page should say "[[Harry S Truman|President Truman]]" or "President [[Harry S Truman]]" (plus the same with several other presidents).
Should the name of this Bollywood gangster film be Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai Again, Once Upon a Time In Mumbaai Dobara, Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai Dobara, Once Upon a Time in Mumbai 2, Once Upon a Time in Mumbai Again, Once Upon a Time in Mumbai Dobaara!, Once Upon ay Time in Mumbaai Dobaara!, Once Upon Ay Time In Mumbai Dobaara!, Once Upon Ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara!, or Once Upon ay Time in Mumbai Dobaara!? Not even the filmmakers seem to know. This hasn't stopped Wikipedians from moving the page 14 times between May and August 2013.
Is this nearly extinct leopard subspecies "tulliana"? Or is it "saxicolor"? One editor apparently thinks the old name of "saxicolor" is the only valid one. Threatens to "hack the page", sic their "IT team" on it, and "continue the edit war forever" abound. Also refers to everyone who disagrees as "racist". Had 91 revisions to the article in three days, until finally semiprotected.
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For decades regarded as a planet, it became a dwarf planet (as defined by the IAU) in 2006. Shortly after, it was duly assigned a minor planet number of 134340. Much contention ensued at the talk page about whether the article should be at 134340 Pluto or whether the disgraced planet should retain its simpler name (or, for that matter, whether to consider it a planet or not).
The Potrero Hills are "a range of low hills on the western edge of Richmond, California". They're pretty unremarkable; there happens to be a Chevron oil refinery there. But is it the "Chevron Richmond refinery" or the "Chevron Richmond Refinery"? An on-and-off edit war over this detail roils for months. After an exasperated (if excitable) administrator goes to the length of fully protecting the page, the war spills over onto Potrero Hill, San Francisco, where it is now being "debated" whether the disambiguation tag at the top should say "For the Potrero Hills in Richmond, California, see Potrero Hills" or "For the bluffs in Richmond, California, see ..." or "For the minor mountain range ...".
Is Sega's 16-bit console the Genesis or the Mega Drive? Which one is the proper name for the article? Or should it be called the Sega Fourth Generation console? The article has been moved from one name to the other multiple times, there is an FAQ and a "Falsehoods in the FAQ" discussion on the issue, and the war has spilled over into Wikipedia talk:Article titles. The article currently sits at Sega Genesis, and reached featured article status in December 2013, so it looks like the debate is finally over ... at least until Megatron Mega Drive (which is obviously the correct article title), rises again ...
Is Scotland a Constituent country (linking to constituent country), or a Country within a country (linking to constituent country), or a Country (linking to constituent country), or Country (linking to country), or a Semi autonomous subdivision of the United Kingdom, or a Semi autonomous constituent subdivision of the United Kingdom, or a Semi autonomous subdivision of the United Kingdom, or a Home Nation, or a Nation, or a Kingdom, or a Part, or a Province, or a Region, or a combination of any of the above, or none of the above?
There have also been similar edit wars on pages about England, Northern Ireland and Wales. Following in the fine tradition of truly Lame edit wars, the conflict has spilt over into unlikely places – for example, cities twinned with Scottish cities have had flag icons repeatedly switched between the Union Jack and that of Scotland, with collateral damage seen on Colin McRae and Chris Hoy (whose page during the 2008 Olympics saw both the Union Jack being removed/added from nationality and switching between being British and Scottish).
What name should Wikipedia give to the article about the railway station in London from which direct international passenger trains depart? Should it be primarily given the historic, shorter, simpler and everyday "St Pancras" or the (mostly) official, longer, more formal and more descriptive "St Pancras International"? Should the UK convention of calling a railway station "X railway station" be overturned in favour of "X station"? For that matter, as "St" is an abbreviation, should it have a full stop (I'm not joking)? All rather lame as they all redirect to the article and the two most popular variations are bolded in the lead anyway. Multiple moves and a stupidly long, long, long talk page court case (complete with "exhibit A" and various chums) ensued. As of 2011, the feud seems to have quelled for the time being.
Is it "Into" or "into"? A simple capitalized letter led to, as xkcd neatly summed up, "Forty thousand words of debate", before suggesting the "compromise" solution of "~*~ StAr TrEk InTo DaRkNeSs ~*~". Here's what the horrifying talk page looked like when the xkcd comic was published. A summary of the results was necessary to keep things sane. And that's over three months before the film's opening. Starfleet representatives have neglected to comment.
Should articles for U.S. state routes use the format "State Route xx" or "Route xx (State)" or something else (where xx is the route number)? There were numerous edit battles and huge debates over official terms versus common vernacular and over uniformity versus state individuality. Some advocated for the pipe tricked version while others preferred full string method of disambiguation. This skirmish raged on for about a full year between roadfans, members of the U.S. Roads WikiProject, regular editors, and administrators, resulting in a few probations and even a song. The debate was finally settled with a poll after three previous naming convention "conventions" (#1, #2, #3) failed to resolve the conflict. In the end, the "State Route xx" format prevailed by a small margin. All the state route articles in the United States have been grandfathered into this format. Apparently the fourth try's the charm! An account of the entire war and eventual peace agreement is found here.
For this CD by "Weird Al" Yankovic, a dispute about whether "outta" should be capitalized spawned lengthy threads on the admin noticeboard, as well as accusations of abuse, and page protection. Arguments focus on whether "Outta" is a preposition, whether it's relevant that it's not shorter than five letters, and whether the way the title is spelled on the actual CD is more important than our manual of style. Until a naming convention change, Straight Outta Lynwood may be SOL (or SoL).
When a vandal struck and a good user reverted all but one of their edits, an edit war ensued over whether Cornelius was nicknamed "The Ass" or not. Another good user stopped the short edit war by adding a comment about the missed vandalism.
That odd little reptile from New Zealand, no wait, it's a diapsid, no it's a reptile, no it's a higher animal, reptile again, higher animal again, reptile once more... an amniote (??) The drama unfolds ... but the tuatara itself just doesn't care. Oh yes I do!
Must a queen deceased for over a century still be styled here "Her Majesty", an epithet conventionally reserved for the current monarch? This weighty dispute (pale reflection of warring here), filling talk pages and edit histories, has spilled over into other British monarchs, other royals and titleholders, several countries having or having had a monarchy, claimants and other royal pretensions, and even hundreds of holders of the papacy, where popes centuries dead are endorsed as "His Holiness" here, losing and regaining the endorsement with blinks of eyes. Ongoing debates deal with the format of dates, and the used or unused, existing or non-existent surnames family names house names former fiefs (some inherited names, but very few are sure what they precisely are) of monarchs and relatively unfamiliar variants of those (as well as the putative name of the horse of her late majesty's husband's family), with most edits being extremely trivial. Involved parties vouch for only aiming at accuracy, and certainly some argumentation goes deeper than believed humanly possible. This even created an edit war over whether it could be mentioned here. A truce, seemingly imposed by a Royal intervention that dragged in innocent bystander Prince Michael of Kent, Scottish accents and snail slime, appears to be holding, though occasionally some new fallout is being generated.
Pet views on royalty again, mostly the same parties warring – but this time, aligned contrariwise. Could an American woman who made an ex-king her catch keep the title she was bestowed by the marriage … or is the "she stole our king" attitude a sufficient reason to revert her (posthumously) back to her second husband's surname, Wallis Simpson? See how contrary POVs enter the debate: persons who had wanted “majesties” and “highnesses” used in each minor royal's articles arguing to strip an American girl of her only nobility title, and chivalrous Americans fighting to the metaphorical death in defense of a countrywoman's entitlement. An interesting point has been whether it is fatal or not that she married her Duke after his abdication, and this relates to various and sundry Austrian, Russian, and Romanian monarchies lost, as well as to her sisters-in-law and also to Fergie (no, not that Fergie or the other Fergie).
Is this article about "Wii" or "Nintendo Wii"? If it's "Wii", should it be called just "Wii" or "the Wii"? Or maybe "Nintendo's Wii"? Does it rhyme with "We" or "Wee"? Should "Wee" link to urine? Is "Wee" slang or a euphemism for urine? Is it a British or International word for urine? Is it even worth mentioning in the article at all? (not to mention "wee" as a synonym for "small", or "diminutive") Just some of the hard-hitting issues that provoked in excess of 1500 edits in the space of two weeks – long before the console was even released, and shortly before a massive war breaks out over "non-official external links" that leads to a huge strawpoll to end the issue, and continuing debates over whether the official or unofficial names of the console (according to official Nintendo policy, the console is called the "Wii", not "Nintendo Wii") and its accessories (for example, the "Wii Remote" aka "Wii-mote" aka "Wiimote") are more commonly used and which ones should be mentioned in which articles.
Was this the name of one King of England and also of some totally obscure minor characters in the mists of history – or was it actually the name of two important and well-known Protestant Heads of State, etc? That became the object of a dispute over a redirect. This vital question divided a bunch of eminent readers of history and led to a revert war that alternated the redirect almost every hour. Casual viewers were holding their breath when coming to check what was the current position of that weathervane. As the name's usage in English-speaking cultures was perceived to be the determining factor, there were attempts to almost hand-count English-speakers in New Zealand, South Africa, etc. – all apparently using the hallowed name in a certain way. Extensive and in-depth arguments in several talk pages and usertalk pages included claims of original primary authorship of a redirect as well as accusations of nationalistic POV, filibustering and "using all the tricks in the box". This teaches us some things about disambiguation pages and potential problems surrounding even such tools. A formal poll resulted in votes 9–5 in favor of renaming the disambiguation page as simply William of Orange, and most fallout is being settled.
There was an animal that was also referred to as William of Orange, but fortunately it is a pigeon, an animal that generally symbolizes peace, so the edit war and participants did not harm this unlucky pigeon (and also the fact that it was the only non-human called William of Orange on Wikipedia as of this edit war).
Many post offices in the United States are known as "U.S. Post Office, Podunk Branch" – unless of course that should really be "United States" and not "U.S." Which one is better? More accurate? More respectful? (Respectful?) Resolving this involved an edit war that dragged in sources ranging from the National Park Service to the U.S. United States Congress. Whoa nelly Nellie.
Involving other languages
This city in North Italy has two official names, Bolzano and Bozen, which are used together on street signs and the like. Should the article be under Bolzano, Bozen, Bolzano-Bozen, Bolzano (Bozen), or Bozen-Bolzano? Surely one of these Italian-German German-Italian names is English usage; or should we try Botzen? Or Bolzano-Bozen-Bulsan-Bocen-Boceno-Bolzan-Bauzanum-Bocenas-Bulsaun-Bolzanu-Buzzanu? This has spread to several talk pages; highlights so far include the two separate move requests from Bozen-Bolzano to Bolzano-Bozen (or was it the other way around?).
Danzig? Gdańsk? Gdanzig? Dańsk? Dgadnazńisgk? Gdanzsikg? Edit wars have been occurring for most of Wikipedia's history with regards to the exact name of this Polish German Prussian Eastern Central Northern European Baltic city. The edit war is so notorious that it is mentioned in the April Fools 2006 "Wikipedia's first IRC chat" log. The edit war was detailed in a chapter of a book. Perhaps ironically, the city hosted Wikimania 2010.
Is it important to know that Korea has been preparing to officially register the name "Ulleung Basin"? The ocean feature is known both under the Japanese name Tsushima basin and under the Korean name Ulleung basin. There is also lots of disagreement which name is the more commonly used name in English for a place that pretty much nobody knows. (Also see the related lame edit war for the Land making up Tsushima subprefecture below and the related edit war concerning the Liancourt Rocks above.)
Does this university have a Latin name, Universitas Sidneiensis, and should it appear in the infobox? Is checking old book stamps in the university library's store rooms "original research" or even "research"? Is the evidence for the name from a primary source or a secondary source? The battle eventually fizzled when everyone stopped caring.
In Swiss Standard German, "ss" is used in place of the ligature "ß". So should the German name use "Fußball" or "Fussball"? Despite the fact that even the German version of the page wasn't consistent, many editors were convinced that they knew best, and the edit war still lives on. See also Voßstraße below.
Edit war over which name to use: Voßstrasse, Vossstrasse, or even Voss strasse or Voss-strasse. The lengthy, unproductive discussions involve legibility, respect of original spelling, a wide variety of silly name callings, an ANI thread, a call to arms, two separate AfD debates, a short move war and Der Spiegel ranking it among the five most absurd Wikipedia debates. See also 2006 FIFA World Cup.
Dates
Should a tropical cyclone that formed on December 30, 2005 and lasted until January 6, 2006 (Tropical Storm Zeta) be placed in the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season article? This has happened only one known time before, so there obviously isn't any already-existing consensus. The debate eventually explores the terms of hurricane season, how long it lasts, why hurricane followers are so tied to the concept of a hurricane season, and even whether a stapler moved from one desk to another is considered to be on the other desk. It was a truly stunning debate that spanned seven months, drew comparisons to civil unions and gay marriage, and could restart at any moment. (January 2006 edit history) Also, why isn't the section title named 2005 Atlantic hurricane season or Tropical Storm Zeta?
Does a storm forming before June 1 mean the whole season becomes considered as having begun, when the official warning centre (National Hurricane Center) says otherwise and that it "begins June 1st"?
Edit war over whether she was born in 1961 or 1963, settled at 1961 after some damning evidence was found.
Was it released in 1988, or '89? Was it released straight to video before hitting the theaters? If so, does that count?
Was this watch released in 1989, or 1991 as the name suggests?
Was this band officially formed in 1996 or 1998?
Should we or should we not list the birth of Jesus of Nazareth under "births"? If so, should his birth date be 1 BC or 1 AD? Or 1 BCE or 1 CE? Or even year zero? And should it be listed as Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ, just Jesus, etc.?
Was she born in 1991 or 1992? After years of being born in 1991, her publicist slips up and accidentally mentions she is 13 years old (in 2005), and all hell breaks loose.
Born in 1969 or 1970? Even after a detailed explanation in the age fabrication article for 1969 was provided, many were still sure it was 1970.
Early in Wikipedia history, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth (or pecked seed from the bottom of their cages), Jimbo recorded his own birthdate in the annals of the Wikimedia Foundation as well as the article talk page. Then, in 2007, he changed his mind and used oversight tools to "unsign" his original edits. An edit war ensued over original research and whether Jimbo should be allowed to revoke his announcement of his own birthday, resulting in not one, but four secondary sources being tacked on to the date.
Ongoing arguments and edit wars over whether to include the word "Friday" in the date of the event.
Was she born in 1921? Or 1923? (This also came about as a result of age fabrication) After days of editing, does anyone really care THAT much?[32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37]
Was their independent EP The Ingredients released in 1989 or 1990?
Did they release their independent EP Wildcard in 1988, 1989 or 1992? A user claims that it was recorded in 1989, but hadn't been released until 1992. Is there any evidence whether it was officially released before or after the other EP A Word from the Wise? The band has a compilation named Wildcard/A Word from the Wise, which contains both of the EPs, so does that mean that Wildcard was actually released before A Word from the Wise?
Did the band form in 1981 or 1982? Some sources (like Metal-Archives.com) list 1981 as the date, but the booklet of the box set Soundtrack to the Apocalypse says they formed in 1982.
Was this Bad Religion album officially recorded and released in 1987 or 1988? The details on their official website claims 1987 as the date, but the CD release actually printed 1988 as the release date and the liner notes on the album also reads April 1988 as the recording date.
Was he born in 1951 or 1952? The problem comes from the fact that a single biography says 1952 while hundreds of fans from a fan site say 1951. One expert vs. hundreds of amateurs. Who's right, David or Goliath?
Should a year appear as 2009 or 2009? Six months of edit warring goes through three requests for comment and culminates in a full arbitration case. The Arbitration Committee even finds it necessary to enact a temporary injunction. The 6-month arbitration case ends with 19 principles, 47 findings of fact, and 32 remedies.
Numbers and statistics
Was he 7'1" (216 cm)? 7'4" (224 cm)? 6'10" (208 cm)? Was his height even consistent during his entire career? Is this in reference to his actual height or the height which promoters billed him at? Did his actual height decrease in his final years due to the effects of acromegaly or due to back surgery? He was tall, just leave it at that.
Is the city's climate subtropical or continental? Are there a couple snowstorms a year, or several? Do some winters bring less than an inch of snow, or only a trace? How often does it get below 10 °F (−12 °C) or, for that matter, 5 °F (−15 °C), or even 0 °F (−18 °C)? Is January's average low 29 or 23 °F (−2 or −5 °C)? And just which weather station most accurately describes Baltimore's climate? These seemingly easily verifiable facts have been the subject of a slow-motion edit war for many months, with occasional language-parsing jockeying for position (for example, "However, winter warm fronts can bring brief periods of springlike weather, while Arctic fronts drop temperatures into the teens" vs. "However, winter warm fronts can bring periods of springlike weather, while Arctic fronts can briefly drop temperatures into the teens") continuing to this day.
Never mind what the airport's web site says, our nationalist pride is more important! Let's crank up those numbers! (Also seen on Toronto Pearson International Airport, Kochi, and many others.)
Let's inflate the earnings of our films, and deflate the earnings of everyone else's. But wait, they're doing the same thing. Can anyone tell the real story? (See the histories for individual films, such as Paglu, Shotru, Khokababu, etc.)
Listed at 5'3" (160 cm), admits to being taller. Is he really 5'5" (165 cm)? Or 5'6" (168 cm)? Is an uncited claim valid for the latter? Sockpuppeting follows over a matter of one inch.
Every so often, tempers flare up over the bot-created "demographic statistics" added to the encyclopedia back in the Dark Ages (2002, to be exact) and the "Wikipedia = The Story of Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody" stance adopted by many editors towards actually fixing these entries when the information is not exactly useful to readers. For instance, do we need to know the median income in this town has been $66,250? Is it original research to write "3" instead of "50% of 6"? In response to the sentence "For every 100 females there were 88.9 males", one editor's eloquent statement says it all: "there are SEVENTEEN PEOPLE IN THE VILLAGE, for fuck's sake"! And that's based on the 2000 Census; imagine how much more anachronistic and awkward these "statistics" would be were they to be based on Chicken's 2010 Census population of seven! Speaking of which, see also Prudhoe Bay, Alaska: while nowhere near as lame, edit warring dragged on in that article for years for pretty much the exact same reason. Ironically, settling the issue in that case resulted in effective abandonment of the article prior to the 2010 Census, in which the community's population mysteriously soared from just five in the year 2000, to 2,174. And if all this didn't drive home the point enough, here's what one editor had to say about Port Clarence, Alaska back in 2005: "What's the point of saying there are 2000 males for every 100 females, if there's only 21 people in all? Why not just tell the truth – there is one woman, 20 men?" Sadly, no known edit wars ensued from that statement. We have learned two things, however: Alaska has a number of underpopulated communities, and the manner in which many underpopulated communities are portrayed on Wikipedia is truly lame. But can they be called underpopulated if Alaska as a whole is sparsely populated?
It is widely acknowledged that Larry was a Category 5 storm on the Australian tropical cyclone scale (the one that matters with respect to Larry) ... but what about the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale? Was it a Category 3? Category 4? Category 5 perhaps? Soon after Larry made landfall in Queensland, Australia, edit warring broke out and the talk page became filled with personal attacks and egos.
Is it 120 km (75 mi) or 160 km (99 mi) in diameter? Even 900 km (560 mi)? How shall they word that? Is the hyperdrive class three or four? Who really cares? George Lucas apparently doesn't. Sure, HE's not the one stuck with the life-or-death decision of picking the right caliber torpedo to blow it up. But to a Rebel pilot, it's very important! This is war, after all.
Before it became a featured article in July 2014, for four and a half years tempers flared over this article. Not surprising, considering all the controversial topics in play: their disputed status between the UK and Argentina, their naming as Falkland or Malvinas, coastal, fishing, and mineral rights, a reasonably recent war, et cetera, et cetera. But who would have guessed that the most controversial issue would be whether to list distances with miles first and kilometres second, or vice versa?
August 2005 edit war asking: who finished third in the 1930 FIFA World Cup? The United States? Yugoslavia? For a year before the Football World Cup 2006, and persisting after, this subject gives involved users something to pass the time.
The infobox lists the four top scorers with five goals each: Forlán, Müller, Sneijder, Villa. Or was it Müller, Villa, Sneijder, Forlán? List in alphabetical order, or in order of FIFA's Golden Boot award where assists and playing time are tie-breakers? The fight continues more than a year after the players went home. Couldn't one of them just have scored another goal and saved us the trouble?
How big is that hard disk drive, exactly? Discussion on this point took over 160,000 bytes (or over 156 kibibytes), with the page being locked for days at a time [38] [39] while this was resolved. Not that you can now figure out how a hard drive works from this article, in spite of all the editorial effort expended.
Is the 45th POTUS Donald Trump, 6'3" (191 cm) or 6'2" (188 cm)? Should it be noted that his height is disputed? A long-running dispute that has been occurring since the 2016 election has involved several registered users and IPs. Unfortunately, it seems that this debate over one inch is not going to be settled soon, and only his hairdresser knows for sure. In December 2019 it received the crowning glory of edit war lameness: media attention, as Gizmodo pronounced it "The Dumbest Wikipedia Edit War of The Dumbest Decade".
Should 4G be included when referring to LTE even though it technically does not meet 4G requirements?
Here's a penny for your thoughts: should our given retail price for this video game console, US$399.99, be rounded to the nearest dollar and listed as $400, despite being technically incorrect and sources stating otherwise? A smaller dispute also erupted over which prices should be displayed, at all.
Is he 5'2" (157 cm)? 5'3" (160 cm)? 5'5" (165 cm)? Did he debut at 5'4" (163 cm) and later grow to be 5'5" (165 cm)? Is he actually 5'6" (168 cm)? Should the official WWE website be taken as accurate despite its common practice of increasing heights and weights for entertainment purposes? What about heights as they appear in video games? This edit war, which was strongly contested due to the many conflicting sources, led to the bizarre compromise of listing his height at 5'4½" (163.8 cm) with the text "We have come to a compromise between 5'2" [157 cm] and 5'5" [165 cm]." thus throwing out all sources and making a claim based on middle ground rather than accuracy ... which, as of 9 February 2008, has been supplanted by 5'6" (168 cm) again.
Are they 8–12 years old? 9–12? 10–12? 8–13? Even 17 years old? Webster says something different from Oxford. American Dictionary says otherwise. And what is the deal with people typing in all caps?
Is the Bee Gees recording 120 beats per minute, 103, 104 or something else? Should we also mention the Queen song "Another One Bites the Dust" for the same reason? Don't rely on Wikipedia to do CPR properly.
Street Fighter character articles
Drawn-out revert wars over the correct heights and weights of fictional characters such as Ken Masters and Balrog are ultimately solved by leaving the statistics off entirely. Should the full names of characters be used, or the abbreviations? Let's not get into the Vega/M. Bison/Balrog naming mess.
Is Kurt Angle the first champion, or is Christian Cage? When the NWA World Heavyweight Championship was withdrawn from TNA by the NWA, did TNA recognize the physical title as the TNA World Title, or did Angle win nothing when he took the belt from Cage? Is Angle in his first, or second title reign? And a discussion on various wrestling writers and webmasters and whose opinion is better than the other's there, too.
7500. Four simple numbers that got an add/remove/add/remove/consensus-add/remove-anyway/ADD edit war ongoing, in slow-motion and, perhaps, still ongoing on this page. What caused all the "squawk"ing? The fact that 7500 is the emergency code you put in a transponder when your aircraft has been hijacked. Although the code is public information provided by the Federal Aviation Administration and available in any student pilot's manual to be grabbed off the shelf, IP editors keep removing it from the article. Because, apparently, would-be hijackers use Wikipedia as their only source of information on aircraft, and would recognise the code when the pilot entered it, whereas it could be entered without recognition otherwise, or so the IPs claim. One even left an edit summary saying "Deleted reference to hijack code for secutity [sic] reasons. (Yes – I know it's available other places ...)". Consensus keeps the code on the page, joined (after yet another well-meaning IP removed the code) by an admin admonishment in an editnotice.
Was the attendance of the event in question 78,000 or 93,178 – or is it really 75,500? Is Dave Meltzer an unreliable source because he is personally anti-McMahon? Is McMahon an unreliable source because he is pro-McMahon? Should Meltzer be considered a reporter because he freelances for the LA Times and Sports Illustrated, or as a self-published hack who runs a tabloid? Either way, this has led to a lot of tears and an eight-month-long edit war.
And because all wrestling feuds deserve a disappointing rematch, a nearly identical dispute erupted regarding the true attendance for this WWE event, which may or may not have set the all-time record for a particular sports arena that had existed for four years. The debate included insults, blocks, and an editor arguing that Dave Meltzer is not a reliable source for Dave Meltzer. Also included was the question of whether a statistic ending in 7 can be trusted. It ended with the WWE's claim being left alone for now, until the next exciting installment of Editmaaaaania!
Just how tall is this famous Chinese basketball player?
Spelling and punctuation
Spelling
Researchers and producers of element 13 have variously called the stuff "alumine", "alumium", "aluminium", and "aluminum". Speakers and writers of American and Canadian English spell it "aluminum" (as does the ACS). The non-American English-speaking world spells it "aluminium" (as does the IUPAC), which is where the article typically stands – with two letters i. There are occasional attempts to put the word back to aluminum. See here and here for the gory historical details. As a gauge of the scale of this territorial feud, the talk page specifically devoted to this debate is over 40,000 words of um/ium debate.
Was her radio hit from her debut album, Let Go, spelled "I'm With You", or was it spelled "I'm with You"? Intense edit warring ensued, and continues, over this contentious matter. Many personal attacks and a request for page protection were also included.
Editors constantly change spellings of the country name to Brasil, because this is the local name of the country. But since both pronunciations have the same sounding as z, but the correct spelling in Portuguese is s, Brazilians/Brasilians consider the z spelling an error. There have been heated debates about the spelling, saying it is American imperialism. Example of wild discussions of this topic here.
Is it "jerkwad" or "jerk wad"? Made it to AN3 [40].
Many editors have made corrections to this word, even though both versions are technically correct. Much like honor/honour, program vs programme. Toe-may-toe, toe-MAH-toe.
Should "Cougar" be capitalized? What better time to revert-war over this all-important issue than on June 11, 2007, when it is Today's Featured Article? The war over capitalization erupts again a few months later, this time simultaneously in Cougar and Cheetah, and leads to full protection of both articles.
She writes it as danah boyd. Some say that the official style guidelines say it should be written Danah Boyd; others say they allow for exceptions for the subject's personal preferences. Are the extant references using all-lowercase sufficient and sufficiently independent to allow the style guide exemption? Or are scientific publications by her and her colleagues biased and not admissable references? Cue extensive edit (and rename) warring ...
This Soviet Ukrainian film director is an example of wars over whether the first name of Ukrainians should be Olexandr instead of Russian Aleksandr or international Alexander.
In addition to the debate over whether or not it is "actually" a number, the page has seen a pagemove controversy between whether the article's title begins with the letter "E" or the symbol "℮" (which resembles the letter "e") due to technical limitations on article names versus a desire to avoid having to tag the article as {{wrongtitle}} or {{lowercase}}.
Native species in North America where the dominant spelling is gray. Invasive species in the United Kingdom where they call it grey. Nationalistic tempers simmer for two years in slow and remorseless edit war after a content request for comment supposedly settles the issue in favour of the Americans. Dissatisfied Brits continually tiptoe back, changing a to e, without ever actually proposing a title change for the article. The British are coming! The British are coming! To arms!
One "n" or two letters "n"? Filling up many talk pages and much time. In the discussion, an editor gripes that "it REALLY DOESN'T MATTER what the actual name of the article is".
It was Constantinople, but is it now Istanbul or İstanbul? A few editors make nuclear war over a small speck above the I, bringing new meaning to the word iota. (Let's just hope this doesn't get the Christians and Muslims fighting all over again.)
Through out the article's life there have been a total of three official move discussions to move the article from its current spelling Metre to Meter. These arguments have also often been made by misinterpreting guidelines or making up ones that don't exist . For example an unofficial move discussion in 2017 was made because using British English was apparently against WP:NPOV and made Wikipedia look unprofessional.
A cut-and-paste move to the American spelling "color". A move back, and statements that Canada, Australia, and the rest of the colour-spelling world didn't matter because the United States spelled it color. Other attempts follow, with one attempt to move it to simply Orange to end the war. Similar wars over the correct spelling of the word "colo[u]r" have happened far more times than anybody cares to count.
According to the article on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, "Pittsburgh is one of the few American cities to be spelled with an h at the end of a burg suffix. From 1890 to 1911 the city's h was removed but, after a public campaign, it was officially restored by the United States Board on Geographic Names." In the course of describing an event, namely Merkle's Boner, dated 1908, an author used the "Pittsburg" spelling when mentioning the Pirates' baseball team. A subsequent editor decided that this was a mistake, and changed it back to "Pittsburgh". Thus is created a cycle in which someone notes the edit history and reinserts the contemporary spelling, and the next editor assumes simple stupidity of the last and adds back the h. This new version of Merkle's Boner makes Pittsburg(h) the ping-pong capital of Wikipedia, and we will likely never get the "h" out of here.
Should a short shwa sound that almost nobody actually pronounces anymore in the plural form of this word be represented in the transliteration by an "e"? What about the one in the abstract "psak/pesak din" that people will naturally say whether the "e" is there or not? More than a dozen reverts both ways, two page protections later, and over ten pages of debate on the talk page, this question of immense import remains without consensus. At one point, The Great Apostrophe Compromise ("pos'kim" and "p'sak din") was proposed, but following its rejection as "[the] most rificulous idea", the "e"less status quo remains.
Should potato chips be flavored or flavoured? What is the provenance of the potato chip, America or Ireland? Four-user revert war on these important issues results in the page getting protected and listed on RfC. As a compromise, the chips became seasoned. And are they not talking about crisps, anyway?
Much time has been spent on if the name of the wolf deity in the series should be spelled Holo or Horo. Beginning in January 2008, the war still continues eight years later into 2016. Sources have been provided for the spelling as Holo, but this continuously gets changed back to Horo due to popularity of the spelling in the anime fandom community. A lengthy discussion has occurred on the issue which would even make your Engrish teacher faint.
Should it be spelled the American or the British way? While the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has ruled in favor of the American spelling, both variants make appearances in IUPAC's literature. It's still occasionally possible to find alternating spellings of Sulphur and Sulfur throughout the text of the Wikipedia article.
A Japanese author with a habit of inventing "foreign" names whose spellings harken more to H. P. Lovecraft than anything in English creates a group of characters called the vaizādo. The term is supposed to be some word in English, but nobody's quite sure what. Should Wikipedia refer to them by the archaic and wrongly pronounced but fan-favorite vizard, or by the grammatically awful but officially supported visoreds? Editors take the official line; thousands of IPs disagree! The article is eventually semi-protected, but it doesn't stop edit wars over the spelling on the dozen-odd other pages in which it appears.
Does it need the 'h'? Is "Yoghurt" the "traditional" spelling, and is it American cultural imperialism to not have it as such?[41] Apparently, the "correct" spelling is worth fighting for – again and again and again. And again. Et cetera. For over eight years, before an RFC restored Truth and Justice to dairy products; for more news, see Strained yoghurt (or is that strained yogurt)?
The first time around, this controversy spawned a thread on ANI and led to a wheel war over a block placed due to a move of the page. Later occurrences involved arguments over the meaning of "stable" in the context of WP:ENGVAR, competing interpretations of WP:MOS, suggestions that editors should really not care so much about spelling variations, and LOTS of Google page counts. This active cultural war re-fermented in November 2003, June 2004, November 2004, May 2005, February 2006, October 2006, April–May 2007, June 2009, July 2009 (which spilled over into this ANI report), and again in November–December 2011, which then produced yet another ANI report and an edit war (with added full page protection and unprotection) over whether or not to close another requested move so soon after the last one. [42] [43] Fortunately, Wikipedians realised that after wars get boring on one page, you can continue it on another page, leading to discussions on whether the requested moves process should be changed to allow a rename to Yoghurt. Or maybe to change WP:CREEP to allow a change to the requested move policy to allow the article to be moved. There was even a heated debate and edit war about the article's entry on this page. Apparently, some people don't know when to get the "H" out of there... or not.
Punctuation
A slow-moving edit war that centred over the use of ... an exclamation mark. As User:C12H22O11 exclaimed on the talkpage talk page, "Come on guys, you can't actually be having an edit war over one tiny exclamation point!" (Which of course would have been better punctuated as "Come on, guys: you can't actually be having an edit war over one tiny exclamation point!") There is also the matter that the "of course" in "Which of course" should be set off by commas, making it: "(Which, of course, would have been better punctuated as ...)" And we haven't even touched the unnecessity of the colon after "making it", as well (aswell?) as the missing period after the sentence. While we are at it, should it be punctuated as ...).", or punctuated as ...)".? And is "unnecessity" even a word? The possibilities are endless infinite endless (infinite) infinite (endless) endless-infinite Endless Infinite NEVER MIND.
Frequent date of birth to death punctuation
Frequent edit wars over whether there are spaces around the en dash when writing a person's date of birth and death.
Example: (January 24, 1943 – August 9, 1969) or (January 24, 1943–August 9, 1969)? Related edit war over whether the month or the date comes first, e.g. 1 July or July 1, despite the fact that display preferences can be set to provide for either regardless of the wikicode placing. (The title of this section is not a hyperlink because this is a very general lame edit war which actually happened on several different articles!)
An edit war over spacing, which led to the article being protected.
If...., formerly If... (film)
Should the ellipsis have three dots, or four? An edit war was not totally resolved when the article was renamed from the three-dot version to the four-dot version.
Not quite punctuation, but the question nevertheless remains: should the discussion of Ms. Storm's arrest for DUI and subsequent no contest pleading be put in one paragraph or spread over two?
HUUUGE edit war over line breaks vs commas in a list of genres. Leads to a WP:ANI case despite total irrelevance to anyone.
An edit war involving three sysops over whether there should be commas in "10,000" and "1,000" led to a blocking and liberal use of the rollback button. During Christmas, yet.
Three-way edit war (or "three way" edit war depending on interpretation) over whether the phrase "Fatal Four Way/Fatal Four-Way" contains a hyphen. This riveting debate, so important that violations of WP:3RR occurred, resulted in the page being fully protected for a month with the protector declaring it the lamest edit war they had ever seen.
Or should that be Russell T. Davies? Over the years, it's been moved three times to lose the dot, and then moved back three times due to "article naming conventions". An administrator moved it to regain that all-important(?) dot, and then immediately move protected it. Doctor Who fans are not to be trifled with, so two separate complaints against admin abuse were duly lodged. As it currently stands, the article has been moved back to the form without a dot.
How many students does the school have, 1,019 or 1019, and does "(With all one's might)" belong in the school's motto?
Is the usage of a dash or hyphen between "Mexican" and "American" more important than the disagreements that led to this historic struggle? Some people would think so. This led to a long thread on WP:AN and a topic ban proposal for no fewer than six editors, as well as the essay Wikipedia:Short horizontal line. The action at WP:AN may be seen as the lamest part of the whole affair so far, since it involved an attempt to swat every editor within the perimeter (peacemakers and seekers-after-order included) with a topic ban! That thread is now closed, as an elaborate joke that got out of hand. But fans need not fret: Jarndyce and Jarndyce II continues at WT:MOS, with clowns for the amusement of all. Merchandise is available in the foyer. One recent suggestion was to change the name to "Mexican War" and be done with it. A move request for Battles of the Mexican–/—American War ran for six weeks, opening with the fatal words "I hope this will be an uncontroversial request".
When the Screen Actor Guild merged with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists in 2012, little did they realize the shit-storm (or is it shit–storm?) they would spark on Wikipedia one decade later. When the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike was featured on our WP:Main page unsuspecting readers got the rare invite into the inner workings of our wonderful community collaboration...all 24 kilobytes!. Self-respecting readers rushed over to our ironically unhelpful articles -En-dash –Em-dash and ・Katakana middle dot to learn the significance, when really a WP:Wikilawyer degree is required to parse MOS:DASH, MOS:ENBETWEEN and Wikipedia:Silly Things.
Wording
The band is/are a collective noun
One difference between British and American English that seems to especially enrage editors is the treatment of collective nouns in articles about musical bands:
- Angels & Airwaves: Forty-six reverts in one hour by two editors. The point of contention? Whether "Angels & Airwaves" is a band or "Angels & Airwaves" are a band. (British English requires "are", as the band comprises multiple people, while American English requires "is", as the band is a singular entity.) ALL-CAPS edit summaries laced with profanity and death threats liberally employed by one side. Stopped only after admin intervention, but resumed again two minutes after the 3RR block expired. Both get blocked for seven days, and one of them gets his block extended to eight days after stating he doesn't care as long as the other side gets a block of the same length. The other side keeps his seven-day block. (Feb. 2006) A similar debate occurred at The Smashing Pumpkins.
- Red Hot Chili Peppers: A multi-day revert war over the proper conjugation of the verb "to be" in the first line of the lead. See [44], [45], [46], [47], [48]. By the time we get to the next day, it has spread to the use of the definite article "the" in the same sentence: [49], [50]. Everyone talks with the authority of a grammarian. No one has any clue, quite obviously though. For non-English speakers this is particularly lame since the verb to be can be conjugated eight ways (am, is, are, was, were, be, been, being) – not fifty-plus as in most other Indo-European languages.
- U2: Is it "U2 are" or "U2 is"? Should the article be written in British English or changed to American English? A full page protection and several combined discussions later (including one on the Royal Family), the dispute over a single word still rages on.
Questions have arisen concerning the name of Lita's moves. Is it DDT, or Lita DDT? Hurricanrana or Litacanrana? Moonsault or Litasault? Powerbomb or Lita Bomb? Is the powerbomb even a finishing move, considering it's not used that often? Do you go by the games, by the announcers, or by WWE.com? After several arguments and many people exclaiming they will continue to change it back, a Fan Name section is created, listing the names fans have given her moves.
Not so much an edit war as an editing armed standoff. Ask yourself: should this song be declared "written one pluvious night" or "one rainy night"? Ironically, "one" night was declared superior to the previous version, "in a" night. Pluvious actually won in a voting showdown, but when it was later changed back to rainy, nobody really cared.
Should psychology or philosophy be the first link in the lede? An editor's fondness for the Philosophy Effect may influence their answer.
Jazz pianist had a career spanning decades and was father to two adopted sons. Wikipedians battle for years because at the end of the musician's life the coroner reported that he she Tipton he[unbalanced opinion?] was biologically female. A decade later, the edit war flared up again, this time around whether inclusion of his birth name would be considered deadnaming.
Editors can't decide whether this venue is for-profit, or non-profit. Edit warring ensues.
An edit war surrounded the sentence "Theological disputes about the correct interpretation of Christian teaching led to internal conflicts and Church authorities condemned some theologians as heretics, defining orthodoxy in contrast to heresy, the most notable being Christian Gnosticism." The questionable wording was the switching of the words "orthodoxy" and "heresy". The user preferring heresy before orthodoxy claimed grammatical accuracy and no meaning change. The user preferring orthodoxy before heresy claimed it completely changed the meaning of the sentence. This discussion can be found here.
Cleo was Kenny Everett's sidekick throughout the 1980s. But was she best known for this? Cue increasingly aggressive back and forth ([51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60]), semi-protection amid accusations of sockpuppetry, and the obligatory ANI thread. Perhaps she's now best known for edit warring. (See also David Gilmour for a similar theme – [61])
Does the Conch Republic, the name assumed by Key West when it "seceded" from the U.S. in 1982, qualify as a "micronation"? For months, an edit war has progressed over this burning question. Supporters say the name is still used in tourist promotions, while detractors say the "Republic" was a joke protest, and the "Prime Minister" surrendered one minute later. Others say micronationalism is an incredibly silly concept anyway.
Was Cranky Kong the original Donkey Kong? Could it be the character in Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 games is actually his son? Or perhaps his grandson? Should we trust offhand comments made by a video-game character? Does being licensed by Nintendo make Rareware publications "official"? How official is the "Nintendo Seal of Quality"? To some people, these questions are a matter of life and death. (For the record, the Nintendo Seal of Quality was, as the name implies, a means of quality control related to the company's internal policy regarding third-party software. But it's still a lame edit war.)
There was a kerfuffle over several sentences on this page. Is a Danish pastry a "variant of puff pastry" or merely similar to it? Should you describe a picture of one as "A typical Danish of Spandauer type with apple filling and glazing" or "A typical Spandauer-type Danish with apple filling and glazing"? Whatever the case, tempers got so frayed the article and the talk page needed to be protected, until everyone calmed down and settled for a nice cup of tea and a ... oh, hang on ...
Or daylight savings time. Or Daylight Saving(s) Time. Or Daylight-Saving(s) Time. You've never heard "saving" in the singular in your entire life? Send in the dualling (or is it duelling?) dictionaries. Either way, it's still dark at 7:00 AM and I'm tired.
Is this comic produced by Curtis Magazines or by Marvel Comics? Should Marvel, which may or may not appear in the comic book (this can't be confirmed, for some reason) appear in the infobox, even though it already appears in the text of the article? People might not see it in the article, and will not read the article. Extensive coverage of this on the talk page.
Derren was shown convincing former unbelievers to believe in god, or should that be "God", or "the Christian god"? The revert war is over, since the article has been protected, but still the battle lingers on in the talk page.
Clearly this article should be named exclusive or. Google hits and a majority of editors confirm the popular name. But wait! This is mob rule! Mathematicians know the real name is exclusive disjunction! Discussion subheadings during this move war include "Are you kidding me?" and "Everyone is laughing at you". It clearly cannot be both.
Is the alliterative phrase "the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds" worthy of inclusion? Was placed on WP:RFC at one point.
Week-long debate regarding the "Controversy/Criticism" section about whether or not Final Fantasy VIII has a "massive" fanbase or a "fanbase as large as the fanbase of Final Fantasy VII". Other wording issues were also discussed. Unfortunately, all options required that sources be cited. The article has since become a featured article.
Fistulae are connections between two organs that don't normally connect, or is that "betwixt two organs"? In 2005 a patient and anonymous editor with a fondness for archaic spellings changed the wording for the many occurrences of "between" in the article every few months, prompting immediate reversions and comprising a large minority of edits to the article that year.
Furious edit war that leads to a thread on WP:ANI and an editor proclaiming that they were leaving the project. The point of contention? Whether this fictional character from a sitcom in the mid-70s was to be described as an "irascible curmudgeon" or as merely "irritable".
Was protagonist Fry cryonically frozen or cryogenically frozen (or even crygenically frozen)? Why don't we just say he was frozen? Seeing as it has been changed nearly daily since the creation of the article (occasionally accompanied by a bit of text on the talk page uncovering some new evidence gleaned from an audio commentary), we may never know ...
An editor added the sentence "The conceit of 'questioning answers' is original to Jeopardy! and, along with its theme music, remains the most enduring and distinctive element of the show." After several people changed "conceit" to "concept", all being reverted by the original editor, a two-year long war broke out over whether the word, used in the context of literary conceit, was appropriate for an article about a game show, with the word in constant flux until someone just changed it to "notion". And then the sentence was deleted.
Is he an "English retired musician" or a "retired English musician"? Another one bites the dust ...
An edit war erupted over John Kerry's first Purple Heart award in Vietnam. Was it just a wound or a "minor wound"? Should wound itself be wikilinked? Was the injury "bandaged", or simply wrapped with "gauze"? Is Kerry's family background pertinent? The wound issue ended with the Rex071404 arbitration case and that editor being banned from editing the article for a year. One year later, the same edit war re-ignited, leading to another arbitration case and the permanent ban of said editor, who then departed Wikipedia. (See also Swift Vets and POWs for Truth)
Is she an "entertainer" or a "journalist?" Is it necessary to mention that she "annoyingly" drops the "g" at the end of words (e.g. "morneen")?
This edit war is fast approaching its first year of existence, mostly a dispute between two users, but has drawn in other editors for brief periods. It started with disputed information on the guns, then moved on to repeated accusations of using weasel words, NPOV, original research, sockpuppetry, disruption of Wikipedia, and vandalism.
An edit war over what to call Mozart's buttocks! Should the German "Arsch" in the title of a joke composition be translated as "arse" or "ass"? See first edit war, second edit war, third edit war, 3RR report, talk page hilarity. The edit summaries that accompany these are equally lame. Between these edits are much of the same. This looks to continue well into the future. The moral of the story: Whether you are going for the ass or the arse, either way, you are going to want full protection.
Dispute over the ordering of the two terms used to describe the band. Is the group a nu metal/rapcore or rapcore/nu metal band? The edit war also threatened to spread into other related articles as well, including Fred Durst and Rapcore.
Should the term "period" or "full stop" be used to describe a full stop (or period)? An edit war and heated discussion on the talk page broke out over this very issue.
In an article written in Commonwealth English and about a topic in the field of aviation, should "alternate airport" or "alternative airport" be used in the following sentence: "The extra fuel was enough to divert to alternate airports – Jinan Yaoqiang International Airport and Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport – which would require 4,800 kg (10,600 lb) or 10,700 kg (23,600 lb), respectively, to reach from Beijing."
? In the aviation field, the term "alternate aerodrome" (or "alternate airport" or "alternate airfield") is used globally to refer to the second airport/aerodrome/airfield selected in a flight plan if a landing at the planned destination cannot be made, see material published by aviation authorities in Europe (Eurocontrol), Israel (CAA). This use of the term "alternate" is consistent with usage in North America, where it means "taking the place of; alternative". In other English-speaking regions, and as second meaning in the US/Canada, the word "alternate" means "every other". This has prompted many editors to try, even after a wikilink and hidden note was added, to change the term to "alternative airport", which is not consistent with usage in the aviation field.
Was Mama (Vicki Lawrence) "pro-active", "foxy", "clever", "cunning", or none of the above? Apparently this question is important enough to occupy more than thirty edits in one day.
Active vs. passive wording: "James Christy discovered the innermost moon, Charon on June 22, 1978, nearly half a century after Pluto's discovery." vs. "The innermost moon, Charon, was discovered by James Christy on June 22, 1978, nearly half a century after Pluto."
Has the GameCube been discontinued (thus it "has failed" to regain the market share lost by its predecessor, the Nintendo 64)? Or, since both the Xbox and PS2 have been discontinued, is the GameCube "failing" to regain the market share? An edit war over these two words ensues after an editor attempts to get the wording changed from the former to the latter. After a very passionate discussion and an inconclusive sockpuppet report, full protection ends the war.
Was the manga published by Viz in a "flipped" format, reading left-to-right, or in a "flipped", left-to-right format?
Is Adam Carr Ph.D, a Historian, or does Adam Carr hold a PhD in history? In addition to five reverts, also spawns thread on the Administrators Noticeboard.
An admin and a user edit war over a number of album articles over the use of "second" or "sophomore". Editing gets heated and eventually results in a block and a request for arbitration.
Is Spore a god game, a life simulation, a strategy game, or a sandbox game? Can we fit everything it is into the template, or do we need a separate section in the article, just to explain its many genres? Don't be fooled by the talk page discussion, there's an edit war here too. As of posting, the dispute is unresolved and the page has been protected. It still can't seem to catch a break—it's been vandalized by one "Idiotic troll" or another for a decade.[62]
Is Squall a hero or a protagonist? Many reverts between "hero", "protagonist", and variant forms of each ensue as an accompanying Talkpage debate weighs the definitions, connotations, and comparisons of the respective terms relative to Squall's role in Final Fantasy VIII; other Final Fantasy articles suffer collateral damage.
The Price Is Right's "lamest" pricing game. Should it be said that it's "the only game that can be won by deciding to do absolutely nothing" or "the only game that can sometimes be won by deciding to do absolutely nothing"? After a few dozen reverts, a third opinion agreed that "sometimes" was redundant, leading the other user to remove the entire sentence claiming it wasn't really the only game that can be won that way after all.
Does Tifa, a character in a PlayStation game (Final Fantasy VII), have "ample breasts"? Lara Croft strongly opposes such a ludicrous claim. Lengthy debate over wording, whether breast size is POV, and the entire concept of mentioning something that silly. And what exactly is her hair colour supposed to be, anyway – black or brown?
A revert war on whether the tiger can properly be described as the "most powerful living cat" (complete with accusations that people were "tiger fanboys") gradually led to arguments about how tigers would match up vs. bears and crocodiles (oh my!), complete with another revert war about the inclusion of a YouTube video showing a tiger fighting a crocodile, eventually leading to the article being semi-protected. The debates about bears and crocodiles continue on the talk page.
Is Urban75 a "left leaning" or "liberal leaning" site? A two-month argument on this results in hundreds of reverts, userpage vandalism, sockpuppetry & two separate WP:VfDs.
Fandom and fiction
Should Chloe O'Brian be close to the top of the cast list, or closer to the bottom? Is Tony Almeida more important, therefore should be closer to the top? Users and anons constantly reverted each others' edits over the position of the character. The war was eventually (bar one or two attempts) finished when the cast was organised by surname.
Is the language being spoken Latin? Or is it Ancient? Is it Ori? Is it Ancient-based-on-Latin? Is it Latin-based-on-Ancient? Is it Ancient or Ori rendered as Latin? All of the above? No? Oh, I'm so confused ... Ergo, ipso facto columbo oreo.
Is it a turn-based strategy game, or a turn-based tactics game? Apparently in an interview with the developers, the "s" word was used. But the back of the box uses the "t" word. One user cared so much about it that he resorted to sockpuppetry and was consequently banned multiple times. Although the user pops up every once in a while under another sockpuppet, the debate fizzled out.
A term created to define American anime, Amerime was deleted as a neologism, then reborn, then deleted, then reborn, then deleted, and then stuck when the software jammed. It was then deleted and reborn again, at which point it managed a sufficient rally on the AfD to survive, roughly 18 months after the original was first posted; however, it has been moved to another location.
Is this character canon? Is Dragon Ball GT canon? Who decides what is and is not canon, anyway, and is it fact or opinion to say so? An eight-hour duel between two editors culminates in nearly one hundred assorted reverts, arguments posted in edit summaries, and both parties blocked for ignoring 3RR, which brings to mind the 30 -episode battles the series is famous for (with 5 episodes being used to launch a single attack.)
Actually waged at Template:The Beatles and Portal:The Beatles/Intro, was an edit war over the order in which the four members of the group should be listed. Should they be listed in the "traditional" order or in alphabetical order? And if you think that's ridiculous, edit wars over whether to identify the band as "The Beatles" with a capital T or "the Beatles" with a lower case t have gone on longer than the group's existence. One such installment of this saga was brought before the arbitration committee (by an administrator, no less) where it was quickly declared "silly". This monumental lameness was even the subject of an article in The Wall Street Journal!
A certain character who appeared before in the show has his name revealed as Pierre Chang, but while shooting a video uses an alias from previous episodes, Marvin Candle. Is this fact relevant enough to warrant inclusion? An IP seemed to think so, and the insistence on adding by one party/deleting by everyone else was described as "nonsense" on the talk page. To render it even worse, the IP went to complain in both the Lamest Edit wars page – this one and the original entry – [63] [64] [65] and the article's GA review (as his persistence was the only thing that prevented it from passing), before the page was protected.
In a frustrating portrayal of blind and ignorant persistence, the user (under a series of different IP addresses) continued his frankly tiring edit warring as soon as the page became unprotected. His first edit to the article was on the 3rd March 2009 and he has continued to war into May 2011.
The DHARMA Initiative could start a whole experiment on this.
After eight deletions and five restores, image drama, a deletion review, and an AfD, the important questions regarding this hyperactive 16-year-old on YouTube were faced. First, is the discussion about a meme with a girl, or a girl with a meme? Is she underaged, or pretending to be? Is she more important because we're talking about her? And most importantly, is this Guardian story a blog or a news article?
Should the identity of the Daedalus class battlecruiser destroyed at the end of the Stargate SG-1 season 9 episode "Camelot" be mentioned? The show left this as a cliffhanger for the next episode but widely available casting information and episode summaries for upcoming episodes make the answer obvious. Is such information canon? Is this a "worse" spoiler than other spoilers already present elsewhere in Wikipedia? The edit war continued in fits and starts over the entire between-season hiatus, when the season opener aired and confirmed the information.
Did Daffy Duck father any children? Should the events of certain animated films be taken to have occurred in "real life" while others should not? Daffy to Wikipedia: "No comment". A Barbara Walters special is reportedly in the works.
Not the film or the novel it was based on, but the band. Are they metalcore, Christian metalcore, or just metal? It sounds like just another one of many brushfire edit wars over a musical artist's exact genre, until you learn that this has been taking place on the disambiguation page.
Page about a member of the rock band My Chemical Romance. This article has been subject to several long term, slow pace edit wars. One is about his height, of all things, with the number being changed several times a week. Another slow edit war is over whom he is dating/engaged/married to, and whether this GF/fiancée/wife is pregnant. (Considering how long this slow edit war has been going on, if she's pregnant it's one of the longest human pregnancies ever.) And a third slow edit war is over how to pronounce his name.
Ernest Vincent Wright wrote this novel as a lipogram, omitting the letter e. Should the article be written in the same way as an homage? Despite the facts that this would make the tone of the article bizarre, and that neither the full actual title nor the author's name could be stated due to containing four and three e's respectively (and, to avoid the disambiguation "novel", was at the very obscure early working title Gadsby: Champion of Youth), war raged on the talk page, and in the article for an exceedingly lame amount of time, with some warriors on the talk page even posting in lipograms (eliminating e does not a stronger argument make). At one point a few editors made an effort to eliminate the letter from the headers and the markup, leading to the removal of the Table of Contents, edit buttons, and reference tags. The caption to an image of capital and lowercase e's near the bottom of the talk page sums things up nicely: "This page needs more of these. Please give generously."
The cat who stars in the eponymous comic strip had been undeniably portrayed as male for 39 years. But then a satirist/troll changes the gender to "None" due to a quote by creator Jim Davis, and a war regarding whether the cat should be listed as "gender-fluid" ensued, being even covered by The Washington Post. (There was also a brief period where Garfield was listed as Shiite Muslim for unknown reasons during this war.) Garfield had only this as a response.
A lame edit war between two vandals, one pro-Britney Spears and the other anti-Britney Spears, on an article which has nothing to do with Britney Spears.
Is the cartoon character an anthropomorphic dog or just an anthropomorphic animal?[66] Or a dogface?[67] Editors back-and-forth accusing each other of OR[68] led to an RfC with suggestions including "zoomorphized human" and "anthropomorphic character with both human and dog features".
Grace Kelly and Cher
Edit wars over whether each is a gay icon. Sources were given for Cher's iconic status, but not for Kelly's.
Are the official facts canon, or are they part of a universe? Should we even care?
What's up with the lack of Asian diversity on the show and on medical dramas in general? Are you a racist for not wanting mention of this? Isn't Kumar Asian? What about Sandra Oh from Grey's Anatomy? Back and forth this went, with only one thing being certain: It's not lupus. Or is it?
A two-week revert duel (with accompanying Talkpage debates) over whether this should redirect to the band, the torture device, or the disambig page. Is a heavy metal band more popular than a medieval torture device, or vice versa? What will be the case one hundred years from now? And what would Google do?
New episodes of the children's show begin with a "Jay Jay's Mysteries" segment whose featured characters include the dump truck Trekkie ... or is the name Truckee? Two anonymous editors change that single name back and forth as humanity weeps.
Is the video game Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier canon to the main story, or is it a spin-off? The stating of standpoints, references, page protection and even a consensus haven't stabilised the article, and the four years of flip-flop edits continue.
Did he found Wikipedia or co-found it? Does using current WMF press releases count as promoting a 'revisionist history'? Does it really matter all that much? And why am I asking you? 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.
A huge discussion broke out regarding the notability of a particular truck appearing in some iterations of the Pokémon series and whether the accompanying images fell under fair use. The article's talk page ballooned over ten times from 12,000 bytes to 140,000 bytes and spilled over onto several users' talk pages.
Revert war on over the contents of the redirect; i.e. whether it should keep the original text or only have the redirect link. The text advocate repeatedly attempts to cite the character's popularity, and nobody bothers to assist him. The slow speed of the edit war never surpasses the limits imposed by the 3RR, and the war ended only when the page was permanently protected.
Revert war over whether the Japanese word for "Link" should be transliterated as Rinku or Rinkū.
You read that right; edit warring over nonexistent waterfowl. Page protections, admin interventions, accusations of vandalism and sockpuppetry fly like ... well, like things that fly, anyway.
When a character casually notes that Naruto Uzumaki is just like his father immediately after noting that Naruto was also just like another prominent character, does that imply that Naruto's previously unmentioned father is that prominent character? Featured revert summaries like "I hope they DAMN WELL ban you!". The battle of interpreters was so intense that two articles needed full protection in order to move the battlefield to various talk pages. Luckily, the truth (they are one and the same) eventually came out of the series itself ... many weeks later.
A very slow, and long-running edit war regarding the demographic of the series. Is it seinen or is it shōnen? In order to rectify further edits, a neutral "male" demographic was included, but even this still continued to be changed, and reverted on a regular basis. The demographic field has even been removed entirely, only to be included again. At one time, both demographics were included. Finally, since the manga is serialized in Shōnen Ace, the demographic was changed to shōnen for good.
Every album has a title track. No they don't. Yes they do. Smells Like Children? Not an album. Live drummer? Studio Drummer? Ginger doesn't record drums. Yes he does. He hasn't been on an album in over a decade.
Two self-proclaimed leaders of micronations in a lengthy revert war in this and other articles about the comparative value and notability of their made-up countries.
A long running revert war that began in June 2004 and continued into August 2005 over whether categorizing a mad scientist – whose goals are to destroy The Powerpuff Girls, crush their hometown, and conquer the world – under Category:Villains violates NPOV. Fortunately, the category has since been moved and deleted.
Sure, it's a song with an odd rhythm, but what exactly is the time signature? The band, which had no formal musical training, have said 7/8, most people say 7/4, experts will go as far as to say 21/8.
A single Saturday Night Live sketch generates a remarkable volume of strong feelings among Wikipedians, with a particularly lengthy debate over whether an animated GIF of the sketch in question is too irritating for inclusion.
A debate has lasted, more or less, since 2006 over whether the "So i herd u liek mudkipz" meme is notable for inclusion anywhere on Wikipedia and, if so, where. Looks like someone doesn't liek.
Is Baby Cuddles blue or green? Is Fizzy blue or green? Editors resorted to uploading photos of their own ponies to debate the point, possibly indicating ten-year-old girls are more computer savvy than ever ... or perhaps Bronies are more prevalent on Wikipedia than previously thought.
Is it an RPG or is it a Console RPG? Or is it a fish! Who knows! Yet, oddly enough, no wars have occurred on the pages for the Generation I games, Generation II games, Generation III games, Generation I remakes or Generation II remakes.
Slang term which originated from a typo (for "owned") displayed on a computer screen during an online multiplayer video game and is now the subject of heated debate as to its actual meaning. Does it mean to reduce your opponent to such a state that no actual words exist to express your dominance over them? Does it mean you possess "ownage" over them? Or does it mean to soundly defeat an opponent? Also, who invented it? What is the correct oral pronunciation of it? What is its phonetic spelling? is it "powned", "pooned", "poughned", or something else? No, it's "pewened'! All these are the subject to serious and heated debates in academic style language mixed in with vandals who type in ALLCAPS, curse like sailors, and call everybody n00bs. Is it a Dutch television broadcaster or is that just a hoax?
Is he French? Is he British? Is he Russian? German? Franco-Russian? South African? Algerian? Believe it or not, there was (before reveal of nationality) an extensive debate on where this (confirmed French) character class from the video game Team Fortress 2 inherits his accent from – despite having only a handful of spoken lines in-game at the time. To be fair, this was mostly the result of every other class in the game (except the Pyro, who is near-unintelligible under his her his her the her its their the gas mask) having a clear regional upbringing, whereas the Spy's accent was a more vague European one. However, nowadays, voice lines with the Spy speaking French are most prominent in the English version of the game (such as cries of "Mon dieu!"). At the very least, it proves that the Spy is good at his job of causing confusion, frustration, and panic (and everyone turning the world upside down to sort him out).
Are Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader considered one character or two separate ones? Do they deserve separate listings in the "credits" section? This seemingly trivial disagreement degenerates into a full-fledged revert war, complete with allegations of vandalism, 3RR violations, aggressive edit summaries, and a week-long page-protection.
Site of an edit war over whether Star Wars Episode III should be listed as the 'preceding film' in the infobox. Opponents argue that it's crazy to say a film released in 2005 'precedes' one released in 1977; supporters argue that it's equally crazy for a series to begin with Episode IV! After an WP:RFC, consensus settles on listing the films in production (rather than in-universe) order. Much blame is placed on George Lucas for creating the mess in the first place. Again.
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and other Star Wars film articles
Revert wars over whether or not the credit list should duplicate the official credits at the end of the film, or be edited by Wikipedians to include uncredited roles. Both sides seem to feel they have the weight of policy on their side, but no one actually points to policies. Thankfully this seems to have eventually resolved itself, with an "official credits" section, and notes made afterward about uncredited roles.
Should it say "also known as Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens"? Is it officially an alternative title? Much edit warring and most of the talk page is used on this vital question after the premiere. Who cares what the film is about?
Was she in Survivor: Pulau Tiga or Survivor: Borneo? Considering both were in heavy use, one really shouldn't have precedence over the other (although Pulau Tiga was the term used for years before Jeff Probst introduced the term Borneo for the first season); in any case, the edit war between the older term and the newer term has gone on for months.
Are they alternative metal, or should they be on the list of nu metal musical groups? See the "mature" arguments at the talk page, such as YES, THEY ARE NU METAL, OK! And you know it, don't you?! This band also spawned a few more lame edit wars regarding two of its albums.
Do you think it's alright to leave the boy with Uncle Ernie edit-warring on Wikipedia? By Pete Townshend's own admission, the plot for Tommy is not exactly straightforward and has been changed in various adaptations. Does the father kill the lover or the captain, or is it the other way round? When you come to Wikipedia, the edit warring's foreveeeeeeeeeer - ha ha!
Debate rages over whether the WWE United States Championship is included among criteria for becoming a WWE Triple Crown Champion. Edits for and against the inclusion of the title lead to several reverts, many angry people, and one fairly active user retiring due to the edits (he later returns on a semi-active basis). Eventually the US Title was given its own section separate from the main list, though the debate is still going on. A similar case is made for the ECW World Championship, but due to its newness in the WWE, it is generally agreed on that it does not count. It's a prestigious title anyways, let's put it that way.
Several disputes over whether past companions should be listed as companions (even before the episodes had aired) or additional/special guest stars and whether "Turn Left" was isolated or joined to "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End". The refusal of the episodes' writer to settle the latter question in interviews only exacerbated the dispute. Another dispute erupted over the use of the word penultimate for "The Stolen Earth" after an editor insisted that the current standard usage of the word was incorrect despite BBC usage of the word in their press release and its definition in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Or should it be Wild ARMs (series)? Akari Kanzaki started an arms conflict demanding that Wild Arms (series) be renamed to Wild ARMs because the company later decided Arms was an acronym and another editor disagreed.
A lame edit war erupted at the page for the then not-yet-aired WWE pay-per-view event over whether the match between The Undertaker and Mr. Kennedy should be listed second or third. The official website for the event had the match listed third, but since the "order doesn't matter", others continued to make it the second listed match. The ensuing argument led to the page being fully protected and spilled into the talk page, the WP:PW talk page and even the page for the following pay-per-view.
Personal involvement
- May 2018: righteous deletion
- December 2018: equally righteous reversion
- June 2019: another go-round
- 09 June 2019 Talk page (paraphrase unless noted):
- Creator of the article (aka Policy guy): Dudes, let's just settle this according to Wikipedia policy & stop the arguing 'on the merits.'
- Deleter: He found it in the '80s and deserves the credit!
- Reverter: Yeah, but she did a bunch of work on it in the 2010s and deserves the credit!
- D: Yeah, but she tries to 'bury' his work on it!
- R: No she doesn't!
- D: Yes she does!
- R: There's no call to shout!
- D: (actual direct quote): You apparently equate disagreement with "shouting".
- R: (also actual direct quote) internet etiquette holds that using a string of all caps is shouting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_caps Please familiarize yourself.
Pause ... breather ... no more substantive edits to the page itself (whew!)
Round 2 - featuring 1 new (anonymous!) editor along with the 'let's settle this according to the policies' voice from earlier
- 10 October 2021: back and forth and ...
- 11 Oct 2021 (paraphrase):
- Policy guy on Talk page: "he was a leader in the 2010s, too" isn't supported by the citations.
- (next two lines hearsay)
- Anonymous: But I am the "she" in question!
- Pg: Aha! In that case you definitely can't contribute here.
Pause ... breath -- Round 3 -- what? January 2022: Yet another opinion that the credit has been mis-balanced?
Daniel Brandt
Someone writes an article about him and he complains that he is a private citizen and not notable. He threatens lawsuits, which causes editors to add more detail to the article. The article also raises questions of public vs. private figures, whether he is truly notable because of his involvement in the Seigenthaler controversy, and questions of when a subject requests deletion. Daniel Brandt (talk · contribs) was blocked, unblocked, and later reblocked, the unblocking discussion a massive 126 KB. The debate on his article stretched out to 14 AFDs over two years, the Daniel Brandt deletion wheel war ArbCom case in February 2007, and two long WP:DRVs (Feb and June 2007).
You thought vampires did not exist? You thought vampire hunters do not edit Wikipedia? You thought two opposing factions of British vampire hunters (the "orthodox" Vampire Research Society and the "revisionist" Highgate Vampire Society, and let's hope these links stay blood red forever) would not clash on a Wikipedia article or its talk page? All I can say is – think again.
A somewhat controversial comic book artist who felt there were errors in his article and so blanked almost all the content without explaining what specifically the errors he was objecting to were. He raised the subject on his own message board and both supporters and detractors flocked to Wikipedia to join in the fight, resulting in numerous articles in blogs and other comic industry media about the ensuing conflict.
Constant reversion of Mark Richards's "vandalism" by original creator who lived there (as was mentioned in the article) and seemed to think it was his page. See page history and VfD discussion.
The reason why external links sections are not web directories is aptly illustrated when the owners of two rival fansites, www.the3rdbestpageintheuniverse.com and www.thethirdbestpageintheuniverse.com, repeatedly replace the other's link with theirs. The link goes back and forth for weeks – as they leave no messages or edit summaries, few notice and none care. One uninvolved editor tries to add both, asking "Is there not room for both self-proclaimed third best pages?" – apparently not, as one is removed two hours later and the war continues on its merry way. Eventually yet another editor drops a train on all the spam, including that oh-so-vital link.
Lameness originating from violation of WP:OWN leads to an epic edit war after the "author" attempts to remove all the information they ever posted on Vic Grimes claiming they own the information. The resulting war escalated and incidents that derived from the war ended up on WP:AN, WP:ANI, WP:3RR, WP:PAIN, a WikiProject, and the talk pages of many users and admins. The war temporarily ends when the "author" was blocked indefinitely for violation of numerous policies and trolling but it soon began again when the "author" started using AOL sockpuppets to continue their campaign. After that, the user was banned and still continues to pop up with more sockpuppets.
Should we mention the fact that the station's broadcast power drops to a ridiculously low wattage at night? Yes, it's a fact. No, I could LOSE MY JOB.
Politics
Was the head of the Zionist Union party Isaac Herzog, or was it headed jointly by Herzog and Tzipi Livni? Does it matter if they changed their minds about who heads the party the day before the election? And what if they didn't really change their minds but the media lied about it? A debate ensues over the difference between a party, a faction, and a list in Israeli politics, whether any or all of these even have defined leaders under Israeli law, and whether editors should read the actual contract signed between the two parties before making a decision. Of course, there's the question of whether Wikipedia even has a committed style for its infoboxes – oh, did I not mention that there was no issue with the text of the article itself? This debate was solely about whether Wikipedia can or should list two party heads in an infobox. Hey, I've got a good idea: Suggest consulting what the Wikipedias in other languages did for their infoboxes. Hey, I've got an even better idea: Change the infoboxes on all the other Wikipedias just before suggesting that first idea.
Not since Mario has a Plumber reporter up-and-coming politician 'character' caused so much confusion. Is the article about the 'person' or the 'concept'? Is it a nickname or a sobriquet? Is he "the most famous plumber in the nation" or not? For that matter, is he a plumber at all?? Occupation: Plumber? assistant plumber? plumbing? or unlicensed plumber? Other suggestions have included "plumber's helper", "illegal plumber". More than a month later, some are even suggesting "turd-gurgler" and "plumber's ass" as "occupations", and edit warring mightily at least to get his occupation described as "plumber" versus "plumbing". (Even editing in this section, of course! LEW in LEW!) It's only a matter of time before some conspiracy-obsessed FBI agent suspects him of actually being an intergalactic police officer.
Is it the burial place of the British royal family, or the Royal family of the Commonwealth realms? What about the Canadian Royal family? Or something else? An edit war involving at least six editors lasted over a month, through two periods of page protection, before consensus was reached: to leave the page as it had begun. For some reason, the inhabitants of the cemetery themselves appeared singularly unconcerned by the dispute, not seeming to care what One were described as.
In a close race, John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon 49.7% to 49.6%. What this dispute revolved around however was a slate of unpledged electors in southern states which after carrying 0.4% of the vote cast ballots for segregationist Harry F. Byrd who did not campaign for the office. Having outright won in Mississippi, casting a plurality in Alabama, and with a faithless elector in Oklahoma, did this entitle Byrd to a spot in the infobox? Generally candidates who won over 5% of the popular vote or carried a state have been included. Does being chosen by a slate of unpledged electors equate to winning the state? If so, should Byrd be listed as a Democrat, Independent & a Democrat simultaneously, Unpledged Democratic Electors movement, Unpledged Elector, Southern Democrat, or Dixiecrat? Should it be noted the electors were unpledged in the infobox? How about mentioning the slate of electors in the infobox but not Byrd? This edit war has continued since 2008 in some form with a shaky consensus against Byrd's inclusion.
Is Stephen Colbert considered a serious candidate?[69] If so, where do we put him?[70] [71] Does covering Colbert's candidacy mean ventriloquist Jeff Dunham's dummy gets covered too?[72] What is the policy pertaining to the difference between a self-declared candidate and some random guy who declares his candidacy? And, perhaps most importantly, is the candidate Stephen Colbert (comedian) or Stephen Colbert (character)?[73] [74] The question was ostensibly rendered moot upon Colbert's denial for both major parties' primaries (he was running only in South Carolina anyway), yet his name perpetually pops up everywhere from "Effects of the Internet" to "Withdrawn Candidates" to "Polls" to "Wikipedia:Wikiality and Other Tripling Elephants" (apparently that encouraged lame edit wars).
A years long edit and revert war that started in 2006 that sparked over whether the flag of the Dual Monarchy shown in the infobox should be the civil ensign (which is commonly used in popular culture) or flags of Cislethania and Translethania. [75] Eventually the article was locked and the infobox currently displays no flag, but it has a redirect under it to an article which explains the complicated flag situation.
Religion
If Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she does not believe in God, does that make her an atheist? And if she is an atheist, does that mean her infobox should display Religion: Atheist or Religion: None? Then again, maybe there should not be a Religion entry in her infobox at all? The edit warring continues for years and years. Watch as a highbrow debate invoking Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein inevitably descends into accusations of WP:POV and WP:OR. Maybe an RfC will sort it out? Don't hold your breath.
- Update: An RfC actually did sort this out ... eventually: The religion field has been removed from all person-related infoboxes other than "religious leader". Whodathunkit!
External link wars
Huge revert war over one external link critical of Smart. Discussion filled several talk pages, with each side accusing the other of POV, systemic bias, stalking, paranoia, bad faith edits and being lame in general. Escalated to a request for arbitration, and eventually an Office Action.
A three-day-long war starting with this good faith edit which turned into an edit war as to whether it should be included or not, ending with this last revert edit. Even after talking on the article's talk page, and bringing the issue up on ANI, the user who originally posted the link was eventually indefinitely banned.
A slow burning edit war lasting over three months over the file extension of one link. Not the inclusion of the link itself – just its extension (.txt or .prt).
A huge edit war regarding the inclusion of external links. Should commercial sites be linked, should the section be this big, or should the external links section be there at all? These are some of the questions plaguing this article.
Lists
Edit war over how a table should be formatted, which led to 46 reverts (23RR for both users) over the course of 14 hours.
Edit war over whether a large, colorful list of truckers' hat styles worn by this fictional character should be included. Leads to page protection, allegations of admin abuse and sockpuppetry.
Edit warring over whether or not the list of South Korea's achievements in the World Cup should or should not merge the consecutive years when South Korea did not enter (and the same for when it didn't qualify).
Such a list was created in April 2008. Led to dispute over what locations should be listed, whether they should be only major cities, small towns too, and suburbs of major cities. Then the list was proposed for deletion. Survived the first AfD, then died on the second. Arguments against were that it was a directory, impossible to maintain, and that one day, as Google's goal is, would include the whole world. Made better sense when the service existed only in the United States. Now it's a redirect to the Google Street View article. Easy, right? Apparently not.
List of multiracial people
Are people who are White and Multiethnic considered Multiracial? It doesn't matter anymore, as the article was deleted.
In January 2020, an edit war about whether the list of characters should also include short descriptions happened then was seemingly resolved. However, from May of 2020 to August of that same year, it picked up again, and because the edits fueling the war happened monthly instead of daily, the 3RR could not stop the edit war. What makes these wars particularly lame is that both the January and August wars caused the main instigators of both sides to flood the article's talk page (mainly in January) and dispute resolution noticeboard (in August) with blatantly uncivil behavior. Some examples include but are not limited to name-calling, stalking, and accusations.
List of numbers that are always odd
The number 3 was being considered as possibly being not odd. Page protection was needed to halt the heated debate. User:Wik's correction of a misspelling of hypochondriacs was re-reverted no less than three times. Supposedly as a means to illustrate the ludicrousness of the subject, various examples such as "the atomic numbers of gold and silver, but not their sum" and "the number of days in a year (except leap years)" were added to the list. Later in the edit war, no less than two thousand five hundred numbers of debated oddness (every second integer from 1 to 4999) were added and removed, four hundred ninety eight of them repeatedly before the edit war was solved by the article's deletion after a VfD vote. An ancient mirror website still had a version available, though, so it's been rescued for posterity: User:ConMan/List of numbers that are always odd
List of virgins
Dispute about whether or not Britney Spears belonged on the list, eventually resolved in a definitive manner: maintenance of the list proved impossible and it was later deleted.
Should the list have a pink background? Yes, this really happened.
Should Wii Points be included? Should they be in the main tables, or discussed in the header? Should there be one table or several, broken out by console? What should the default sort order of the list be? All these issues came to a head at once, resulting in a huge revert war.
Should the band's genre be rock, pop, dance, emo, big beat, techno, punk, dance, techno, jazz, electronica, alternative, indie, etc. ...? Four talk pages of debating, arguing, and "discussion" later: and we have arrived on the conclusion of rock and dance (for the time being) and a disabling of editing by new or unregistered users.
Dispute over whether or not "alternative gatherings" should be included in the list of gatherings, leading to failed mediation, protections, blocks, and finally one party walking away from the whole project. Don't you want to know when your local subculture is gathering in a copse of trees?
Should this group devoted to high-power model rocketry and related legal advocacy, the subject of a New York Times article headlined "A Cult of Backyard Rocketeers Keeps the Solid Fuel Burning", therefore be included in List of groups referred to as cults? The debate raged in February 2007 and again in May 2007, apparently because its inclusion makes some sort of point about the list simply being a disguised non-NPOV list of cults. Two key combatants in this battle have dragged their bad blood to a third editor's talk page, where accusations fly regarding editing each other's comments.
Should the article Beer style include a link to the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP)? A months-long revert war ensues over a single link.
Highest-valued currency unit
Is the Bitcoin a currency? Should the fact that it is worth more than any other currency swing it either way? Going on-and-off since 2011, this debate that has led to most of the talk page being filled with ad hominem attacks, dozens of reverts (with both sides claiming vandalism), and two protection locks so far. Just be glad that Kuwaiti patriots, upset that the Bitcoin is beating their dinar, haven't found this page yet. The article was merged to List of circulating currencies but a short edit war started over whether it should be in the destination article. The redirect was eventually deleted on 7 August 2020.
What badgers are notable enough to earn inclusion? For over a year, there were inclusions immediately reversed, additions of maintenance templates, and rather fiery discussions regarding "badgerness" (including the phrase "the character is non-trivial and is a badger deliberately, for badger reasons"). The involved could be considered mad as a badger, or if another digging mammal is allowed, making mountains out of molehills.
Is Hermione Granger a catgirl? She temporarily develops cat features following an incident in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, but does this mean that she qualifies as a quote-unquote "catgirl"? She is added to the list towards the end of June 2021, and nearly every single edit to the page through October is either removing or re-inserting her entry. No one attempts to justify either position; the talk page goes unused and there is not an edit summary to be seen. One brave editor attempts to begin a discussion on the talk page, but receives no response. Eventually the page is protected and a formal RfC is opened to address the issue.
Categories
Slowly edit warred over several years to include it in itself despite the guidelines saying otherwise. The proponents of the loop have variously argued that it should be done as a joke, as a (recursively defined?) tradition, or as an educational effort. Insofar nobody has tried to argue that yo dawg would have done it. The page is now indefinitely extended confirmed protected.
Redirects and disambiguation pages
Redirects
Corn redirects to Maize to the dismay of every midwesterner in the U.S. This has resulted in multitude of move requests ...
- RM, Maize → Corn, No consensus, 20 June 2007, Talk:Maize/Archive 2#Requested Move
- RM, Maize → Corn, No consensus, 21 February 2011, Talk:Maize/Archive 3#Requested move
- RM, Maize → Corn, No consensus, 11 August 2013, Talk:Maize/Archive 4#Requested move 3
- RM, Maize → Corn, Not moved, 22 June 2015, Talk:Maize/Archive 4#Requested move 22 June 2015
- RM, Maize → Corn, No consensus, 11 September 2022, permalink
... and a long list of protests going back 15–20 years.
With the release of the iPod classic, there was a lot of confusion on whether the new iPod is in the same line as the original iPod. Can a new product be "classic"? Should it just be part of the iPod article?[76], [77], [78] Should previous generations be incorporated into the "classic" article? Maybe there should just be an article for every generation of the product? What about the iPod photo – is that part of the iPod classic family or some freaky half-cousin? Eventually "original" and "classic" became synonymous and the iPod photo was deemed unworthy as a member of the classic family.
Should it redirect to Main Page as a shortcut for Firefox users? Or should it link to printf (where it serves as a shortcut to print text). How about transcluding the Main Page as a compromise? And isn't it because of printf that Firefox uses %s? Involved page protection, a vote, and an appeal. In the end, as User:This, that and the other observed, more than 64 KB of discussion was recorded over a redirect for a two byte title.
After being featured in the webcomic xkcd, an article on this term was created and deleted three times in one day before being turned into a redirect and listed on Redirects for discussion. The discussion was one of the most epic and passionate ever to take place at RFD, with almost 200 users participating; and that's despite being closed early. In the end, the redirect was kept, but on the talk page the arguments over it rage on.
Disambiguation pages
What do you get when a country has the same name as a U.S. state? You get one of the longest running debates on Wikipedia. It seems to have everything but the kitchen sink. Which of the two should receive the coveted title as "primary topic", and thus get to have the disambiguating phrase in its article name removed? The archived discussions are full of endless content and tables regarding search engine results, population statistics, and the number of English speakers in each (enough material to create its own encyclopedia). This is followed by the many accusations of either U.S.- or European-systemic bias, along with accusations that one side is holding the other "for ransom". Is the fact that Wikipedia's web servers are located in the United States relevant? Does Wikipedia's method of disambiguation make topics "less important or notable"? Well, if the pages are move protected for now, then which article gets to be listed first on the Georgia disambiguation page? And do flag icons make a difference on that disambiguation page? Does this entire debate make the English Wikipedia "out of step" with all other Wikipedias? Or are we just flogging a dead horse? This debate has been going on for so long that there have been occasional requests on Talk:Georgia for brief summaries of the previous discussions! Did we mention that Wikipedia's web servers are located in the United States?
Should the Gay Nigger Association of America be at the top of this irrelevant disambiguation page, or somewhere in the middle? The ongoing dispute leads to the page being protected and one administrator being blocked for WP:3RR. After 18 Articles for Deletion nominations, the association's article was deleted for lack of reliable sources (see below), and the dispute mutated into whether the page should include a redlink to the deleted article or not. This critical issue of a single Wikilink led to full protection (three times) and a Request for Comment on a disambiguation page. The situation calmed down only when the disambiguation page for a 4-letter acronym joined the tiny number of articles with indefinite full protection (it has since been reduced to semiprotected). Recently, the association's article has been recreated as a result of a deletion review.
Phenomenally lame, multi-stage edit war at the disambiguation page for Lolita over the purpose of disambiguation pages. Is the Manual of Style written in stone, or is it merely a "recommendation" that can be ignored? Vladimir Nabokov's novel is currently located at Lolita, making it the de facto primary use: should it be listed at the top of the disambig page, as the MoS says, or below the etymology for the name Lolita which had no article? Should the page include a list of Japanese fashion styles that include the word "Lolita" in the name? Will anyone type in "Lolita" looking for Amy Fisher? The one thing that never occurs to anyone is that they have better things to be doing. The debate gets so heated that one user moves the page to "Lolita (non-disambiguation)" to free it from the tyrannical restraints of the MoS, believing that WP:3RR doesn't apply to the new creation, and continues reverting. A sloppy cut-and-paste merge back follows, ensuring that no one is happy with the article's condition. In the end a level-headed admin fixes the mess and protects the page for a week, and at least one user takes a long wikibreak over the ordeal. The contention still pops up occasionally, especially after the creation of a stub for the name "Lolita" and the debate over whether Nabokov's novel should really be the primary target.
The August 29, 2008, announcement of Sarah Palin as the presumptive Republican nominee for Vice-President of the United States set off a firestorm at (among other places) the Palin disambiguation page (which had previously been edited three times since it was created nearly a year before). Should Palin redirect to Sarah Palin? Is Sarah Palin more famous than Monty Python member Michael Palin? If she's more famous now, will she continue to be more famous in the future? Should Sarah and/or Michael Palin be listed in their own section at the top of the dab page, or just on top of the list of other Palins, or should the sorting be purely alphabetical? Following a handful of polls and rampant accusations of bias, a consensus seems near, but who knows what the future will bring?
Talk pages
These are not about discussions on talk pages, but actual edit wars (as typified by reverting) occurring on talk pages.
Probably the first instance of revert-warring on an article talk page, where one editor accused another of using the talk page as an alternative soapbox for a POV agenda. The accused editor first tried to insert a list of unpredictable predictions, then when that didn't work, transferred it to the talk page, ostensibly for "discussion" when in fact none took place. That section was reverted back and forth numerous times, since no statute seems to govern behaviour in talk pages.
Edit war over whether the template at the top, announcing that the article was speedy kept after an Articles for Deletion debate lasting less than an hour, should include the word "ZOOOOOOOM" to exemplify the speediness of the process. It was kept in until finally being supplanted by a note in the archive box template.
Should Hurricane Ike's importance within WikiProject Tropical cyclones be High, or Top? One editor (and later his sockpuppet) reverts against consensus many, many times. 40 KB discussion ends with real-life harassment.
Should a talk page section heading have a question mark? Two IP editors slow revert war over punctuation until another editor comes in and chastises them both for it.
Images
Several storms in the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season sparked edit wars over which satellite image should go in the infobox. These included an argument over which of two barely-distinguishable pictures of Hurricane Eta was the best quality. A more contentious debate emerged over two images of Hurricane Delta. Should the image of the storm at peak intensity be based on wind speed or barometric pressure? Does it matter if one image doesn't have the classic appearance of a hurricane? The editors involved could not even agree on whether there was a consensus, or which image was being used before the edit war began. The edit war was resurrected by an IP editor days later, opening up questions of possible sockpuppetry. One sockpuppet account was also involved in the talk page discussion. Hurricane Teddy fell victim to not one, but two edit wars, again debating which image best represented the storm at peak intensity.
A map of election results by Catholic Diocese: serious map or a joke gone too far? Was Catholicism relevant in the 2020 election in Pennsylvania, or wasn't it? Is a map of results by diocese useful, or does it provide no new information? Does the average person know what Diocese they're in? Do they know that about their voting district? How about the same map except in North Carolina? How about by State Patrols, is that relevant? After 83 separate talk page messages, multiple blocks for vandalism and edit warring, another block of the original editor for off-site harassment, and first semi-protection then—once that proved insufficient—full protection, the war seems to be over, with all deemed to be unencyclopedic images removed from the page.
Is the concept of contact between an anus and a mouth complicated enough that we need a picture to explain it? Or is the concept too icky to put in an article? Do we need to use a hide/show box to protect our virgin eyes, despite the fact that similar practices have been repeatedly rejected as policy? Is preventing someone from seeing something really censorship? Would biology students find a picture of a disembodied mouth licking a disembodied asshole informative? Not one but two debates have been spawned at the Village Pump over this page. An alert editor noticed that the tongue isn't actually touching the anus, and therefore is not a picture of what the article is about. An edge-enhanced photograph from the Afrikaans Wikipedia was used instead, and a cease fire seems to be in effect.
Has there been a homosexualization of this article? Edit war over which image should be the first, the straight one or the gay one. [79] [80] [81] [82] [83]
Should this article include a large image of a human anus? Should the demonstration anus be male or female? Should the level of hair in the anus be "moderate"? Debates over whether cropped porn images of bleached human anuses are appropriate for Wikipedia abound.
Since Wikipedia is not censored, is it appropriate to include a huge picture of a tarantula for illustrative purposes on a page discussing the fear of spiders? Although this question can be pondered as far back as June 2005, this issue enjoyed nearly total dominion over the talk page, and accounted for virtually all edits to the article between November 2006 and February 2007. The picture was later changed to a cartoon of Little Miss Muffet (removed, and then returned) and ultimately a cute little spider crept into a template at the article's very bottom.
Edit war in June 2007 over the inclusion of a screenshot from Second Life in which the character pictured is holding a hammer. This led to the page being protected, and a straw poll [84] on whether or not the image should be included, along with accusations of sockpuppetry, single purpose accounts, and meatpuppetry, and eventual banhammers. Eventually the article was deleted anyway, making the entire argument moot.
Is a bathrobe better illustrated with a photo of a guy smiling at the camera making a thumbs-up gesture, Fonzie-style, or a photo of a different guy in a different bathrobe striking a dramatic pose in his bathroom? Should the chosen photo include a model at all, and is a toddler less suitable than an adult? These crucial issues led to dozens of edits in 2008, changing between at least seven images with frequently changed captions competing for the prestigious position of the Wikipedia bathrobe illustration, and inspiring the formation of The Illustrious and Honourable Bathrobe Cabal of Wikipedia. Consensus eventually favoured a pink fluffy bathrobe on a hanger. And then the dramatic pose image came back. And then the bathrobe on the hanger turned purple, and then ... Cue more edit wars!
Edit war in December 2005 over whether the picture at the top should be on the left and face left, or be on the right and face left, or be on the left and face right, or be on the right and face right. Image was eventually replaced with a higher quality version.
Edit war over which pictures should be used to represent black people, and how to caption those pictures. Be sure to practice your absurd captions on the pics on the talk page. Then, ramble on ad nauseam on said talk page justifying your edits. Don't forget to continue your diatribe in your edit summary.
Should the image to the right be captioned "Boops boops in a bucket" or "A specimen in a bucket"? This highly significant distinction was the subject of many edits (and reversions) over 8(?) years, resulting in the page being protected over this sacrilegious "vandalism", in the "specimen" state (which is clearly the wrong version!) A truly stunning discussion was hosted at Talk:Boops boops § Boops boops in a bucket :3 (note the gratuitous emoticon). Is it a suboptimal caption? Is it "vital to me and to science as a whole"? Do we all lack any sense of humor? (Absolutely not.) Culminated in a request for comment with four options. Eventually, "Boops boops in a bucket" was settled on. For now...
British Rail Class 142/153/313
This started on British Rail Class 153 when the replacement of one image of a train with another led to a two-day edit war [85] over whether it was more important to show that said train is one carriage long or to make the interior and exterior shots match. On a page with three edits in the preceding month. This was sorted when it was proved it was possible to do both, but similar debates then began (for vaguely different reasons) on British Rail Class 142 and, most spectacularly, British Rail Class 313 – where the talk page increased in size from 1KB to over 28KB in just over a week [86]. Sample edit summaries include "It's a dark photo", "It's NOT a dark photo", and "Reverted edit. Autism is not a factor". Similar "debates" continue to flare up occasionally, but nothing has quite reached that level of lameness ...
Thirty-four reverts in just over an hour. The pressing issues: Should one unremarkable photo be included? Is the cat depicted really smiling? Both users were blocked for thirty seconds – "a suitably lame block for a remarkably lame edit war" – after protection of the page had halted the reverts. One user resumed after protection was lifted the next day, leading to further twelve reverts over the same photograph. Another page protection put a stop to the lameness. As it turned out, the photo was deleted for not having any copyright status. And of course, don't forget those proud, brave souls who tried to resolve the matter by promoting the use of Happy Cat.
Where a picture of the character "Tiamut usually referred to as The Dreaming Celestial or the 'Great Renegade'" should go. [87], [88], [89], [90], [91], [92], [93], [94], [95], [96], [97].
Is it appropriate to include a picture of a cow with the caption "An unsuspecting potential victim"? People disputed this caption, largely because some considered it humor and no evidence could be found that it was. Many different variations were put forth from plain "A cow" to humorous "Mooo?" Consensus was to delete the image, even though the article spent some time with the picture of "A cow in its natural upright state". Now, despite the edit warriors' initial refusal, the article proudly features two images of cows lying down to dispute that they can lie down and get up. The old disputes can be found at Talk:Cow tipping.
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A big row erupts in late May 2023 between bus enthusiast users on the page of what is considered Britain's most popular single-deck bus: should this page feature an image gallery for all the many body and chassis variants of the Dart? The gauntlet is thrown down on 24 May 2023 when the removal of the gallery in December 2022 is reverted, followed by that being reverted a day later, then it is unreverted again. Other users begin to intervene and revert, arguing WP:NOTGALLERY, then that is reverted but with the gallery trimmed, followed by a brief break to clean up the article text, with images eventually removed from the gallery and instead distributed under relevant subheaders. On the 28th, another user joins in and reverts on the grounds of "sandwiching and stacking issues", quickly reverted on a technicality, images are cut again then reinstated and moved around, then finally, it all settles down on 5 June with one final image removal reversion.
All the while as this is being fought, it all kicks off on the talk page, with such highlights being "wild accusations", "edit warring", "libellous statements", arguments that "deletionists have got their eyes on this and are going to start targeting bus articles" and eventually on one user talkpage, accusations of "behaving like a bully" and threats to take the edit warring up with the administrators. For now, though, the dust appears to have settled.
Truly, an edit war over dental floss! Apparently a photograph and innocuous description have somehow offended someone's sense of fair trade. For those who take their dental hygiene seriously, this became quite a crusade. Page protection was applied in December 2006 to help heal the bleeding gums.
The crux of an argument concerned a photograph of a building in Warsaw that houses the Australian Embassy; because other tenants also occupied the same building, should the caption state that the building was the Australian Embassy in Poland? The photo was removed and argy-bargy followed, with the photographer complaining the rule was inconsistently being applied.
Debate continues to rage over whether a picture and a video (presumably of a Wikipedia editor) of ejaculation is encyclopedic. Some editors object on the grounds that the subject is ejaculating without apparently touching his penis – can this be considered "normal" ejaculation? Another editor objects on the grounds that the image/video is "akin to a self attributed quote, or worse, an ... original work." Should the video and/or image be included but linked or otherwise hidden? Much wailing and gnashing of teeth, along with the usual pleading "for the children," including one post by a parent whose 12-year-old daughter had bookmarked the article, and who concluded that "gay perverts have overtaken Wikipedia" ... Obligatory Village Pump discussion can be seen here. See also Semen, below.
Revert wars, alleged sockpuppetry, and page protection: should the article on feces include this picture of a large human turd? As of early July 2005, the discussion on this issue alone had reached 12,900 words. Someone commented "Seriously, guys. You're arguing about poo." Brace yourselves for a second round when the editor who contributed the ejaculation video (see above) gets the idea of a companion video for this article.
The edit war was sparked over whether an image of the "one finger highway salute" should have been included. Several different pictures were added; the debate even included the lighting of the picture. Eventually it was settled. At least no one went out on the highway and rammed somebody to get a good shot ...
Edit war over whether or not to mention the fact that Standing appears to be sitting in his infobox photo. The photo was humorously captioned "Guy Standing sitting". Eventually, his legs were simply cropped out. Later, editors compromised to use a version of the photo that was not as tightly cropped, making it clear that he was sitting, with the caption "Guy Standing in 2012". The page has been changed to Extended Confirmed Protection due to the joke in 2020.
Edit war over what pictures (if any) to include of an invisible parody deity, and how to caption them.[98] [99] [100] [101] [102] It is later decided to use an image of a pink unicorn silhouette with a gradient fading to invisible. Also included is an image of a pink unicorn with its alpha channel altered to form an invisible image of a pink unicorn.
Do the leggings pictured have a floral design? A splattered paint design? Both flowers and splattered paint? Is it okay if we simply describe it as a "colored design"? A third opinion was requested, and per this page the respondent commented that the dispute was lame.
Edit war by multiple users and anonymous IP editors in October 2005 regarding whether to put a picture of the 7th Heaven actress on the left side of the page or the right. In the end, the picture was deleted anyway.
Should this drawing of the sexual position include a teddy bear? No, it's creepy and suggests paedophilia! Yes, it's incongruous, amusing, and adds atmosphere! Low-level edit war reverting between the two versions has been going on for over two years, with 46 reverts in 2006 alone.
A revert war over the top image. Some users felt that because the free image depicted an outdated model, it should be replaced by a promo image. Others cited the WP:FU policy that states that a free alternative should always be used. Heated debate commences on the talk page after it gets page protected. The issue still comes up time to time about why the free image is on the page. Since then, the PS3 has been released, a free image has been created, and the war has ended.
A picture of a nude pregnant woman has been the subject of numerous discussions.[103] [104] [105] [106] [107] [108] [109] [110] [111] Finally in September 2011, it comes to a head. Basically, while a few want to delete the image completely, most simply want to move the picture to another section of the article and replace the lead image with something less controversial. The other side argues that this picture is the best image out there and to move it is a violation of WP:CENSOR. Over 50 60 70 80 100 people chime in on two RfC's, several ANI notices, a failed policy change at the Village Pump, major discussions at WP:NOT and a rejected case at ARBCOM that generated over 500 600 700K 800K 900K a megabyte two megabytes of discussion, and ultimately involved a rare Jimbo Wales RfC closure ... can we all say WP:TLDR? The lead image has since been changed to a fully clothed woman, and there has been little warring since.
"Should we have animals?" "Should we have a picture of this girl or another one?" "Should we have a picture of someone's principal?" "Should we exclude dye jobs?"
A user who "contributed" several photographs of his own phallus to articles takes an actual photo of his own semen and puts it (the photo) on the page. Cue an ongoing several-years-long revert war over the image on whether a badly taken picture should be included as a visual aid. Has since been replaced with a more clinical image of semen in a Petri dish.
Which picture should top the article: "Old style" Sonic or 3D Sonic? After some discussion, including an image-by-image vote on every image on the page, consensus settled on both, and montage of the two was created. Just to make this war more irrelevant, a single (3D) picture appeared in the infobox later, the dual picture was deleted and a 2D Sonic was later readded ... (Ironically, the current picture shows both Sonic variations in question from Sonic Generations promotional material.)
Does an image of an unaired episode pass NFCC #8 or not? From a dispute between two editors, it quickly scaled into a WP:ANI thread involving several admins. Sorted out now, with the WikiProject deciding that they fail unless otherwise discussed.
Upload wars on Commons of images used in English Wikipedia
An EU flag in the shape of Serbian territory resulted in editors disputing whether such territory includes Kosovo. Both versions (with and without) created didn't immediately stop edit wars.
Does Beijing-Guangzhou Line starting Fuxing service means its maximum speed is restored to all its glory (350 km/h) like Beijing-Shanghai Line? Other lines like Mudanjiang-Suifenhe and Lanzhou-Guangyuan were also affected. Years after 350 km/h fans conceded defeat to 310 km/h status quo enforcers, China Railway steps in and actually do the upgrade (only Beijing-Wuhan section is completed, for now).
Right off the heels of earlier image wars lasting over a month, an idea to make the map more accessible for colourblind readers quickly spiraled into an all-out color war over the best palette for the map. Over the course of three days, users repeatedly uploaded competing "colourblind-friendly" maps and reverted each other, until Commons administrators stepped in and blocked most of the image-warriors for at least three days each. Subsequent discussions were held both on Commons and on the talk page of the main article on Wikipedia for implementing an accessible version of the map. The discussions eventually resolved roughly two weeks after the end of the color wars.
Templates
Userboxes
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Template:User admins ignoring policy
A userbox reading "This user is pissed about admins ignoring policy" (the word "pissed" was later changed to "annoyed"). Surprisingly enough, the userbox was speedily deleted by admins ... ignoring policy. See the first, second, and third Templates for Deletion votes. During its third DRV, support waned just enough and the userbox remains deleted.
Should the font size for this userbox be 10pt or 14pt? 3rr violations, page protection, and vitriol spilling onto multiple talk pages ensue. Nobody is surprised. And then end result of the fight? – to make the text 12pt.
A rather heated debate over changing the text of this user box from "This user comes from the United Kingdom." to "This user lives in the United Kingdom." This all arose from an argument over what took precedence; the text the user box said "This user comes from the United Kingdom." or the category it was grouped with Category:Wikipedians in the United Kingdom. It was resolved only by a straw poll vote and the changing of the text.
Infoboxes
Should Template:Infobox Biography be used in this article? Is it ugly or not? Are the place and date of his birth and death important enough to be highlighted in a big box? Does a box which repeats information that is already in the article offer any substantial advantage? Do the wishes of those who wrote most of this featured article count for anything? Multi-sided edit war over these issues.
Reggie Jackson, et al.
(Others include Joe Girardi, Dave Winfield, Rickey Henderson, and Jeff Nelson.)
What should the (barely noticeable, and ultimately superfluous) color be of the infobox for baseball players: the last team they were on, or the team they played the most often for? This terribly important convention was the subject of several reports at WP:ANI [112] [113] [114] [115], multiple page protections[116], rampant sockpuppetry [117], [118], multiple 3RR blocks over several months, and several dozen reversions of a page within a few hours [119]. As administrators were called in for assistance, everyone agreed the situation was truly, very very lame.
An administrator full-protected Laurence Olivier, a featured article, for one week, in order to end an edit war. There had indeed been some edit warring. However, the edit war did not concern the content of the article. The edit war did not even concern whether or not there should be an infobox on the article. Rather, the edit war concerned whether the article should contain two sentences of hidden text (i.e., text that shows in the edit window but is not visible to readers), advising against adding an infobox without gaining a consensus.[120]
Should the Stanley Kubrick article have an infobox? No! An infobox "pollutes the article" and having no infobox "will encourage readers to know more about the person" and makes the article look "more professional". The debate had been going on since August 2015, with countless infoboxes added and deleted over the years, but in a request for comment in November 2021, there was a strong consensus for adding one. Thus, the years-long feud came to an end.
Other templates
Conflict began when an editor tried to add a new essay to this template. Another user suggested that the essay was only tangentially related to civility and removed it. Amid a sea of blue links to wise essays on the value of civility, an edit war broke out over the new link's inclusion. More parties joined the fray, making 12 reverts in two days over the essay's inclusion. Editors then took to the talk page and began hurling profanity at each other as they discussed whether the essay contained valuable advice about civility. After two full protections of the template and multiple blocks, the matter appears to have been resolved.
An EU flag is added to the template's header. Another editor reverts it as a Eurocrat POV. No, the tiny little flag is a statement of fact, and you're the POV pusher. No, you! Vandal! Vandal! Somehow, despite the 5-alarm urgency of this three-day edit war, Luxembourg's political system fails to fall apart or be in any way affected by the existence of an EU flag on its template. (Other small European countries are also involved.)
Revert warring over the inclusion of the Wikipedia Biography Project template at the top of the talk page. Many breathless proclamations that this picture (previously part of the Wikipedia Biography Project template) was RACIST OMG and a direct attack on author Jack Vance.
58kb of talk page debate plus a user block over how to copy edit a two line statement.
92RR in five hours between two users.[121] After about ten reverts, the war settles into an edit summary-less back and forth. See here.
Two editors contribute more than thirty reverts in two hours over whether Spyro is a part of the Crash Bandicoot universe or not. Tempers flare in Edit Summaries, but talk page contributions are mysteriously left unsigned.
Not two editors, but two ethnic groups of editors clashed on whether this stub template's icon should be a map, a flag, some other Cypriot symbol, or a combination of any of the three. This raged throughout a large number of Wikipedia's pages, including user talk pages, WikiProject Stub sorting, various Greece-, Turkey-, and Cyprus-related talk pages, and – of course – this template's talk page, where much of the evidence still resides.
On June 12, 2010, England and the United States started the group C play with a 1–1 draw. FIFA seemed naively unbothered by this – perhaps under the assumption that the results of the remaining games against Algeria and Slovenia would determine who would advance. Wikipedia, in accordance with its core mission of providing real-time goal-by-goal updates to major sporting events, couldn't wait that long. Should England be awarded second place, above the thin green line separating advancing teams from eliminated teams? [122] Or does USA have the tiebreaker? [123] Maybe both should be above the green line, [124] or between two green lines. [125] An ANI thread resulted in full protection until the next group match.
User and User talk pages
- Wikipedia user space fashions
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2007 -
2008 -
2009
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User pages
After an impostor of this user had been revealed (it was before suspected that the impostor's sockpuppets were Axmann8's), several users (including administrators) revert-warred over whether this user should be tagged as banned or indef-blocked, since Axmann8 was initially banned due to a community discussion. The revert war can be seen in the page history.
A user's fake "you have new messages" banner, after remaining on their userpage for months without trouble, is removed as "disruptive" by an administrator in February 2007. A quick revert war leads to a block of the user by the administrator and a giant thread on the administrator's noticeboard (now preserved in its very own page; also here) over whether the fake banner, which simply links to practical joke, "takes away from contributing to the encyclopedia". Many users admonish the administrator's actions with some calling for desysoping of the admin. The edit war was revived for a short time in January 2008, and in April 2009 a similar banner by a different user also precipitated a brief user block.
Should this indef-blocked user with no edits have an {{pagemovevandal}} tag, {{WoW}}, or {{impostor}}? Unfortunately (unfortunately??), edit warring had to end when the page and two templates were deleted and the third template became a redirect. The page was protected, then unprotected, then protected again, and then finally deleted with a beautiful edit summary: "useless page causing even more useless edit war, content was: '{{Pagemovevandal}}'".
Edit war over background color of various parts of user page. Jimbo himself never made his color preferences known, but the war ended nonetheless.
Part 2 – Edit war over whether it should be noted on Jimbo's userpage that he was either a co-founder or sole founder. Several users reverted each other and one was blocked for WP:3RR, however after he was unblocked, he was at it again, careful not to violate WP:3RR.
Should people be allowed to edit this page if they have more than one letter in their username? What about numbers? Symbols? Warring involves sysops deleting and restoring the page to remove "unwanted" contributions to the page. It culminated in the Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:R/Single Letter Group MFD listing.
Two sysops in a revert war over the user page of a blocked sockpuppet of banned user:142. Then, a month later, a user takes one of them to Quickpolls over the revert war.
User talk pages
User:Arminius left the Template:test message on the anonymous user's talk page. The anonymous user removed the test message. A three-hour, 25-edit war followed over whether or not the talk page should include such inflammatory messages as {{test}} and welcome notices. Edit warring about this edit war then proceeded onto this very page. Other admins were called in to look at the situation, and, after careful analysis and fact-checking, it was determined to be a very lame edit war indeed.
An anonymous user copied and re-posted an attack originally posted by another anonymous user in 2008. It was subsequently reverted by others and then restored by the user a total of 22 times in 10 minutes.
The blocked IP removed a block message, multiple users added it back, talk page access was revoked, socking began, with the page ending up being fully protected indefinitely. User:Bishonen ended up stating:
I've fullprotected this page to stop the edit warring. I hope everybody realizes all the IPs posting here are one individual, who is thereby entitled to remove (not refactor) comments here. There's little point in fighting on one of their many talkpages anyway. Who's gonna know?
Diplomat Mass murderer Henry Kissinger dies, noted for being extremely loved and extremely hated (there were parties celebrating his death). Asticky, our "protagonist", changes "is" to "was" on the article, and promptly brags about it on her user page. This might have blown over (it should have blown over) had depthsofwikipedia not tweeted about it. And it got media coverage. (Slow news day?)
People rushed to shower her user talk with praise and barnstars. This might have blown over (it really, really should have blown over) but the issue was raised on the administrators' noticeboard. The praise and barnstars were removed, and the talk page was fully protected (then reduced to semi-protection) (then back to full protection) (then back to semi-protection). Then the comments were restored. Then removed again. Fight! Fight! Fight! The AN thread devolved into editors insulting each other. Editors stopped caring about the situation, and the barnstars stayed. 38 editors (10(?) administrators included) made 107 comments total in the thread. And here we are whining that this was overblown and immortalizing it on this page.
As an added bonus, the edit that changed "is" to "was" (you know, the thing that started this) was a WP:BLP violation, as Asticky had not cited a source for his death.
Miscellameness
Fourteen reverts to date on a hatnote: should it be explained that this is an article about the science of the age of the Earth and you can also read creation myth if you want? Does the hatnote pander to creationism? Does deleting a hatnote constitute censorship and even disenfranchisement? Does putting this hatnote violate policy? Is it important who might want to read the hatnote?
English town formerly part of Cheshire; should the article mention that many people still use Cheshire on their post? Inspired a talk subpage, and a sockpuppetry accusation, not to mention the associated blood boiling rage and name calling on Talk:Association of British Counties ...
Is Aphex Twin really IDM? Is IDM even a legitimate genre, or is it just a huge internet troll? Are 99% of things on the web rubbish? If you are an editor aged 38–42, your opinion is requested.
Does an article with no content whatsoever meet any of the NPP criteria for being marked as patrolled?
Should the royal anthem be included in the infobox, or should it be a footnote? Is it even worthy of a footnote? A long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long debate continues on the talk page, including an ... interesting ... table of opinions (!).
Should there be a reference to Baha'i YouTube videos? Should they have their own section? Is YouTube encyclopedic enough or should be counted as a personal website? Debate lasted for over a month and involved many a personal attack, accusations from the single user advocating the inclusion that he was being ganged up on against WP policy and threats to have users blocked.
How should this Danish or Swedish street gang's theft of 120 boxes of cake be worded? Ongoing since 2012 the humorous phrase "Which is many as twelve tens. And that's terrible" has been added and removed almost twenty times, and mentioned in edit summaries. 20. That's as many as two tens. And that's terrible.
Is this country in northern North America, in the northern part of North America, or just in North America? The first option is just vandalism, and a poll was needed to achieve consensus on this important issue.
Is cauliflower nutritious? Does specifying what parts are usable violate NPOV?
Is sharing a birthday with Abraham Lincoln important enough to include in the Charles Darwin article, or is it a bit of trivia that has no place in an encyclopedia? As of 4 February 2005, there has been an eight week-long revert war over a single sentence. There have been two polls on the Darwin Talk pages, one request for a debate, one WP:RFC, one WP:RFM, one WP:RFAr denied, and a Charles Darwin-Lincoln dispute arbitration case. The discussions at Talk:Charles Darwin/Lincoln and LincolnArchive01, plus the arbitration pages amount to some 30,000 words, which is about the length of a short Agatha Christie novel. Trivia: Agatha Christie was born on the same day as Frank Martin.
A lame edit war started in the wee hours of the morning on May 31, 2008 (for those in UTC) over whether or not the article should state that, from a certain angle, a cluster bomb resembles a certain part of the male body.
This article has seen a number of frequent and repeating lame edit wars. These include:
- Was the party founded by President Thomas Jefferson in 1792 or President Andrew Jackson in 1828 and does this make it the oldest political party in the world?
- Should the party be referred to as the "Democratic Party" or the "Democrat Party"?
- Who is a "conservative Democrat" and what do you call them?
- Who should be considered a 2008 presidential front-runner?
- Is the party center-left, centrist, center-right, right, progressive, conservative, right from an international POV, left from a general POV, ...
Is the third season coming in late 2023 or early 2024? The source Harper's Bazaar estimated to premiere either in which date.
Is Royal Dutch Shell a Dutch company or half-Dutch, half-British? Leads to 93 consecutive reverts (79 of them deleted) over the course of a week.
Noted science fiction author dies, which is tragic. Then the tragedy is compounded when the death is reverted for being an uncited statement in a BLP. Edit war and thousands of words of often uncivil argument ensues (sometimes valid, sometimes invalid, sometimes downright stupid), noted by various external sites ([126],[127]), but Fred remains dead. The resulting article had three citations for his death and no citations for any other fact contained within.
Can anonymously written folk songs be copyrighted? What if the anonymous author sues Wikipedia? Or his heir? Such a serious controversy on such a serious article can be settled only by a month-long, soul-scarring flame-fest, delving into international copyright law, which fails to convince an obstinately irascible user out to impugn Wikipedia's credibility.
What goes into an Irish breakfast; black pudding, white pudding or neither? Is the bacon boiled or fried? See the talk page for an in-depth analysis of the various issues.
In 2005 a several week long edit war over the Italian beef sandwich ensued over many many topics regarding the popular Chicago style dish, if a variation of it including cheese is common, if it is in fact Italian in anything besides name. A link to the talk page over this war still exists.[128]
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A very long dispute arguing over whether to use BC/AD or BCE/CE for era notations, resulting in the silly decision to use both systems within the article (i.e. 400 BC/BCE and 30 AD/CE) with the BC/AD terms usually preceding the BCE/CE terms. Both systems were used until an RFC was conducted in 2013 and the consensus was to have the article use the BC/AD notation. Much like Jesus, the dispute is sometimes resurrected.
Edit war over long-time contributors preferring the old Harvard references versus the new Cite.php method. Multiple users attempt to use the Ref converter with other users reverting back. One side files a WP:RFC over the issue, while the other side takes a strawpoll. The strawpoll results in an overwhelming consensus to convert. The primary supporter of Harvard references left the project as a result.
Is adding that rival KSL-TV is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints vandalism that must be reverted on sight?
Is the 12–5am DJ of this Oregonian radio station a "personality"? Or should she be removed from the page since she's supposedly a recording? The edit war receives mention on-air – and possible Wikipedia editing – from a KUFO DJ.
Is the colour group containing Pall Mall, Whitehall and Northumberland Avenue purple, or is it pink? Like the similar argument in Reservoir Dogs, the participants have forced themselves into a Mexican standoff and nobody can pass Go, let alone collect £200. See WP:PALLMALLISPINK.
Nielsen claimed copyright over the concept of the DMA (or TV market), and the entire United States section of this article required a complete overhaul. This led to an edit war about whether a 40-year-old, incomplete, public domain list was better than something made up by some Wikipedian, or whether we should assume that the copyright claim, which no one has ever seen, doesn't exist and bring back the FCC DMAs. Is linking to the FCC officially verboten due to copyright, or is the government organization under public domain? Either way, the only solution seems to be having no list for the United States at all.
A long-running, slow-motion edit war between anonymous users seeks to address the big issue: Are they or aren't they sold in Ireland? See also: Irish breakfast. Or maybe not.
Is it North or South? Mid-Atlantic or Southern? Reversions were once a daily occurrence and the discussion page was rife with debate offering little more than personal reflections, but a subpage helped clean things up and provided the riff-raff a place to babble away. The subpage is now filled with passionate arguments, which of course wouldn't be complete without editors calling one another "redneck" and "yankee".
It's dangerous stuff, not only for one's waist but also one's sanity, at least on Wikipedia. Does traditional mayonnaise contain lemon juice or not? If so is it really required to make it? Those ponderous questions led to a major revert-war that stretched for the better part of September 2007, including the usual name-calling, bias-tag-adding and "summoning the admins" threats ... [129] [130] [131] So when you enjoy your fries with mayonnaise, take a second to remember those heroes that fought for (against) the lemon juice that might be in it.
Did David Saks write "the official song of Memphis", or did he write a Memphis "song of the year"? An editor calls the City Council to find out, only to find that the songwriter himself has already called requesting proof that he wrote "the official song" – citing Wikipedia as his source.
He grew up in Davison, Michigan, next to Flint, Michigan [132]. He often says he's from Flint. Is that correct?
Was Zachary Jaydon a cast member throughout the MMC incarnation of this Disney series? Some say yes, some no, as his name is added to and removed from the cast list with depressing frequency. A standard reference book on Disney television doesn't list him, but some online sources do. Were those references added by Jaydon himself? Who knows? Fans of the 1950s version of the show can only shake their heads in bemusement, grateful that nobody is edit warring about Moochie's appearances.
Edit war over whether it is appropriate for the text some demons to link to the article Evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet, which has since been merged and redirected to Ontario general election, 2003.
Is it a puzzle of probability or of game theory? Is it even correct? This dispute has led to multiple mediation attempts and an ArbCom case. After ten years of disputing, as of August 2012 there have been 1,269,228 words posted on the article talk page without reaching any agreement.[133] By comparison, all the Harry Potter books combined have 1,084,170 words in them.
Regarding the table of Moscow Metro lines, should the color of the line be in the first column or the second? Should the color names be spelled out or do the colors speak for themselves? Edit warring over the version of the table occurred at the onset of June 2006. Following a month-long full protection, a straw poll, a request for comment, and an appearance in the New York Times on June 17, 2006 for its protection (and almost certainly this lame dispute), the article was unprotected, not because anything was actually resolved but because the article had been protected for so long. And guess what? More edit/revert warring and ensues, to the point where the original table is re-added to the article and one frustrated editor proclaims: "Ah, so we've killed a couple of weeks to ... keep the old table. Amazing." Indeed. Amazing.
A single editor from Connecticut objects to Boston being mentioned as the "business and cultural center" of New England. The editor endlessly reverts article to remove all mention of Boston from the article, believing it to be a conspiracy by Boston propagandists to covertly "recapture" Connecticut via Wikipedia. A compromise is attempted by conceding in a subsection that the "... New York metropolitan area [is] an important economic influence on Fairfield County ..." but the editor is still not satisfied. New England editors offer to cede Fairfield County to NYC to resolve conflict. Issue receives mention in a Nashua Telegraph article about Wikipedia.[134]
A two-way edit war between an unregistered user and a registered user was started in March 2010 over whether or not the characters identified as "kamibito" in the anime and video game Ōkami Kakushi qualify as werewolves.
Should boys or girls be listed first? Should it be in traditional English or alphabetical order, or should it be in the order that humans start puberty? Is there some kind of conspiracy in favour of females over males, or is it entirely innocent? The eventual consensus was to list boys first, and the article has remained that way for some time.
Anonymous user with a bone to pick spends more than half a year on a crusade to discredit the subject and to promote a boycott. Page is protected multiple times, several sockpuppets are blocked, threats are made to bring Wikipedians before an attorney general for consumer fraud, blocking an entire ISP is tried. Edit war stops as abruptly as it started, with the anonymous editor's final edit summary stating that he was personally defrauded by the company because they betrayed Macintosh customers by supporting Windows, or something like that.
A lone editor leads a brief edit war in an attempt to point out to the world what should be obvious, that is illegal to throw rocks at the police. Thankfully, he eventually gave up, though not before opening up a dispute resolution and a request for comment.
The last man to be hanged in Australia died decades ago, but the debate over his possible innocence still rages on (as all the best controversies do) in Wiki form. Accusations and counter-accusations are thrown around like confetti, editors are accused of promoting various (possibly fictional) books and ALL CAPS edit summaries abound. The only thing all the editors-turned-detectives can agree on is that the truth is out there.
High-intensity edit war lasting about forty minutes. Editor A makes a correction, giving her middle name and month of birth. This was lost through an edit conflict, and Editor B adds a paragraph worth of content. A reverts; B reverts. Et cetera. The only objection either had with the other's edits was that they reverted their own. The war can be seen here: [135]
Two admins disagree over the inclusion of a paragraph mentioning several Stego-like cartoon characters. The dispute eventually dissolves into slow wheel-warring over several days, with a careful attention to the magic number, leaving other users scratching their head as they attempt to understand what makes that particular paragraph such an obvious target for dispute.
Does Steve Irwin's death by a stingray warrant mentioning? Immediately after news of his death emerged, a lame edit war ensued.
Who was the prime Prime Minister of Sweden between October 5 and October 6, 2006? Did Göran Persson resign on the 5th or the 6th? Was Fredrik Reinfeldt appointed on the 5th or the 6th? Or did Sweden have two prime ministers during the period?
Is it a spin-off, a sequel, or a spin-off sequel? It's a direct continuation of the plot of Tales of Symphonia, but the playable characters are different most of the time. The developers have always called it a sequel, except for when they've always called it a spin-off. Has been going on for about a year now.
Is it an island or a group of islands? Does it matter if there are islets surrounding what people call an island? Can we still consider it an island if the navy blasted a shipping channel in the middle of it? Maybe the Japanese name should be used to decide. Or possibly the English term used to refer to it by the government of Japan. Or is it just a case of one side thinking about the landmass in the sea (e.g. British Isles) while the other side thinking about the island as a political entity (e.g. United Kingdom & Ireland) and couldn't actually agree on what the article is actually about??
U2 (yet again)
Is it relevant that Bono plays the harmonica? Should it be mentioned in the lead paragraph along with vocals and guitar? Does this mean that we should also state in the same sentence that The Edge also plays piano, organ, and bass, in addition to background vocals, guitar, and keyboards? As an anonymous IP user kept adding "harmonica" as one of Bono's instruments, other editors kept removing it. A discussion on the talk page took place and was closed, with the consensus that "harmonica" will not be included. Of course, the addition of "harmonica" continued. A second discussion was created following the first one, and the anonymous editor eventually got the hint after "harmonica" was removed following six previous attempts.
Are Ultimate Fighting Championship events notable enough for individual articles or do they fail the criteria? That's the debate that continued on MMA talk pages, which resulted in omnibus articles being created.
Long edit war back in 2005 regarding whether the school is located in Arbutus, Baltimore, or Catonsville. A compromise was attempted when the location was changed to Baltimore County, but that was considered too general by some, but unnecessary by one Baltimore supporter who asserted that "Baltimore" includes all of Baltimore County anyway. And since one lame edit war apparently wasn't enough, another one raged over whether the school's full name is "University of Maryland, Baltimore County" or "University of Maryland Baltimore County". Look closely. Yes, the only difference is the comma, a comma which generated a heated debate on the talk page over whether the school wished to identify itself with the punctuation mark. One vandal even gave a nod to the comma edit war by changing the bolded title to "University, of, Maryland, Baltimore, County".[136]
"Santa" (possibly a sock puppet of an experienced editor) was blocked on Christmas day for attempting to spread cheer and goodwill to other users. A long discussion on WP:ANI (and a wheel war over Santa's blocking) ensued over the legitimacy of the block – was Santa being disruptive? Was Santa a troll? Santa lamented about being unable to visit Wikipedia in 2006.
Should the article about this video game show the box art from the European release, the Japanese release, or the US release? National pride is at stake, so the article has been locked. Furthermore there is an even more heated debate as to whether its 58% rating should be considered above or below "average" here ...
An edit war over the inclusion of these nine words: "the first-ever Kickoff Classic, played at Giants Stadium". Things get so heated that one of the editors starts making personal attacks and is blocked. A compromise remains, where a link to the page on said game is a piped link in the transcript of the general manager's final speech.
After 2038, it turns out that some computers are also going to run into date issues in the year 292,277,026,596, well after the predicted end of the solar system. Which means we've still got some time to discuss whether the article should include a sentence that says "this is not widely regarded as a pressing issue".[137] [138] [139] [140] Apparently saying that it didn't matter itself didn't matter, because the phrase was deleted when nobody was watching and nobody even seemed to notice. And then the reference to the problem was deleted as well, so if you're reading this after finding a copy of Wikipedia amidst the fallout of the war caused by the Year 292,277,026,596 problem, the Wikimedia Foundation extends its condolences.
Should quotes by Adolf Hitler be sourced using primary sources or are scholarly sources required? Does it really matter considering that they are just quotes? This dispute has resulted in a heated edit war, at least one AN/I thread, a RfC and two rounds of full protection, all without resolving this never ending edit war.
Is Jimbo the founder or a co-founder with Larry Sanger? Edit war begins on the Larry Sanger page, involves AN/I threads and moves to an edit war across dozens of articles.
Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars
Was Psychosurgeons an edit war or not? Five editors wrangling over whether an argument about a comma was an edit war or the same editor changing his own edit back and forwards – 97 times! In the end, it was resolved when the original article was deleted.
An edit war springs up over the addition of a single line of whitespace between the external links section and the navboxes in Reach for the Sky. Results in two ANI threads, a contested entry at WP:3O, and various accusations of vandalism and sockpuppetry. The true source of lameness here? Two newlines in the source had been stripped out at some point without either participant noticing, rendering the appearance of the two versions, which were reverted back and forth seven times, completely identical.
Perhaps one of the most truly bizarre edit wars ever, this was a short but tense edit war where an anonymous user apparently argued with themselves over whether Tyrannosaurus rex was a predator or a scavenger (ridiculous arguments abound including comparing Troodon to Tyrannosaurus and much Jack Horner-bashing). It later turned out that it happened to be two anonymous users who shared the same IP address. Concerns of violating WP:3RR came up but were shot down because the IP was technically reverting their own edits.
An edit war between editors and the internet has resulted in several page protects and internal text warning users not to add Doge (meme). The debate rages on whether a link in "See also" is enough or whether a mention in the article is notable.
Is the bee hummingbird the world's smallest dinosaur? Is this a noteworthy fact? One user certainly thought so, sporadically edit warring for over a year to include the statement, eventually resulting in a Request for Comment, where opposition to the statements' inclusion was all but unanimous, still, the user refused to accept the result, forcing the discussion to have to be formally closed.
Meta pages
What April Fool's jokes should be mentioned on the Main Page, if any? This protected page, editable only by admins, normally goes unedited for days – all content is included from templates, so there is no need to edit the Main Page directly. On April 1, 2005, it racked up more than 60 revisions of varying seriousness before finally being reverted to a days-old version. This does not even include all revisions of the templates the Main Page includes. (edit history)
Once upon a time, editors felt the need to give an example of an inappropriate article title. "The weather in London" was chosen. And then, over a long period of time, people created and admins deleted various entries for The weather in London (normally, either a redirect to London#Climate or some variation on the words "bloody cold, let me tell you"). At one point, a soft redirect explaining the historical situation was created, but that has since been replaced by a hard link to London#Climate. What made this so lame? Well, the above arguments led to one of the longest page deletion logs for any page on this site.
There was a flurry of activity in late 2011 when an enthusiastic user noted that the often abbreviated form of "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion" should be WP:Afd and not WP:AfD as had previously been the case. A bold maneuver quickly descended into arguments from both sides, culminating in the rather sage advice For fu*k's sake, leave it alone and a proposal to ban anyone else having the gall to carry on the discussion. The closing administrator perhaps summed up popular opinion by stating "I have intently analysed every word of the impassioned arguments presented in this section, both for and against, and have discovered that this discussion is pointless, and furthermore, that we all have better things to do than try to change a long-standing abbreviation that has presented absolutely no problems to anyone ever."
Regular dispute spurts over the wording having to do with the placement of footnotes: after or before punctuation? Do we or do we not recommend any one? Should we be consistent between articles? At one point spread to several related policy and style pages.
Should the rule to be ignored be singular, or plural? Will working with others be permitted by this policy? And can (or should) this rule itself be ignored? Many editors, including a few administrators, spent well over a month trying to decide these critical answers. And then, a few months later, spent well over a month doing it again. See protection log and the story of a change to IAR.
Another edit war about this page (circa 2006) was whether it should be kept to the one-sentence version from Larry Sanger, or be several paragraphs, including explanations and conditions of the policy.[1]
Can users remove themselves from the list? If so, should they have their names replaced with User:Place holder? Culminated with User:^demon blocking himself for 3RR after reporting himself on ANI and the page being nominated for deletion. The MFD ended in no consensus after 99 KB of debate.
A minor two-word change to the guideline sparks an edit war over whether words in quotes should very rarely be linked or should never be linked. Reactions to these two words involve gratuitous personal attacks and spread to several related pages in a forest fire, including pages explaining how "binding" the manual of style is supposed to be in the first place.
Mother of all notability disputes, edit wars have erupted over wording of the guideline, whether parts are/were significantly disputed or not, and even – once it had been demoted from a guideline – whether it should be tagged as "essay", "historical", "proposed", or "failed".
An edit war which focuses on which image should be used to describe "dick". Matter on hand include WP:BLP, WP:censor along with a US president, a US vice president and 1960 politics. But that wasn't enough. No, a further edit war, as lame as it was slow, continued, with each side fiercely picking a new picture for the page and defending it to the death! Thrust! Parry! Riposte quinte! Remise! Counter-attack! Finally, the issue became so serious, so unbelievably important, that the only resort was a request for comment. Normally this would be seen as overkill for a humor page, but only by fools and knaves, blind to just how important this page truly is. And with that request for comment came ... a DEATH-BLOW!
What will the future bring, for a vital issue such as this, the choice of which picture is the funniest/least funny/most educational/least educational/best pun/worst pun on a humour page? One might think that only arbitration can decide, but thankfully this seems to have been averted, with the most recent image change sticking without any arguments.
Wik's nominations of nine Wikipedia:Wikicops were moved; the wikicops page itself got in a move war about a week later and ended back at Wikipedia:Administrators. [141]
What is the correct wording to indicate that an RfC may be followed by an arbitration request? Is it "Although not formally required before proceeding to arbitration, many RfCs are steps towards it", or is it "Many, though by no means all, arbitration cases are preceded by a user-conduct RFC"? Three-way revert war that has lasted two weeks and 50 edits so far.
A simple redirect to an RFC page that was deleted and recreated numerous times.
The meta-irony of an edit war over the presence of {{disputedtag}} on the page, amounting effectively to a dispute over whether there was a dispute, could be topped only by the version without the tag being protected with the protecting admin then adding {{pp-dispute}}. There has more recently been a dispute over whether or not spoilers are even necessary, which has been resolved for the most part, yet it continues to smolder to this very day.
Pretty much anything to do with non-admin rollback
Including this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, and this page. Users creating more pages than they've had laid. More proposals than a Vegas wedding chapel. More polls than Super Tuesday. Polls about the proposals, one of which garnered nearly 500 responses. A poll about that poll. After disputes about consensus status (including edit wars over which pages should have what tags indicating their consensus status), another poll was started, edit warred over, and then locked. A draft of the next poll was started, edit warred over, and then locked. A poll about having polls. Big red warnings about polls (soon reverted). Some heated discussions and locked-page edit reverting over a picture of a cat (shown at right). Some minor admin edit warring over the perm-protected watchlist message. Propaganda-like editing at the bulletin board – even Jimbo gets involved. An ArbCom case. Pronouncements from Wikipedia's co-creator and the current Foundation chair, including contradictory suggestions.
What should the "other" section be called? Other pranks? General tomfoolery? General Jerryfoolery? Something incredibly long? The Bee Movie script? Should it be an SCP? Should it contain generation VIII Pokémon made out of synthetic elements? Should egg be part of a balanced breakfast? Should it have a hint of crab rave? Eventually, users just settled on "The section title of the article that people kept edit warring over" foolery. This edit war has been dubbed The Great April Fools' Day Edit War by some, with hundreds of different titles by the end of the day, leaving us to have to make a whole page documenting the mania, which you can see here.
Once again, the Tomfoolery/Jerryfoolery debate occurred, and the ensuring chaos enveloped the ENTIRE April Fools page. The Communist Manifesto got posted. Someone posted hundreds of digits of pi. People began listing the names of pokemon. "Pre-April 1st" became "Pre-March 32nd", then "Pre-February 61st", and so on. The page got rotated 45 degrees. It got to the point where there had to be a genuine request for page protection because things had gotten too insane. All this happened in the first three hours of April 1st. And out of this came: The Great April Fools Edit War Part II: Electric Boogaloo. This war was so absurd that there had to be an RfC over conduct on April Fools' Day, with consensus being that these edit wars are to no longer be tolerated.
(Ro)bot wars
Bot vs bot
RMCD bot vs itself
A requested move on a part of the RM infrastructure in March 2018 confused RMCD bot, which engaged in a brief edit war with itself, in which it added a requested move notice every 15 minutes, and then less than a minute later removed it while updating the table.
AnomieBOT vs T13bot
Should the header at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion and Wikipedia:Possibly unfree files (since closed) have the metadata class or not? User:T13bot, editing off-task, engaged in a brief edit war with User:AnomieBOT in July 2014 over this minor issue, with each bot carefully following 3RR by making only two reverts on each page.
Mathbot vs itself
Beginning in August 2016, and then approximately every day from November 2016 until April 2017 (when this was noticed), User:Mathbot has been changing its mind over whether Philippe Michel (number theorist) or Philippe Michel (economist) should be included in List of mathematicians (M). They're two different people with the same name, both with a plausible claim to be listed as mathematicians, but according to Mathbot there can be only one.
Template talk:X1 – Template talk:X9 wars
For two months, Hazard-Bot and AvicBot2 warred over what type of hidden comment should be left for any user editing this series of nine pages. This followed an earlier war, of only a few hours duration but much more intensive, between SoxBot IV and Addbot. As of June 2013, the territory remains globally disputed, with some entrenched fortifications and low-intensity battlefields. Then a new bout exploded between Cyberbot I and Hazard-Bot in October 2015 over whether to use {{Please leave this line alone (sandbox talk heading)}} or {{Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading)}}
RfCbot vs itself
For over six hours on 4 September 2009, RfCbot edit-warred with itself about whether or not to include a moveheader template at Talk:White-bellied Parrot (since moved to Talk:Green-thighed parrot), and Talk:Nanday Parakeet (history links).
File:Foot Amputation.JPG
Is it on the MediaWiki:Bad image list or not? SoxBot reverts itself at 22:41 daily for over a month in early 2011.
A slow-motion edit war between SmackBot and Yobot about whether or not to include a blank line before a {{DEFAULTSORT}} line.
Semi-protection of a template used in the interface kicked off a twelve-hour edit war between SuggestBot and Lowercase sigmabot, who couldn't agree on whether a padlock should be displayed. Every hour, SuggestBot removed the padlock while updating the template, and 20 minutes later, Lowercase sigmabot put it back. This continued until SuggestBot was stopped and reprogrammed by its operator.
Bot v Bot v Bot v Bot
In a spree of 60 edits in less than 20 minutes, four bots edit warred about which hidden comment should be added to the top of Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism.
GreenC bot vs InternetArchiveBot
InternetArchiveBot repaired an archive link, adding the URL fragment, and GreenC bot removed the fragment. This slow-motion edit war went on for four months between September 2017 and January 2018 before a time-out was called.
AnomieBOT vs Bot1058
Should Talk:Jean Gabriel Marie (1907-1928) redirect to Talk:Jean Gabriel Marie or Talk:Jean Gabriel-Marie? These bots made more than 700 edits each from April to October 2023 on this question, before this edit war, along with a less long-lasting one at Talk:Syrian Republic (1946-1963), was discovered and resolved.
This epic man versus machine battle involves something widely agreed to be a problem: double redirects. Should patern-avoiding permutation and patern-avoiding permutations redirect to the correctly spelled pattern-avoiding permutation or directly to Stanley-Wilf conjecture? Pattern-avoiding permutation itself (which might some day get its own article) redirects to the latter. An administrator revert-warred [142] [143] with a bot called Computer (since renamed to User:タチコマ robot) which fixes double redirects, and eventually blocked it for three-revert rule violation and "malfunctioning", before getting chastised by other admins. Finding the strong irony here is an exercise left up to the reader.
A six-hour edit war between SoxBot IV and some anonymous editor that turned a testing page into an arena [144]. A suggested rematch more than a year later was withdrawn after lack of interest from the now-inactive editor.
A 23-hour edit war in the sandbox between some anonymous editors and two bots, Lowercase sigmabot II and Cyberbot I over the Sandbox header.
Deletion wars
The Gay Nigger Association of America is the most fought over article for whether it should be nuked. The GNAA article was first created sometime in 2004 and finally deleted in November 2006. September 2010 saw what were hoped to be the final pushes to restore the article. A redirect to Goatse Security later took the absent article's place, and an RfD reaffirmed this redirect as the new status quo. After several more DRVs, the article was finally recreated after the 12th DRV.
Here are the glorious winners with the most debates:
- 40 (44 counting deleted AfDs): Gay Nigger Association of America (19 AfDs (26 counting deleted ones), 13 DRVs, 1 RfD, 2 MfDs on the userspace draft that was eventually restored, and an MfD on the userfied old copy of the page.) (and a (failed) proposal to prohibit further nominations, and an AfD for that, too)
- 24: Encyclopedia Dramatica (8 AfDs, 16 DRVs)
- 19: Daniel Brandt (14 AfDs, 5 DRVs ... oh, and an ArbCom case)
- 12: List of films that most frequently use the word "fuck" (10 AfDs, 2 DRVs[145] [146], and a (failed) proposal to prohibit further nominations)
- 11: Cleveland steamer (redirected to Coprophilia, after 9 AfDs, 1 DRV, and 1 RfD)
- 11: List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming / List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming (8 Afds, 3 DRVs)
- 11: List of films considered the worst
- 10: United States and state terrorism (10 AfDs)
- 10: Israel and the apartheid analogy aka Allegations of Israeli apartheid (9 AfDs, 1 DRV)
- 10: Uncyclopedia (10 AfDs)
- 9: Earth – 1 bad-faith nom, 8 April Fools' noms
- 9: The Game (mind game) (6 AfDs, 3 DRVs)
- 9: Al Gore III (Al Gore's son) (8 AfDs, 1 DRV, and the article was restored over the redirect three times since the last deletion in February 2008)
- 9: Wikitruth (8 AfDs, 1 DRV)
- 9: List of male performers in gay porn films (7 AfDs, 2 DRVs)
- 9: Railpage Australia (9 AfDs)
- 8: Girlfriend
- 7: Ashida Kim; Memory Alpha; Eep; List of YouTubers; List of unusual deaths (including one under original name: List of People Who Died With Tortoises on their Head); Plowback retained earnings (4 RfD, 3 DRV); this very page
- 6: Mass killings under communist regimes; Brian Peppers (and an ArbCom ruling); Nicholas Beale; Wikipedia Watch (related to the Daniel Brandt debacle); Essjay controversy; Able and Baker; Soggy biscuit; List of unusual personal names; Universism; Lightsaber combat; History of video game consoles (eighth generation); Jonathon Sharkey (plus numerous arguments about notability on other pages, complaints from the individual himself, and a GA Review that failed miserably); Ava Addams
- 5: Scholars for 9/11 Truth; Yellowikis; Richard Tylman; Bullshido.net; GameTZ.com; LUEshi; List of bow tie wearers; Time Cube; Donkey punch; Andrew Schlafly; Xxxchurch; List of largest empires; BrokeNCYDE; Wookieepedia; Clea Rose; Anna Svidersky; Exopolitics; Roadgeek; Ken Hoang; List of lists of lists; List of Presidents of the United States with facial hair (the first nomination being under "List of United states presidents with facial hair during their tenure"); SSSniperWolf (with two nominations under "SSSniperwolf", and one nomination under "Sssniperwolf")
- 4: Smosh; Man-Faye; Barbara Schwarz (and an ArbCom ruling); Magibon; Andrew Gower; Roy St. Clair; Emmalina; Cyrus Farivar; Pearl necklace (sexuality); Joachim Cronman; Red Bar Radio; Feloni; Google Watch (related to the Daniel Brandt debacle); Chris Sligh; O RLY?; Sollog; Climate change denial; HHO gas; Artix Entertainment; Maravilla; GDrive; Chewbacca defense; WoWWiki; NeoGAF; Archimedes Plutonium; Generation Z; Deletionpedia; London Underground trivia; Rachel Marsden (and an ArbCom ruling); Kancho; Sexuality of Robert Baden-Powell; Chess.com; Jacob Barnett; Dianne M. Keller; Captain Obvious; MathematicsAndStatistics
- 1: The vandal cluepon. Just one MFD but, seriously, was that one MFD really needed? One participant actually referred to it as an IDLefest.
Honorable mentions go to the various pages that are nominated for deletion during April Fools. Examples include Earth (nine times), Wikipedia (nine times) and the Afd pages being nominated for deletion themselves, often recursively.
Metawars
On rare occasions, edit wars have erupted where the vital subject at stake is ... well, edit wars.
An edit war about the definition of "edit war" on the policy page telling us not to edit war. Does one word (or less than one word) count? (three edits reverted.) Involving the same or different material? (two edits reverted.) Is adding or deleting a cleanup tag exempt? (two edits reverted.). All without any real attempt to arrive at a consensus before reverting again. It took full protection [147] to stop the edit warring.
In what is, ironically, a noticeboard for violators of a rule which is supposed to prevent major edit wars, an argument involving six reversions by a user, removing a report from the noticeboard citing that the Three Revert Rule does not apply to things such as obvious vandalism, or material in violation of some core policies such as WP:BLP for instance. The strangest fact of all about this incident is that the repeated reversions were done by the user who had originally introduced the three revert rule to Wikipedia. [148]
An edit war regarding a page about preventing edit wars. Should editors assume their fellow Wikipedians have "above average" intelligence? Resulted in full protection by two administrators,[citation needed] a waste of a talk page, and a demotion from official policy to mere guideline. And it still is.
In the course of the debate over a proposed policy banning all links to sites deemed to be "attack sites" against Wikipedians, some editors enforced the proposed policy against other editors who were, for the purposes of the debate, attempting to provide (in their opinion) legitimate examples of attack sites. Much edit warring followed, with accusations from both sides of bad faith, WP:POINT-making, and of ulterior motives. The conflict later resurfaced when similar language was added to the No Personal Attacks policy, and resulted in two (to date) arbitration cases.
Meta-lameness
Have you learned nothing from this entire page?!? Of course there have been lame edit wars about lame edit wars! Edit wars over which edit wars are allowed to be on these pages, or over how specific entries on this page should be worded (oh, the irony*†‡). See recursion; see also tail recursion. Examples have included "Cat" (under Wording), William of Orange, Her Late Majesty, Vic Grimes, List of virgins, e (mathematical constant), Template:User admins ignoring policy, Democratic Party (United States) and, yes, even this entry[citation needed][citation needed][citation deeply wanted]. The page as a whole has also survived at least six attempts at deletion, plus another attempt which was ultimately closed at the nominator's request.
* Reverted because this is not a true example of irony. Even this revert itself is not an example of irony, and even in the context of this page. Look it up if you don't believe this. This includes you, Alanis Morrisette.
† Yeah, but the colloquial definition of irony does include this example.
‡ We are all sticklers for accuracy here, you know that. We need everything prim and proper, and you have certainly worsened our humor page that no non-editor will read with this terrifying edit.
See also
- Parkinson's Law of Triviality
- Pig War (1859)
- Wikipedia:Don't edit war over the colour of templates
- Wikipedia:Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass
- Wikipedia:Historic debates
- How to win a revert war
- Wikipedia:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man
- Wikipedia:Talk page highlights
- Wikipedia:WikiWar
- m:The Wrong Version
- WP:TEA and its extension WP:BOSTONTEAPARTY
- Wikipedia:How to put up a straight pole by pushing it at an angle
- Visualization from Information is Beautiful, by David McCandless.
- User:JulieMinkai/ANI Hall of Fame