Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars: Difference between revisions

Occasionally, Wikipedians lose their minds and get into edit wars over the lamest things. This is to document that phenomenon. Please note, this page is dedicated to whimsy, and not to exhaustively documenting all the real, contentious edit wars.

Names

Gdanzig

edit wars have been occuring for most of a year as regards the exact name of this Polish German Prussian Eastern Central Northern European Baltic Baltijas city.

Richard Neustadt

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).

Punctuation

FOX News

VeryVerily rewrites part of a paragraph; 172 reverts because of three commas placed outside quotation marks; revert war between VeryVerily and 172 ensues.

Template:Wikipedialang

Edit war involving three sysops over whether there should be commas in "10000" and "1000." Leads to a blocking and liberal use of the rollback button.

Spelling

Aluminum

The non–North American English-speaking world spells it aluminium, the official IUPAC spelling is aluminium, and that's where the article is. There are occasional futile attempts to put the word back to aluminum.

Potato chips

Should potato chips be flavored or flavoured? What is the provenance of the potato chip, America or UK? Four-user revert war on these important issues results in the page getting protected and listed on RfC. And the chips become seasoned.

Sysop Wars

User:The Trolls of Navarone

two sysops in a revert war over the user page of a banned sockpuppet of hard-banned user:142. Then, a month later, a user takes one of them to Quickpolls over the revert war.

Template:Wikipedialang

Edit war involving three sysops over whether there should be commas in "10000" and "1000." Leads to a blocking and liberal use of the rollback button.

Miscellaneous lameness

Cauliflower

Is cauliflower nutritious? Is specifying what parts are usable POV?

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 3 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.

Wikipedia:Yet more bad jokes and other deleted nonsense#Edit conflicts

the edit war on the Wikipedia:Edit conflicts page, preserved in Yet More Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense.

Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship

Wik's nominations of 9 Wikipedia:Wikicops were moved; the wikicops page itself got in a move war about a week later and ended back at Wikipedia:Administrators.

Sarah Edmonds

Wik makes a correction, giving her middle name and month of birth. This gets lost through an edit conflict, and Danny and Alexandros add a paragraph worth of content. Wik reverts. Danny reverts. Etcetera. The only objection either had with the other's edits was that it reverted their own.

Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars ever

edit war over what edit wars should be on this page. - see Recursion; see also tail recursion.

Suncrest, Washington

Constant reversion of Mark Richards's "vandalism" by original creator who seemed to think it was his page. See page history and VfD discussion.

Grace Kelly

edit war over whether she is a gay icon.

Miss Kitty Fantastico

edit war over whether it is appropriate for the text some demons to link to the article Evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet.

Invisible Pink Unicorn

edit war over what pictures (if any) to include of a parody deity, and how to caption them

Nancy Reagan

was she born in 1921? Or 1923? After days of editing, does anyone really care THAT much? Woman is old.

Micronations

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.

User talk:66.167.235.16

User:Arminius left the Template:test message on the IP's talk page. The IP removed the test message. A three hour edit war followed over whether or not the talk page should include such inflammatory messages as {{test}} and welcome notices. 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. 25 versions, 02:29–05:59 on September 17, 2004.

Susan Hawk

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.

SkyOS

fast & furious kindergarten catfight with accusations of GPL violations, advertising, lying and fanboyism

Apple pie

Is apple pie really "all American"? This weighty issue causes a revert war, ending in a 24-hour block, two ArbCom cases, and the temporary departure of one Wikipedian.

What would Jesus do?

should the article link to Brian Boitano or What Would Brian Boitano Do?. Should a movie title be italicized? Did something happen in the middle of the 1990's or the mid- to late-1990's? These and other probing questions were at the heart of five-day long edit war between Anthony and Wik, during which the page had to be protected twice. The campaign spread to other pages, with What Would Brian Boitano Do? surviving a VfD listing by Wik.

Exploding whale

Is the "blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds" worthy of inclusion? Was placed on WP:RFC at one point.

Charles Darwin

Is sharing a birthday with Abraham Lincoln important enough to include in the Charles Darwin article, or it is 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 one recently closed RFAr. 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.