The examples here are hilarious.<p>> 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.
This is a very long, debate-fueled, page.<p>It reminds me of the page on Toilet Paper[1].<p>It is 35,330 bytes<p>Meanwhile the page on Toilet Paper Orientation[2],
of which there are two choices:<p>- OVER<p>- UNDER<p>goes on and on, and manages to weigh in almost 50% larger
than toilet paper at 49,667 bytes.<p>Amusingly, "vertical" is actually mentioned, but how
a hero got that in, I don't know. Probably killed
or captured.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper</a>
[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper_orientation</a>
While most of these are very silly and fun, I have to admit that I do care about some of them.<p>For example about the legitimacy of the "Nobel Prize in Economics" as a real Nobel Prize.<p>In the end, the way history gets written is important for the propaganda of the future. And Wikipedia is the primary authority on truth in the current world. Wether we like it or not.
The section on images is great. Should there be a picture of a big spider on the arachnophobia page? Which anus is most representative of humanity? The (ro)bot wars section may be of particular interest to HN
Glad to see both the Island of Dokdo (a.k.a. Takeshima) and Sea of Japan (a.k.a. the East Sea) are recognized, but it missed my favorite(?) edit war: was An(Ahn) Jung-geun, a Korean nationalist who shot and killed Japanese Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi one year before Japan's annexation of Korea, a terrorist? Should he be included in "Category: Terrorists"? You decide!
The saddest part about this page are the warnings and the fact that they felt these needed to exist:<p>“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.”
Not an edit war, but I was amazed at the time about the discussion over the name of the Río de la Plata article, which just went on and on and on. I didn't contribute. The article at the time was just a tiny stub. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:R%C3%ADo_de_la_Plata/name" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:R%C3%ADo_de_la_Plata/name</a>
The "Ethnic and national feuds" section seems like it gets a certain point across: things that seem silly in current context were extraordinarily important cultural touch-points at one point, and could well become so again. E.g., the U2 Irish/UK thing. Easy to laugh at today, but equally easy to understand why to some people at some point in time nationality difference between Irish and UK really mattered. Most flamewars are just real arguments that happen in the wrong time/place/tenor.<p>OFC some examples are clearly just the product of either drugs or a bad week, or more likely both.<p>Kind of like reading slashdot articles about "websites", hacker news articles about "capitalism", or newspaper article comment sections about "immigrants" in the late 20th/early 21st century. Or whatever. You get the point ;)
Re: Ányos Istvan Jedlik, I've had a uni colleague and former friend of mine who shared a given name with this inventor and whose family name was 95% similar to his, and seeing as we both live and used to study in Romania (where even the ethnic Hungarians' family names don't generally sound like this) I was curious at first what nationality he was, he told me that he's not sure either, part-Hungarian, part-Slovak. Maybe a similar approach could have been used in this inventor's case (i.e. using the "part-" thing)
It makes me wonder why are editorial pieces like this one hosted on official wikipedia page.<p>Branding a discussion as a lame diminishes the importance of the discussion. Taking as an example Chopin, the whole importance of of him being considered a Pole is reduced (you can even see it in the comments in this thread) to accusations of nationalism and tribalism. I'm worried that next time someone tries to take a more nuanced, more informed approach to editing they will stop themselves in the fear of being included in a piece like this.
This is dangerous:<p>> 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".<p>What about when one party is actively spreading misinformation? A statement that no one is never right in an edit war just gives misinformation credibility.<p>(Examples could be that smoking is safe, climate change is a hoax, ect.)
I'm surprised that there's no entry for "Is Finland part of Scandinavia?". Always leads to heated debates with lots of technicalities.
The upload war for the territory of Kosovo is not a lame one, it is still a highly heated dialogue amongst politicians of both countries. While this topic had consequences during the 1999 war between Kosovo and Serbia, is still present today for which US is actively involved in this dialogue for that particular map this wouldn't classify as lame.
I enjoyed the C# section on whether it's a real sharp sign or a plain octothorpe:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars#C#" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars#C#</a><p>> 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?
After reading some of them, it became obvious nationality and the race always creates a funny conflict :)<p>In good dishes like hummus or people who accomplished something, all nationalities want to be part of their success.
I repurposed a WebGL globe to visualise anonymous Wikipedia edits made around the world: <a href="https://umaar.com/globe/" rel="nofollow">https://umaar.com/globe/</a><p>This is the original, which visualised tweets: <a href="https://github.com/cedricpinson/globetweeter" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/cedricpinson/globetweeter</a>
Go meta meta, you know you want to -<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Lamest_edit_wars&offset=&limit=500&action=history" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:La...</a>
Well there's a thing: There are two types of vampire hunter here in the UKoGB&NI!<p>"two opposing factions of British vampire hunters (the "orthodox" Vampire Research Society and the "revisionist" Highgate Vampire Society, "
I'm quite fond of the Star_trek: INto DaRkneSS edit war that was covered by XCKD awhile back.<p><a href="https://xkcd.com/1167/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1167/</a>
"Wikipedia is a MMORPG for bureaucrats." <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_an_MMORPG" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_an_MMOR...</a>
A funny effect of this page : it seems to me that the discussion around it on HN is way less bitterly contradictory than usual. Well, that's my impression at least, I haven't measured it.
Encyclopaedia Dramatica was an entire (and large) wiki written almost exclusively in this irreverent-to-obnoxious tone, but the entire site is offline because the administrator went to jail for something that isn't even interesting.<p>Well, there's always <a href="http://n-gate.com/" rel="nofollow">http://n-gate.com/</a>
Not all these wars are lame:<p>> Various supporters of the US Libertarian party (founded in<p>> 1971) argue that they own the meaning of the word<p>> 'libertarian', that placing it next to 'socialism' is a<p>> contradiction in terms, and hence that libertarian socialism<p>> (described circa 1850) cannot possibly have existed. An edit<p>> war and request-for-deletion war ensues.<p>The question of the meaning of "liberty" and the compatibility of liberty with socialized means of production (and the meaning of "socializing") is quite a deep subject. So, not lame.
This opinion could easily spark one of these wars, but I really wish a global community like Wikipedia wouldn't use ablest language in a title of a post like this...<p>(caveating that I realize the concept of caring about ablest language is relatively new for most people, and that this type of language is deeply ingrained in our cultural subconscious, but it still doesn't cost much to try to avoid it where we can...)