Wikipedia’s Lamest Edit Wars

Hat-tip to Lindsay: Wikipedia has a page dedicated to Wikipedia’s lamest edit wars.

Avengers (comics)

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).

Gdańzig 

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 Baltijas city. The edit war is so notorious that is is mentioned in the April Fools 2006 “Wikipedia’s first IRC chat” log.

Death Star 

Is it 120km or 160km in diameter? Who cares?

FOX News 

One user rewrites part of a paragraph; another user reverts because of three commas placed outside quotation marks; and a revert war ensues.

Avril Lavigne

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.

Beelzebub 

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.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Which picture should top the article: “Old style” Sonic or 3D Sonic? After a some discussion, including an image-by-image vote on every image on the page, consensus settled on both.

The weather in London

This page is used in several places as an example of something that shouldn’t have an article. And indeed, it doesn’t (Red link is also used as an example of, well, a red link in some places). Since several people made lame attempts to create it anyway (e.g. with contents “foggy”) and others have inserted Template:deletedpage thus defeating the point, it’s probably our most-often deleted page ever. Our actual page on the weather in London is climate of London; occasionally, a redirect has been made here (and deleted again). One editor found this issue important enough to create an official policy proposal for the deprecation of this red link, advertised on this very page. It did not quite get the community support he hoped for.

Who says Wikipedia is just a source of dry information?