Today’s topic may have been the inspiration for this blog, (which I had the idea for a long time before I took this class), Wikipedia’s article on the lamest edit wars the site has had. The quote which opens the page, “What mighty contest rise from trivial things,” is where the title of the blog came from.
Edit wars, in case you couldn’t figure out from the name alone, are instances when edits to Wikipedia articles are undone and redone repeatedly. This occurs when two contributors have differing opinions on what should go in an article. Reverting an edit 3 times within a day is not allowed in order to curb the disruption caused by edit wars. Many edit wars are over fairly major differences in tone or content or are caused by bad-faith editors, but the edit wars on the “Lamest edit wars” page show some of the more interesting topics which one would not think could provoke so much discussion.
The disputes over place names mentioned earlier flare up as some of the edit wars, such as the Sea of Japan naming dispute, and disputes over the name of the Irish city of Derry (which is officially Londonderry). However, similar national disputes can find their way into seemingly unrelated articles. For example, an uproar emerged over whether or not hummus could be considered an Israeli food, and whether or not the homeland of the Palestine viper was to be referred to as “Palestine” or “the Palestinian territories.”
Other disputes are more pedantic, such as whether or not to capitalize the “i” in the title of the film Star Trek Into Darkness, or whether or not the first letter of “the Beatles” should be capitalized. Some of them are caused by particular personal obsessions, such as an editor who insisted on changing instances of the word “between” to the word “betwixt.” There was also an argument about whether or not the list of Virtual Boy games should have a pink background to match the console’s aesthetic. Many of them seem to amount to playground disputes, such as whether or not the tiger is “the most powerful living cat.”
However, despite the trivial nature of these disputes, they all had to be resolved somehow, and in the cases of some issues (like the ethnicity-related ones) there is no easy way to do so. Some disputes emerge from the fact that Wikipedia says in its policies that it is not censored, so shocking content on articles does not need to be removed, although purposefully adding shocking material is generally frowned upon.
The article is mostly intended to be humorous, so you should probably give a read if you want to find out more, though as a word of warning some somewhat inappropriate topics are discussed.
I checked out the article that you attatched, and I found it funny like you said it would be. Thank you for including the right links! I really enjoyed reading your article and the article that you discussed. Good job.