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Lamest Edit Wars

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Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#31

Post by epolanski »

Wikipedia is massively raging in edit wars.

Before 2014's Russian aggression towards Ukraine, several Crimea-related pages pointed out (with citations) that Crimea tried to split from Ukraine twice already during soviet times, but this whole narrative was steadily rewritten after 2014.

Considering how many people rely on Wikipedia to get "facts", this has always struck me at how much history rewriting can happen and how much can it influence the world we live in.

Now, I'm no historian, and I didn't live in Crimea in the 70s, I have no clue what happened there but the whole edit war about Crimea-related pages made me really think about how little and how potentially distorted (in multiple ways) information can be even for recent events.

I think The Office put that beautifully when Michael Scott says:

“Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information.”

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#32

Post by ineedasername »

This is extremely useful. Lately I've begun to feel that my edit wars had descended into the just the usual mundane back & forth. My spirit wasn't really in it. But a guide like this is just what I needed to revitalize my pettiness and perhaps even raise it to new heights.

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#33

Post by zamnos »

leipert wrote: post #25
tgv wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, of course, place of birth doesn't determine nationality, and also not necessarily modern nationality. I know a few families whose children were born in France, but have the Spanish nationality, and one of them changed nationality (not to French). Polish borders have shifted a few times, to highlight another problem. I think the problem comes from trying to keep the text short.

> place of birth doesn't determine nationality Depends: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli In most of the Americas it actually does.

As anybody with dual citizenship has the passports to prove it, Jus Soli is only half (or a third, for triple citizenship) the story.

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#34

Post by canjobear »

tobr wrote: post #6

> Was Chopin French, French–Polish, Polish, or Polish–French? An aside, but maybe this wouldn’t be as much of an issue if not every biographic article had to start with “ ( ) is a ”. I never understood why nationality should be considered more important than the reason someone is notable.

This position has been well-considered in all the edit wars listed.

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#35

Post by TechBro8615 »

epolanski wrote: post #31

Wikipedia is massively raging in edit wars. Before 2014's Russian aggression towards Ukraine, several Crimea-related pages pointed out (with citations) that Crimea tried to split from Ukraine twice already during soviet times, but this whole narrative was steadily rewritten after 2014. Considering how many people rely on Wikipedia to get "facts", this has always struck me at how much history rewriting can happen and…

The best place to find alternate views is on the Talk page of any controversial article. You can usually judge the bias of an article by reading the discussion on its Talk page (and making sure to view the archives).

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#36

Post by zamnos »

nevi-me wrote: post #9

For months or longer, there's been an edit war around Solana vs Ethereum, where mods (it appears deliberate) only allow negative content about the former. It felt petty that adults who've spent over a decade editing such a vast source of information could end up devoting a chunk of their unpaid labour time to such petty edit wars. I didn't know that there's so many edit wars, speaks to the vastness of Wikipedia.

It is petty? If you have a vested interest in cryptocurrency, in particular a cryptocurrency that you've got a lot of, and a vested interest in a different cryptocurrency not replacing yours, that gives someone real financial motive not to allow negative comments about the former, and to make it sound like the latter is on shakey ground and is just moments from collapse. I'd flex whatever Wikipedia editor privileges I had if significant portions of my net worth was tied up in Ethereum and not Solana. Greedy sure, but not petty, not when huge amounts of money are on the line.

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#37

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

smcl wrote: post #15

Quite a few of these disputes were about nationalities, which is interesting as I encountered this recently. I noticed on one page that someone famous was quite unusually described as "British" when "Welsh" was more accurate. A bit more digging and it turned out to be the work of a user who had made a few contributions changing "Scottish" and "Welsh" to "British" with comments like "corrected the nationality, Welsh i…

Nationalistic edit-wars are the worst, and these are most likely to rage all the way up through ArbCom decisions.

I visited Catalonia once fifteen years ago, and so for a while I had an interest in Barcelona and Catalonian topics such as Antoni Gaudí. Now, I knew about the Catalonian independence movement, and the history of oppression by Franco and so forth. So it was no surprise that the nationality of Gaudí was controversial. If you put that he was a Spanish architect then someone would soon come along and change it to "Catalan architect" and of course, that could not stand more than a few days before a nationalist would change it back to "Spanish". So we compromised on "Antoni Gaudí was a Spanish Catalan architect", and this phrasing withstood most scrutiny, and we managed to tamp down the edit-war on that particular lead sentence.

Other nationalistic edit-wars of note include the naming of the FYROM (Macedonia and "North" Macedonia), Armenian genocide denial, the Israel-Palestine conflict, of course, and many many others.

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#38

Post by deafpolygon »

> Aeris vs Aerith

She'll always be Aeris to me.

> Star Trek Into Darkness

Well, that depends. If it's a sub-tag, like "Star Trek: " then it's capitalized. Ergo, "Star Trek: Into Darkness". But if it's "Star Trek" going into darkness, then it's lowercase. Anyways, I think it's "Star Trek Into Darkness" (the different font on the official title leads me to believe it is more like "Star Trek: Into Darkness" so it should be capitalized.

Re: Lamest Edit Wars

#40

Post by sashank_1509 »

epolanski wrote: post #31

Wikipedia is massively raging in edit wars. Before 2014's Russian aggression towards Ukraine, several Crimea-related pages pointed out (with citations) that Crimea tried to split from Ukraine twice already during soviet times, but this whole narrative was steadily rewritten after 2014. Considering how many people rely on Wikipedia to get "facts", this has always struck me at how much history rewriting can happen and…

My thumb rule is to ignore wikipedia for any article with a hint of politics. Unfortunately over time nothing is being spared from politics
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