Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars/Wording
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PLEASE include two or three edit history links about the lame edit war. It would be also useful to list the date the edit war was added.
The band is/are a collective noun
[edit]One difference between British and American English that seems to especially enrage editors is the treatment of collective nouns in articles about musical bands:
- 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. Stopped only after admin intervention, but resumed again two minutes after the 3RR block expired. Both get blocked for seven days, and one of them gets his block extended to eight days after stating he doesn't care as long as the other side gets a block of the same length. The other side keeps his seven-day block. (Feb. 2006) A similar debate occurred at The Smashing Pumpkins.
- Red Hot Chili Peppers: A multi-day revert war over the proper conjugation of the verb "to be" in the first line of the lead. See [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. By the time we get to the next day, it has spread to the use of the definite article "the" in the same sentence: [6], [7]. Everyone talks with the authority of a grammarian. No one has any clue, quite obviously though. For non-English speakers this is particularly lame since the verb to be can be conjugated eight ways (am, is, are, was, were, be, been, being) – not fifty-plus as in most other Indo-European languages.
- U2: Is it "U2 are" or "U2 is"? Should the article be written in British English or changed to American English? A full page protection and several combined discussions later (including one on the Royal Family), the dispute over a single word still rages on.
Questions have arisen concerning the name of Lita's moves. Is it DDT, or Lita DDT? Hurricanrana or Litacanrana? Moonsault or Litasault? Powerbomb or Lita Bomb? Is the powerbomb even a finishing move, considering it's not used that often? Do you go by the games, by the announcers, or by WWE.com? After several arguments and many people exclaiming they will continue to change it back, a Fan Name section is created, listing the names fans have given her moves.
Not so much an edit war as an editing armed standoff. Ask yourself: should this song be declared "written one pluvious night" or "one rainy night"? Ironically, "one" night was declared superior to the previous version, "in a" night. Pluvious actually won in a voting showdown, but when it was later changed back to rainy, nobody really cared.
Should psychology or philosophy be the first link in the lede? An editor's fondness for the Philosophy Effect may influence their answer.
Jazz pianist had a career spanning decades and was father to two adopted sons. Wikipedians battle for years because at the end of the musician's life the coroner reported that he she Tipton he[unbalanced opinion?] was biologically female. A decade later, the edit war flared up again, this time around whether inclusion of his birth name would be considered deadnaming.
Editors can't decide whether this venue is for-profit, or non-profit. Edit warring ensues.
An edit war surrounded the sentence "Theological disputes about the correct interpretation of Christian teaching led to internal conflicts and Church authorities condemned some theologians as heretics, defining orthodoxy in contrast to heresy, the most notable being Christian Gnosticism." The questionable wording was the switching of the words "orthodoxy" and "heresy". The user preferring heresy before orthodoxy claimed grammatical accuracy and no meaning change. The user preferring orthodoxy before heresy claimed it completely changed the meaning of the sentence. This discussion can be found here.
Cleo was Kenny Everett's sidekick throughout the 1980s. But was she best known for this? Cue increasingly aggressive back and forth ([8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]), semi-protection amid accusations of sockpuppetry, and the obligatory ANI thread. Perhaps she's now best known for edit warring. (See also David Gilmour for a similar theme – [18])
Does the Conch Republic, the name assumed by Key West when it "seceded" from the U.S. in 1982, qualify as a "micronation"? For months, an edit war has progressed over this burning question. Supporters say the name is still used in tourist promotions, while detractors say the "Republic" was a joke protest, and the "Prime Minister" surrendered one minute later. Others say micronationalism is an incredibly silly concept anyway.
Was Cranky Kong the original Donkey Kong? Could it be the character in Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 games is actually his son? Or perhaps his grandson? Should we trust offhand comments made by a video-game character? Does being licensed by Nintendo make Rareware publications "official"? How official is the "Nintendo Seal of Quality"? To some people, these questions are a matter of life and death. (For the record, the Nintendo Seal of Quality was, as the name implies, a means of quality control related to the company's internal policy regarding third-party software. But it's still a lame edit war.)
There was a kerfuffle over several sentences on this page. Is a Danish pastry a "variant of puff pastry" or merely similar to it? Should you describe a picture of one as "A typical Danish of Spandauer type with apple filling and glazing" or "A typical Spandauer-type Danish with apple filling and glazing"? Whatever the case, tempers got so frayed the article and the talk page needed to be protected, until everyone calmed down and settled for a nice cup of tea and a ... oh, hang on ...
Or daylight savings time. Or Daylight Saving(s) Time. Or Daylight-Saving(s) Time. You've never heard "saving" in the singular in your entire life? Send in the dualling (or is it duelling?) dictionaries. Either way, it's still dark at 7:00 AM and I'm tired.
Is this comic produced by Curtis Magazines or by Marvel Comics? Should Marvel, which may or may not appear in the comic book (this can't be confirmed, for some reason) appear in the infobox, even though it already appears in the text of the article? People might not see it in the article, and will not read the article. Extensive coverage of this on the talk page.
Derren was shown convincing former unbelievers to believe in god, or should that be "God", or "the Christian god"? The revert war is over, since the article has been protected, but still the battle lingers on in the talk page.
Clearly this article should be named exclusive or. Google hits and a majority of editors confirm the popular name. But wait! This is mob rule! Mathematicians know the real name is exclusive disjunction! Discussion subheadings during this move war include "Are you kidding me?" and "Everyone is laughing at you". It clearly cannot be both.
Is the alliterative phrase "the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds" worthy of inclusion? Was placed on WP:RFC at one point.
Week-long debate regarding the "Controversy/Criticism" section about whether or not Final Fantasy VIII has a "massive" fanbase or a "fanbase as large as the fanbase of Final Fantasy VII". Other wording issues were also discussed. Unfortunately, all options required that sources be cited. The article has since become a featured article.
Fistulae are connections between two organs that don't normally connect, or is that "betwixt two organs"? In 2005 a patient and anonymous editor with a fondness for archaic spellings changed the wording for the many occurrences of "between" in the article every few months, prompting immediate reversions and comprising a large minority of edits to the article that year.
Furious edit war that leads to a thread on WP:ANI and an editor proclaiming that they were leaving the project. The point of contention? Whether this fictional character from a sitcom in the mid-70s was to be described as an "irascible curmudgeon" or as merely "irritable".
Was protagonist Fry cryonically frozen or cryogenically frozen (or even crygenically frozen)? Why don't we just say he was frozen? Seeing as it has been changed nearly daily since the creation of the article (occasionally accompanied by a bit of text on the talk page uncovering some new evidence gleaned from an audio commentary), we may never know ...
An editor added the sentence "The conceit of 'questioning answers' is original to Jeopardy! and, along with its theme music, remains the most enduring and distinctive element of the show." After several people changed "conceit" to "concept", all being reverted by the original editor, a two-year long war broke out over whether the word, used in the context of literary conceit, was appropriate for an article about a game show, with the word in constant flux until someone just changed it to "notion". And then the sentence was deleted.
Is he an "English retired musician" or a "retired English musician"? Another one bites the dust ...
An edit war erupted over John Kerry's first Purple Heart award in Vietnam. Was it just a wound or a "minor wound"? Should wound itself be wikilinked? Was the injury "bandaged", or simply wrapped with "gauze"? Is Kerry's family background pertinent? The wound issue ended with the Rex071404 arbitration case and that editor being banned from editing the article for a year. One year later, the same edit war re-ignited, leading to another arbitration case and the permanent ban of said editor, who then departed Wikipedia. (See also Swift Vets and POWs for Truth)
Is she an "entertainer" or a "journalist?" Is it necessary to mention that she "annoyingly" drops the "g" at the end of words (e.g. "morneen")?
This edit war is fast approaching its first year of existence, mostly a dispute between two users, but has drawn in other editors for brief periods. It started with disputed information on the guns, then moved on to repeated accusations of using weasel words, NPOV, original research, sockpuppetry, disruption of Wikipedia, and vandalism.
An edit war over what to call Mozart's buttocks! Should the German "Arsch" in the title of a joke composition be translated as "arse" or "ass"? See first edit war, second edit war, third edit war, 3RR report, talk page hilarity. The edit summaries that accompany these are equally lame. Between these edits are much of the same. This looks to continue well into the future. The moral of the story: Whether you are going for the ass or the arse, either way, you are going to want full protection.
Dispute over the ordering of the two terms used to describe the band. Is the group a nu metal/rapcore or rapcore/nu metal band? The edit war also threatened to spread into other related articles as well, including Fred Durst and Rapcore.
Should the term "period" or "full stop" be used to describe a full stop (or period)? An edit war and heated discussion on the talk page broke out over this very issue.
In an article written in Commonwealth English and about a topic in the field of aviation, should "alternate airport" or "alternative airport" be used in the following sentence: "The extra fuel was enough to divert to alternate airports – Jinan Yaoqiang International Airport and Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport – which would require 4,800 kg (10,600 lb) or 10,700 kg (23,600 lb), respectively, to reach from Beijing."
? In the aviation field, the term "alternate aerodrome" (or "alternate airport" or "alternate airfield") is used globally to refer to the second airport/aerodrome/airfield selected in a flight plan if a landing at the planned destination cannot be made, see material published by aviation authorities in Europe (Eurocontrol), Israel (CAA). This use of the term "alternate" is consistent with usage in North America, where it means "taking the place of; alternative". In other English-speaking regions, and as second meaning in the US/Canada, the word "alternate" means "every other". This has prompted many editors to try, even after a wikilink and hidden note was added, to change the term to "alternative airport", which is not consistent with usage in the aviation field.
Was Mama (Vicki Lawrence) "pro-active", "foxy", "clever", "cunning", or none of the above? Apparently this question is important enough to occupy more than thirty edits in one day.
Active vs. passive wording: "James Christy discovered the innermost moon, Charon on June 22, 1978, nearly half a century after Pluto's discovery." vs. "The innermost moon, Charon, was discovered by James Christy on June 22, 1978, nearly half a century after Pluto."
Has the GameCube been discontinued (thus it "has failed" to regain the market share lost by its predecessor, the Nintendo 64)? Or, since both the Xbox and PS2 have been discontinued, is the GameCube "failing" to regain the market share? An edit war over these two words ensues after an editor attempts to get the wording changed from the former to the latter. After a very passionate discussion and an inconclusive sockpuppet report, full protection ends the war.
Was the manga published by Viz in a "flipped" format, reading left-to-right, or in a "flipped", left-to-right format?
Is Adam Carr Ph.D, a Historian, or does Adam Carr hold a PhD in history? In addition to five reverts, also spawns thread on the Administrators Noticeboard.
An admin and a user edit war over a number of album articles over the use of "second" or "sophomore". Editing gets heated and eventually results in a block and a request for arbitration.
Is Spore a god game, a life simulation, a strategy game, or a sandbox game? Can we fit everything it is into the template, or do we need a separate section in the article, just to explain its many genres? Don't be fooled by the talk page discussion, there's an edit war here too. As of posting, the dispute is unresolved and the page has been protected. It still can't seem to catch a break—it's been vandalized by one "Idiotic troll" or another for a decade.[19]
Is Squall a hero or a protagonist? Many reverts between "hero", "protagonist", and variant forms of each ensue as an accompanying Talkpage debate weighs the definitions, connotations, and comparisons of the respective terms relative to Squall's role in Final Fantasy VIII; other Final Fantasy articles suffer collateral damage.
The Price Is Right's "lamest" pricing game. Should it be said that it's "the only game that can be won by deciding to do absolutely nothing" or "the only game that can sometimes be won by deciding to do absolutely nothing"? After a few dozen reverts, a third opinion agreed that "sometimes" was redundant, leading the other user to remove the entire sentence claiming it wasn't really the only game that can be won that way after all.
Does Tifa, a character in a PlayStation game (Final Fantasy VII), have "ample breasts"? Lara Croft strongly opposes such a ludicrous claim. Lengthy debate over wording, whether breast size is POV, and the entire concept of mentioning something that silly. And what exactly is her hair colour supposed to be, anyway – black or brown?
A revert war on whether the tiger can properly be described as the "most powerful living cat" (complete with accusations that people were "tiger fanboys") gradually led to arguments about how tigers would match up vs. bears and crocodiles (oh my!), complete with another revert war about the inclusion of a YouTube video showing a tiger fighting a crocodile, eventually leading to the article being semi-protected. The debates about bears and crocodiles continue on the talk page.
Is Urban75 a "left leaning" or "liberal leaning" site? A two-month argument on this results in hundreds of reverts, userpage vandalism, sockpuppetry & two separate WP:VfDs.