Misplaced Pages:Lamest edit wars

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Occasionally, Wikipedians lose their minds and get into edit wars over the most petty things. This is to document that phenomenon. This page isn't comprehensive or authoritative, but it is designed to show the "worst-case" result of people attaching so much importance to some trivial detail that they are willing to engage in the lame pastime of edit warring over an even lamer cause.

File:Head to head clowns.jpg

Bring on the clowns!

Ethnic feuds

(see also Gdań zig below)

Category:Hong Kong literature: Edit war over whether the category should be subcategorized under or merely linked to Category:Chinese literature. Resulted in repeated multiple reverts that led to violation of the three-revert rule.

Florina and other towns in Macedonia (Greece): Edit war about whether the alternative name Lerin is Macedonian, Bulgarian, or south Slavic (which covers both Macedonian and Bulgarian).

Foustanella: Who first donned a frilly skirt and threatened to kill anyone who questioned his manhood over it? Was he Albanian or Greek? If Albanian, Gheg or Tosk? Thankfully, none of the modern day warriors on this topic have access to real weapons (we hope!)

Nicolaus Copernicus: Was he Polish, German or Prussian? Or did he have no nationality at all that bears mentioning? If Copernicus were around today, he might have suggested that he would be satisfied to be remembered as an astronomer without a nationality specifier, but we will never know.

Nikola Tesla: Born of Serbian parents in a part of Austria-Hungary which is now in Croatia; so was he Serbian? Croatian? Austro-Hungarian? You decide! But don't forget to leave an edit summary saying how pathetic it is to choose any other version...

Werner Herzog: Born in Germany in 1942 of a German mother and a Yugoslavian father, and raised in Bavaria, Germany. Does that make him a) Croatian or b) Serbian? Fill your edit summaries with original reporting and interviews. Yes, interviews that you conducted — or heard rumors about.

Names

2006 FIFA World Cup: In Swiss German, "ss" is used in place of the ligature "ß". So should the German name use "Fußball" or "Fussball"? Despite the fact that even the German version of the page wasn't consistent, many editors were convinced that they knew best, and the edit war still lives on.

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).

Cornelius Vanderbilt: When a vandal struck and a good user reverted all but one of his/her edits, an edit war ensued over whether Cornelius was nicknamed "The Ass" or not. Another good user stopped the short edit war by adding a comment about the missed vandalism.

C Sharp: In the name of the programming language C#, is that # thing (octothorpe) after the C a number sign or the musical sharp symbol? What should the wrongname template say? Some argue that a Microsoft FAQ supports the sharp symbol, while others argue that the ECMA standard promotes the # symbol and that it has better browser support. Some propose using # as a superscript (C), which few editors like. Editors repeatedly reverted between each other, some refusing to discuss the issue on the talk page. 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?

Devil's Lake (North Dakota): Shockingly, there are multiple locations in the United States with the name "Devil's Lake." A very heated war broke out here regarding which one should be featured, whether a disambig page was needed, even over the usage of the apostrophe- eventually literally degenerating into "my lake is better than yours!"

Fossil fuel for reciprocating piston engines equipped with spark plugs: Should this substance be called gasoline or petrol? See the talk page for a debate about the total number of English speakers in the world, the relative utility of search engines and claims that UK-wikipedians are set to re-establish the British empire by moving pages to British spellings and that Americans who want "gasoline" are being their usual nationalistic/culturally imperialistic selves. Gasoline has been settled on for now, only because it was the original title, but the fallout has yet to settle.

Gdań zig: Edit wars have been occurring for most of Misplaced Pages'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 it is mentioned in the April Fools 2006 "Misplaced Pages's first IRC chat" log.

Libertarian Socialism: Various supporters of the US Libertarian party (founded in 1971) argue that they own the meaning of the word 'libertarian', that placing it next to 'socialism' is a contradiction in terms, and hence that libertarian socialism (described circa 1850) cannot possibly have existed. An edit war and request for deletion war ensues.

Hannover 96: One n or two n's? Filling up many talk pages and much time.

Her Late Majesty: Must a queen deceased for over a century still be styled here "Her Majesty", an epithet conventionally reserved for the current monarch? This weighty dispute (pale reflection of warring here), filling talk pages and edit histories, has spilled over into other British monarchs, other royals and titleholders, several countries having or having had a monarchy, claimants and other royal pretensions, and even hundreds of holders of the papacy, where popes centuries dead are endorsed as “His Holiness” here, losing and regaining the endorsement with blinks of eyes. Ongoing debates deal with the format of dates, and the used or unused, existing or non-existent ~~surnames~~ ~~family names~~ ~~house names~~ ~~former fiefs~~ (some inherited names, but very few are sure what they precisely are) of monarchs and relatively unfamiliar variants of those (as well as the putative name of the horse of her late majesty's husband's family), with most edits being extremely trivial. Involved parties vouch for only aiming at accuracy, and certainly some argumentation goes deeper than believed humanly possible. This even created an edit war over whether it could be mentioned here. A truce, seemingly imposed by a Royal intervention that dragged in innocent bystander Prince Michael of Kent, Scottish accents and snail slime, appears to be holding, though occasionally some new fallout is being generated.

Istanbul: It was Constantinople, but is it now Istanbul or İstanbul? A few editors make nuclear war over a small speck above the I, bringing new meaning to the word iota.

Kiev, the capital of Ukraine: Has the (mis)fortune of having a Russian name that clearly is internationally more widely known than the Ukrainian name. The best efforts of Ukraine's government to legislate what is the right version of their capital's name in the English-speaking world led only to edit and revert wars in Misplaced Pages, as some editors did not heed the country's own government, insisting that the best-known version should be used, and in the end they won. Since it was unthinkable that any of the warring camps were wrong in their contentions, it must have been the NPOV policy that was faulty.

Land making up Tsushima subprefecture: Is it an island or a group of islands? Does it matter if there are islets surrounding what people call an island? Can we still consider it an island if the navy blasted a shipping channel in the middle of it? Maybe the Japanese name should be used to decide. Or possibly the English term used to refer to it by the government of Japan. Or is it just a case of one side thinking about the landmass in the sea (e.g. British Isles) while the other side thinking about the island as a political entity (e.g. United Kingdom & Ireland) and couldn't actually agree on what the article is actually about??

"Local girl makes good": Pet views on royalty again, mostly the same parties warring - but this time, aligned contrariwise. Could an American woman who made an ex-king her catch keep the title she was bestowed by the marriage ... or is the "she stole our king" attitude a sufficient reason to revert her (posthumously) back to her second husband's surname, Wallis Simpson? See how contrary POVs enter the debate: persons who had wanted "majesties" and "highnesses" used in each minor royal's articles arguing to strip an American girl of her only nobility title, and see chivalrous Americans fighting to the metaphorical death in defense of a countrywoman's entitlement. An interesting point has been whether it is fatal or not that she married her Duke after his abdication, and this relates to various and sundry Austrian, Russian, and Romanian monarchies lost, as well as to her sisters-in-law and also to Fergie.

Missing sun motif: Is it a collection of myths or a motif? Should "sun" be capitalized or not? What about "underworld"? Edit warring here over these and other weighty issues have involved four editors and most of the article's history.

Richard Neustadt: Two months of edit war on whether the page should say "]" or "President ]" (plus the same with several other presidents).

Speedy deletion criteria: While not really an ongoing edit war, an interesting point of lameness is the fact that a significant number of edits to WP:CSD consist of changing the name in the example of attack pages, e.g. this edit.

Tsushima Basin: Is it important to know that Korea has been preparing to officially register the name "Ulleung Basin"? The ocean feature is known both under the Japanese name Tsushima basin and under the Korean name Ulleung basin. There is also lots of disagreement which name is the more commonly used name in English for a place that pretty much nobody knows. (Also see the related lame edit war for the Land making up Tsushima subprefecture above)

Wii: Is this article about the Wii or the Nintendo Wii? Should it be Nintendo's Wii? Does it rhyme with "We" or "Wee"? Should "Wee" link to urine? Is "Wee" slang or a euphemism for urine? Is it a British or International word for urine? Should urine be mentioned in the article at all? Just some of the hard hitting issues that provoked in excess of 1500 edits in the space of two weeks. In addition to all of that, a massive war breaks out over "non-official external links" that leads to a huge strawpoll to end the issue.

William of Orange: was the name of one King of England and also of some totally obscure minor characters in the mists of history — or was it actually the name of two important and well-known Protestant Heads of State, etc? That became the object of a dispute over a redirect. This vital question divided a bunch of eminent readers of history and led to a revert war that alternated the redirect almost every hour. Casual viewers were holding their breath when coming to check what was the current position of that weathervane. As the name's usage in English-speaking cultures was perceived to be the determining factor, there were attempts to almost hand-count English-speakers in New Zealand, South Africa, etc. — all apparently using the hallowed name in certain way. Extensive and in-depth arguments in several talk pages and usertalk pages included claims of original primary authorship of a redirect as well as accusations of nationalistic POV, filibustering and "using all the tricks in the box." This teaches us some things about disambiguation pages and potential problems surrounding even such tools. A formal poll resulted in votes 9-5 in favor of renaming the disambiguation page as simply William of Orange, and most fallout is being settled.

Copyrights

Hitler Has Only Got One Ball: Can anonymously written folk songs be copyrighted? What if the anonymous author sues Misplaced Pages? Or his son? Such a serious controversy on such a serious article can only be settled by a soul-scarring delving into international copyright law, which fails to convince an obstinately irascible user out to impugn Misplaced Pages's credibility.

Numbers and statistics

André the Giant: Was he 7'1"? 7'4"? 6'10"? Was his height even consistent during his entire career? He's tall, just leave it at that.

Baltimore: Is the city's climate subtropical or continental? Are there a couple snowstorms a year, or several? Do some winters bring less than an inch of snow, or only a trace? How often does it get below 10°F or, for that matter, 5°F, or even 0°F? Is January's average low 29°F or 23°F? And just which weather station most accurately describes Baltimore's climate? These seemingly easily verifiable facts have been the subject of a slow-motion edit war for many months.

Death Star: Is it 120km or 160km in diameter? Who cares?

e (mathematical constant): An editor who self-admittedly knows little of mathematics disputes the status of e as an "important number", preferring the term "special number". When a number of mathematically inclined people disagree, he argues that e is not in fact a number.

Football World Cup: Who finished third in the 1930 World Cup? The United States? Yugoslavia?

Dates

Ann Coulter: Edit war over whether she was born in 1961 or 1963, settled at 1961 after some damning evidence was found.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure: Was it released in 1988, or '89? Was it released straight to video before hitting the theaters? If so, does that count?

Death By Stereo: Was this band officially formed in 1996 or 1998?

Jamie Lynn Spears: Was she born in 1991 or 1992? After years of being born in 1991, her publicist slips up and accidentally mentions she is 13 years old (in 2005), and all hell breaks loose.

Jennifer Lopez: Born in 1969 or 1970? Even after a detailed explanation in the age fabrication article for 1969 was provided, many were still sure it was 1970.

Nancy Reagan: Was she born in 1921? Or 1923? After days of editing, does anyone really care THAT much? Woman is old.

Ned's Atomic Dustbin: Was their independent EP The Ingredients released in 1989 or 1990?

Pennywise (band): Did they release their independent EP Wildcard in 1988, 1989 or 1992? A user claims that it was recorded in 1989, but hadn't been released until 1992. Is there any evidence whether it was officially released before or after the other EP A Word from the Wise? The band has a compilation named Wildcard/A Word from the Wise, which contains both of the EPs, so does that mean that Wildcard was actually released before A Word from the Wise?

Suffer (album): Was this Bad Religion album officially recorded and released in 1987 or 1988? The details on their official website claims 1987 as the date, but the CD release actually printed 1988 as the release date and the liner notes on the album also reads April 1988 as the recording date.

The Sufferer & The Witness: Is this album by Rise Against supposed to be released on July 4 or July 11, 2006? So far the news of Punkmusic.com says that it will be out on July 11th, so does this count as the correct release date? A source for July 4th has not yet been provided.

Punctuation

Berwick-upon-Tweed: A slow-moving edit war that centred over the use of ... an exclamation mark. As User:Ulayiti exclaimed on the talkpage, "Come on guys, you can't actually be having an edit war over one tiny exclamation point!"

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.

Frequent date of birth to death punctuation: Frequent edit wars over whether there are spaces between the dash when writing a person's date of birth and death.
Example (January 24, 1943 – August 9, 1969) or (January 24, 1943–August 9, 1969). Related edit war over whether the month or the date comes first, i.e. 1 July or July 1, despite the fact that display preferences can be set to provide for either regardless of the wikicode placing.

Gloria Ladson-Billings: An edit war over spacing, which led to the article being protected.

Template:Wikipedialang: Edit war involving three sysops over whether there should be commas in "10000" and "1000." Leads to a blocking and liberal use of the rollback button.

Spelling

Ahmed Osman: Should the country with the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Nile be spelled "Egypt" or "Ægypt?" Should the doctrine or belief that there is only one God be spelled "monotheism" or "monotheïsm?" Plenty of hilarity concerning the validity of archaic spellings ensues on the talk page.

Aluminium: The non-American English-speaking world spells it aluminium with two letter "i"'s, the official IUPAC spelling is aluminium also with two letter "i"'s, and that's where the article is - with two letter "i"'s. There are occasional futile attempts to put the word back to aluminum, which only has one letter "i" in it. See here and here for the gory historical details.

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.

Orange (colour): A cut-and-paste move to the American spelling "color". A move back, and statements that Canada, Australia, and the rest of the colour-spelling world didn't matter because the United States spelled it color. Other attempts follow, with one attempt to move it to simply Orange to end the war.

Potato chips: Should potato chips be flavored or flavoured? What is the provenance of the potato chip, America or Ireland? Four-user revert war on these important issues results in the page getting protected and listed on RfC. As a compromise, the chips become seasoned.

Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Jedi6: User:Cyde makes a remark about someone being a rouge admin. User:Doom127 edits Cyde's comment to the spelling "rogue". Cyde reverts, explaining that the spelling error was deliberate. A revert war ensues.

Wheel wars

Main Page: What April Fool's jokes should be mentioned on the Main Page, if any? This protected page, editable only by admins, normally goes unedited for days—all content is included from templates, so there is no need to edit the Main Page directly. On April 1, 2005, it racks up more than 60 revisions of varying seriousness before finally being reverted to a days-old version. This does not even include all revisions of the templates the Main Page includes.

User:The Trolls of Navarone: Two sysops in a revert war over the user page of a blocked sockpuppet of banned user:142. Then, a month later, a user takes one of them to Quickpolls over the revert war.

Templates

John Vanbrugh: Should Template:Infobox Biography be used in this article? Is it ugly or not? Are the place and date of his birth and death important enough to be highlighted in a big box? Does a box which repeats information that is already in the article offer any substantial advantage? Do the wishes of those who wrote most of this featured article count for anything? Multi-sided edit war over these issues.

Template:WikiProject Computer science: 58kb of talk page debate plus a user block over how to copyedit a two line statement.

Template:Castes and Tribes of the Punjab: 92RR in five hours over the inclusion of a certain group. See here.

Userboxes

Template:User admins ignoring policy: A userbox reading "This user is pissed about admins ignoring policy" (the word "pissed" was later changed to "annoyed"). Surprisingly enough, the userbox was speedily deleted by admins. Whether this act was ignoring policy itself is an exercise in irony left for the interested reader. See the first, second, and third Templates for Deletion votes. During its third DRV, support wanes just enough and the userbox remains deleted.

Template:User Aspie: Should the font size for this userbox be 10pt or 14pt? 3rr violations, page protection, and vitriol spilling onto multiple talk pages ensue. Nobody is surprised.

Template:User review: This userbox (consisting of the bare statement "This user has an account at Misplaced Pages Review") has been ~~speedied~~ ~~recreated~~ ~~speedied~~ ~~protected~~ ~~recreated~~ ~~speedied~~ ~~recreated~~ speedied... Well, just see for yourself.

Template:User United Kingdom: A rather heated debate over changing the text of this user box from "This user comes from the United Kingdom." to "This user lives in the United Kingdom." This all arose from an argument over what took precedence; the text the user box said "This user comes from the United Kingdom." or the category it was grouped with Category:Wikipedians in the United Kingdom. It only got resolved by a straw poll vote and the changing of the text.

Userpages

User:COOL CAT ON WHEELS!!!!: Should this indef-blocked user with no edits have an {{imposter}} tag, the now deleted {{WoW}}, or {{pagemovevandal}}? Edit warring over this up one side and down the other.

User:Jimbo Wales: Edit war over background color of various parts of user page. Jimbo himself is not involved.

Pictures

Asian (people): Edit war over which Asian pictures should be the representative pictures on the article.

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.

Cat: 34 reverts in just over an hour. The pressing issues: Should one unremarkable photo be included? Is the cat depicted really smiling? Both users were blocked for 30 seconds — "a suitably lame block for a remarkably lame edit war" — after protection of the page had halted the reverts. One user resumed after protection was lifted the next day, leading to further 12 reverts over the same photograph. Another page protection put a stop to the lameness. As it turned out, the photo was deleted for not having any copyright status.

Feces: Revert wars, alleged sock-puppetry, and page protection: should the article on feces include this picture of a large human turd? As of early July 2005, the discussion on this issue alone had reached 12,900 words.

Image talk:Anime by nima.jpg: A copyright violation was noticed and marked for deletion. When faced with such a discovery, normal users usually say, "Thanks for pointing that out to me." But if it's an administrator, you'd better get ready to face divine wrath.

Invisible Pink Unicorn: Edit war over what pictures (if any) to include of an invisible parody deity, and how to caption them.

JSTOR: Should the logo go on the left of the article or on the right? Straw poll results claims that the right side image is "better".

Missionary position: A revert war between two versions of the line drawn illustration, one incorporating a teddy bear and one without. Some people claimed the bear was distracting, or believed it implied the woman to be under age. Other people found the bear adding atmosphere since the couple is ignoring it.

PlayStation 3: A revert war over the top image. Some users felt that because the free image depicted an outdated model, it should be replaced by a promo image. Others cited the WP:FU policy that states that a free alternative should always be used. Heated debate commences on the talk page after it gets page protected. The issue still comes up time to time about why the free image is up there.

Red hair: "Should we have animals?" "Should we have a picture of this girl or another one?" "Should we have a picture of someone's principal?" "Should we exclude dye jobs?"

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.

Talkpage wars

Homosexuality in Singapore: Probably the first instance of revert-warring on an article talkpage, where one editor accused another of using the talkpage as an alternative soapbox for a POV agenda. The accused editor first tried to insert a list of unpredictable predictions, then when that didn't work, transferred it to the talkpage, ostensibly for "discussion" when in fact none took place. That section was reverted back and forth numerous times, since no statute seems to govern behaviour in talkpages.

Lolicon: Edit war over whether the template at the top, announcing that the article was speedy kept after an Articles for Deletion debate, should include the word "ZOOOOOOOM" to exemplify the speediness of the process.

User talk:66.167.235.16: User:Arminius left the Template:test message on the anonymous user's talk page. The anonymous user removed the test message. A three hour, 25-edit war followed over whether or not the talk page should include such inflammatory messages as {{test}} and welcome notices. Other admins were called in to look at the situation, and, after careful analysis and fact-checking, it was determined to be a very lame edit war indeed.

Wording

Angels and Airwaves: More than 40 reverts in one hour by two editors. The point of contention? Whether "Angels and Airwaves" is a band or "Angels and Airwaves" are a band. (British English requires "are," 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 same length. The other side keeps his seven-day block.

Apple pie: Is apple pie really "all American"? This weighty issue causes a revert war, ending in a 24-hour block, two ArbCom cases, and the temporary departure of one Wikipedian.

Aquarela do Brasil: 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.

Christianity: 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 was once found here, but appears to be gone from both there and the archives.

Cranky Kong: 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.

Daylight saving time: 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 dueling dictionaries. Either way, it's still dark at 7:00 AM and I'm tired.

Drow: Should Dungeons and Dragons be mentioned before Drow or after Drow?

Euro: Are the plurals of "euro" and "cent" "euro" and "cent" (as the ECB suggests) or "euros" and "cents" (as claimed is common usage)?

Europe: Revert war over whether Europe is commonly considered a continent or not.

Exploding whale: Is the phrase "the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds" worthy of inclusion? Was placed on WP:RFC at one point.

Final Fantasy VIII: 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, which is still a work in progress.

Guinea pig: Slow, simmering edit war between anons as to whether guinea pigs had no need to jump and climb in the natural environment in which they were created, or in the natural environment in which they evolved.

John Kerry: 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? Is Kerry's family background pertinent? The wound issue ended with the Rex071404 arbitration case and that editor being banned from editing the article.

Katie Couric: 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")?

Limp Bizkit: 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 is also threatening to spread into other related articles as well, including Fred Durst and Rapcore.

London Underground: 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.

Mama's Family: Was Mama (Vicki Lawrence) "pro-active", "foxy", "clever", "cunning", or none of the above? Apparently this question is important enough to occupy over 30 edits in one day.

Psephos: Is Adam Carr Ph.D, a Historian, or does Adam Carr hold a PhD in history? In addition to 5 reverts, also spawns thread on the Adminstrators Noticeboard.

Switch?: The Price Is Right's lamest pricing game. It's "the only game that can (sometimes) be won by deciding to do absolutely nothing" after all, but isn't "sometimes" redundant in that sentence? What exactly is the meaning of the word "can" anyway? We should have a lame edit war with bitchy edit summaries to decide.

The Smashing Pumpkins: is a band, or are a band? The debate continues... sort of.

United Kingdom: Should the first sentence describe it as a country or state? The final conclusion being that it should be called both and left up to the reader to work out.

Urban75: 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 VfDs.

Weblog: Is a blog an application or is it the product of an application? See the discussion on the Talk: page for Weblog.

Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment: What is the correct wording to indicate that an RfC may be followed by an arbitration request? Is it "Although not formally required before proceeding to arbitration, many RfCs are steps towards it", or is it "Many, though by no means all, arbitration cases are preceded by a user-conduct RFC"? Three-way revert war that has lasted two weeks and 50+ edits so far.

Lists

GNAA: Should the infamous Gay Nigger Association of America be at the top of this irrelevant disambiguation page? The ongoing dispute leads to the page being protected and one administrator being blocked for WP:3RR.

J. K. Rowling: Edit war over long-time contributors preferring the old Harvard references versus the new Cite.php method. Multiple users attempt to use the Ref converter with other users reverting back. One side files a WP:RFC over the issue, while the other side takes a strawpoll. The strawpoll results in an overwhelming consensus to convert.

List of multiracial people: Are people who are White and Multiethnic considered Multiracial?

List of Nu metal musical groups: Do bands like Staind, System of a Down, Tool, etc. have anything to do with nu metal? Do they ever use it?

List of numbers that are always odd: The number 3 was being considered as possibly being not odd. Page protection was needed to halt the heated debate. User:Wik's correction of a misspelling of hypochondriacs was re-reverted no less than 3 times. Supposedly as a means to illustrate the ludicrousness of the subject, various examples such as "the atomic numbers of gold and silver, but not their sum" and "the number of days in a year (except leap years)" were added to the list. Later in the edit war, no less than two thousand five hundred numbers of debated oddness (every second integer from 1 to 4999) were added and removed, four hundred ninety eight of them repeatedly before the edit war was solved by the article's deletion after a VfD vote. An ancient mirror out on the Net still had a version available, though, so it's been rescued for posterity: User:ConMan/List of numbers that are always odd

List of virgins: Dispute about whether or not Britney Spears belonged on the list, eventually resolved in a definitive manner. Eventually maintenance of the list proved impossible and it was deleted.

List of Virtual Boy games: Should the list have a pink background?

Korea Republic national football team: Edit warring over whether or not the list of South Korea's achievements in the World cup should or should not merge the consecutive years when South Korea did not enter (and the same for when it didn't qualify).

Personal concerns

Daniel Brandt: Someone writes an article about him and he complains that he is a private citizen and not notable. He grows angry with Misplaced Pages and rants about it on his webpage. More people add to the article just to piss Brandt off, resulting in an article that is sometimes (depending on the edit of the moment) more detailed than that of most movie stars. Ironically, Brandt's anti-Misplaced Pages zeal leads him to involve himself in the John Seigenthaler Sr. Misplaced Pages biography controversy, thus making himself notable and blowing any chance of his article being deleted. D'oh!

John Byrne: A somewhat controversial comic book artist who felt there were errors in his article and so blanked almost all of the content without explaining what specifically the errors he was objecting to were. He raised the subject on his own message board and both supporters and detractors flocked to Misplaced Pages to join in the fight, resulting in numerous articles in blogs and other comic industry media about the ensuing conflict.

Suncrest, Washington: Constant reversion of Mark Richards's "vandalism" by original creator who seemed to think it was his page. See page history and VfD discussion.

WNRI: Should we mention the fact that the station's broadcast power drops to a ridiculously low wattage at night? Yes, it's a fact. No, I could LOSE MY JOB.

Miscellaneous lameness

1994 FIFA World Cup: A revert war over what order the teams' names should appear in the list of results.

Adria (Stargate): Is the language being spoken Latin? Or is it Ancient? Is it Ori? Is it Ancient-based-on-Latin? Is it Latin-based-on-Ancient? Is it Ancient or Ori rendered as Latin? All of the above? No? Oh, I'm so confused…

Amerime: A term created to define American anime, Amerime was deleted as a neologism, then reborn, then deleted, then reborn, then deleted, and then stuck when the software jammed. It was then deleted and reborn again, at which point it managed a sufficient rally on the AfD to survive, roughly 18 months after the original was first posted.

Aphex Twin: Is Aphex Twin really IDM? Is IDM even a legitimate genre, or is it just a huge internet troll? Are 99% of things on the web rubbish? If you are an editor aged 38-42, your opinion is requested.

Augusto Pinochet: On September 7, 2005, three anonymous and two Misplaced Pages editors contend in a 20 revert war, sometimes reverting each other in less than a minute, over the course of a half-hour.

Better Days (webcomic): Among the reviews for the WebComic, should there be a negative review written by a group of anti-furries? Unlike most edit wars, this one was lazy and slow, with the presence or absence of the link appearing or disappearing for months at a time. This edit war was finally solved when someone realized that a webcomic didn't need a link to every review that's ever been written about it, and dropped all except for one, balanced set of reviews.

Cauliflower: Is cauliflower nutritious? Is specifying what parts are usable POV?

Charles Darwin: Is sharing a birthday with Abraham Lincoln important enough to include in the Charles Darwin article, or is it a bit of trivia that has no place in an encyclopedia? As of 4 February 2005, there has been an eight week-long revert war over a single sentence. There have been two polls on the Darwin Talk pages, one request for a debate, one WP:RFC, one WP:RFM, one WP:RFAr denied, and one recently closed RFAr. The discussions at Talk:Charles Darwin/Lincoln and LincolnArchive01, plus the arbitration pages amount to some 30,000 words, which is about the length of a short Agatha Christie novel.

Cosplay: Edit war over two external links , and over the existence of HTML comments that were added in an attempt to stop the war.

Daedalus class battlecruiser: Should the identity of the Daedalus class battlecruiser destroyed at the end of the Stargate SG-1 season 9 episode Camelot be mentioned? The show left this as a cliffhanger for the next episode but widely available casting information and episode summaries for upcoming episodes make the answer obvious. Is such information canon? Is this a "worse" spoiler than other spoilers already present elsewhere in Misplaced Pages? The edit war continued in fits and starts over the entire between-season hiatus, when the season opener aired and confirmed the information.

Daffy Duck: Did Daffy Duck father any children? Should the events of certain animated films be taken to have occurred in "real life" while others should not? And is it Misplaced Pages's business to document the "real life" of fictional characters in the first place?

Democratic Party (United States)

This article has seen a number of frequent and repeating lame edit wars. These include:

Was the party founded by President Thomas Jefferson in 1792 or President Andrew Jackson in 1828 and does this make it the oldest political party in the world?
Should the party be referred to as the “Democratic Party” or the “Democrat Party”?
Who is a “conservative Democrat” and what do you call them?
Who should be considered a 2008 presidential front-runner?

Furry: Huge edit war over whether or not the article should be re-directed to furry fandom with multiple reverts and multiple-paragraph arguments on the talk page.

Grace Kelly and Cher: Edit wars over whether each is a gay icon.

Hypnotize: Was it supposed to be called Mesmerize? Since the two are supposed to be a double album, does it really matter? Much to-ing and fro-ing over an assertion that the names of the two albums were switched around, with sources asked for but none provided.

Irish breakfast: What goes into an Irish breakfast; black pudding, white pudding or neither? Is the bacon boiled or fried? See the talk page for an in-depth of the various issues.

Jennifer Aniston: Is she American or American-born?

Jeremy Clarkson and Talk:Jeremy Clarkson: An ongoing edit war over whether or not a {{npov-section}} tag should be placed in the Controversy section. Is the section controversial, or is it Clarkson, or is it both? And does one matter more than the other? Repeated calls to specify exactly what is POV have gone unheeded, with one side going, "'tis!" and the other going, "'tisn't!" with equal vagueness. Meanwhile, the cleanup of the rest soldiers on...

Jesus: A very long dispute arguing over whether to use BC/AD or BCE/CE for era notations, resulting in the somewhat foolish use of both systems within the article (i.e. 400 BC/BCE and 30 AD/CE) with the BC/AD terms usually preceding the BCE/CE terms. The dispute sometimes re-arises.

Job (professional wrestling): Edit war over a two sentence "Comedy relief" section.

KTVX: Is adding that rival KSL-TV is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints vandalism that must be reverted on sight?

Mezmerize: Recurring edit wars over such trivialities as the release date of the album and the chart positions of songs.

Michael Jackson: Is it really that big a deal whether his nicknames are in the opening paragraph or not?

Michael Moore: He was born in Davison, Michigan, a suburb of Flint, Michigan. He often says he's from Flint. Is that correct?

Micronations: Two self-proclaimed leaders of micronations in a lengthy revert war in this and other articles about the comparative value and notability of their made-up countries.

Miss Kitty Fantastico: Edit war over whether it is appropriate for the text some demons to link to the article Evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet.

Monty Hall problem: Is it a puzzle of probability or of game theory?

Moscow Metro: Regarding the table of Moscow Metro lines, should the color of the line be in the first column or the second? Should the color names be spelled out or do the colors speak for themselves? Edit warring over the version of the table occured at the onset of June 2006. Following a month-long full protection, a straw poll, a request for comment, and an appearance in the New York Times on June 17, 2006 for its protection (and almost certainly this lame dispute), the article was unprotected, not because anything was actually resolved but because the article had been protected for so long. And guess what? More edit/revert warring and ensues, to the point where the original table is re-added to the article and one frustrated editor proclaims: Ah, so we've killed a couple of weeks to ... keep the old table. Amazing. Indeed. Amazing.

Sarah Edmonds: Wik makes a correction, giving her middle name and month of birth. This gets lost through an edit conflict, and Danny and Alexandros add a paragraph worth of content. Wik reverts. Danny reverts. Etcetera. The only objection either had with the other's edits was that it reverted their own.

SkyOS: Fast & furious kindergarten catfight with accusations of GPL violations, advertising, lying and fanboyism.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Are Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader considered one character or two separate ones? Do they deserve separate listings in the "credits" section? This seemingly trivial disagreement degenerates into a full-fledged revert war, complete with allegations of vandalism, 3RR violations, aggressive edit summaries and a week long page-protection.

As a side note: Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back has also been the site of an edit war over whether Ian McDiarmid should be included in the credits or not for his role in the Special Edition version.

And while we're on the subject, revert wars on RotS and other Star Wars film articles over whether or not the credit list should duplicate the official credits at the end of the film, or be edited by Wikipedians to include uncredited roles. Both sides of the war seem to feel they have the weight of policy on their side, but no one actually points to policies. Thankfully this seems to have eventually resolved itself, with an "official credits" section, and notes made afterward about uncredited roles.

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire: Does the fact that this is not a film preclude it from being categorized as a Star Wars film? Many reverts a day.

Stingray: Does Steve Irwin's death by a stingray warrant mentioning? Immediately after news of his death emerged, a lame edit war ensued.

Susan Hawk: Was she in Survivor: Pulau Tiga or Survivor: Borneo? Considering both were in heavy use, one really shouldn't have precedence over the other (although Pulau Tiga was the term used for years before Jeff Probst introduced the term Borneo for the first season); in any case, the edit war between the older term and the newer term has gone on for months.

System of a Down: Are they alternative metal, or should they be on the List of Nu metal musical groups? See the "mature" arguments at the talk page, such as YES, THEY ARE NU METAL, OK! And you know it, don't you?! This band also spawned a few more lame edit wars regarding two of its albums.

The Best Page in the Universe: The reason why external links sections are not web directories is aptly illustrated when the owners of two rival fansites, www.the3rdbestpageintheuniverse.com and www.thethirdbestpageintheuniverse.com, repeatedly replace the other's link with theirs. The link goes back and forth for weeks - as they leave no messages or edit summaries, few notice and none care. One uninvolved editor tries to add both, asking "Is there not room for both self-proclaimed third best pages?" - apparently not, as one is removed two hours later and the war continues on its merry way. Eventually yet another editor drops a train on all the spam, including that oh-so-vital link.

Vic Grimes: The removal of a single line in which an editor credits himself as "author" of the article, in violation of WP:OWN, leads to an edit war where the "author" attempts to remove all the information they ever posted on the page stating they own the information they found. The resulting war escalated and incidents that derived from the war ended up on WP:AN, WP:ANI, WP:3RR, WP:PAIN, a WikiProject, and the talk pages of many users and admins. Arguments put forward by the "author" included wikilawyering on whether WP:REVERT applies to WP:3RR leading to a bolding of the line in whole or in part, wikilawyering on if removing information you added yourself compromises the integrity of wikipedia and attempting to have a user blocked for violation of WP:3RR for removing a large block of information copied from another part of wikipedia off their own talk page. After every location tells the "author" their argument is ridiculous, and to stop the warring, the "author" begins spamming templates on every piece of information in the article, even information they originally added, in an attempt to have all the information removed due to lack of citations. After this was reverted as the original information fell under WP:AGF the "author" began a second edit war to have the templates put back in. The war temporarily ends when the "author" was blocked indefinitely for violating WP:POINT, WP:NPA, edit warring, and trolling but it soon began again with the "author" using AOL sock puppets to continue their campaign to have the information they added removed from wikipedia.

What would Jesus do?: Should the article link to Brian Boitano or What Would Brian Boitano Do?. Should a movie title be italicized? Did something happen in the middle of the 1990's or the mid- to late-1990's? These and other probing questions were at the heart of five-day long edit war between Anthony and Wik, during which the page had to be protected twice. The campaign spread to other pages, with What Would Brian Boitano Do? surviving a VfD listing by Wik.

Misplaced Pages:Requests for de-adminship: Wik's nominations of 9 Misplaced Pages:Wikicops were moved; the wikicops page itself got in a move war about a week later and ended back at Misplaced Pages:Administrators.

Misplaced Pages:Yet more bad jokes and other deleted nonsense#Edit conflicts: The edit war on the Misplaced Pages:Edit conflicts page, preserved in Yet More Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense.

Meta Lameness

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.

Misplaced Pages:Lamest edit wars ever: Edit wars over which edit wars are allowed to be on this page, or over how specific entries on this page should be worded (oh, the irony). See Recursion; see also tail recursion. Examples have included William of Orange, Her Late Majesty, List of virgins, Template:User admins ignoring policy and this entry itself. These have also resulted in two attempts at VfD (now WP:MFD), which were soundly rejected.

Misplaced Pages

:Lamest edit wars - Misplaced Pages