Wikipedia Lamest Edit Wars (Infographic) (opens in new tab)

(informationisbeautiful.net)

60 pointsfod15y ago15 comments

15 comments

12 comments · 6 top-level

Groxx15y ago· 3 in thread

I love how the death star article is on there. Though I don't know that this qualifies as an infographic: the only info on it is title + num_edits. The relative sizes aren't informative, their locations aren't informative (horizontal or vertical, I'm sure the Jesus article is still highly edited).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars for the data. Not sure where to get the edit counts, aside from checking the history statistics.

aristus15y ago

And, dammit, it's spelled Brasil.

Groxx15y ago

IMDB says "no": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/

Battle!

forinti15y ago

Brésil, j'en suis sûr.

philwelch15y ago· 2 in thread

One of these I remember quite well--Angels and Airwaves "is" a band vs. "are" a band. Wikipedia's summary:

More than 40 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 same length. The other side keeps his seven-day block.

I was the admin in that case. It was my proudest moment in all of Wikipedia adminship.

carussell15y ago

I think mentioning the British/American disparity does a disservice to demonstrating how truly ridiculous the argument was, because it distracts from what the "are" user was actually arguing, which is that "are" is correct because the subject is is named by a phrase comprising two things join by a conjunction, "and".

Reading the actual "discussion" is both hilarious and depressingly frustrating. The Alex 101 user had to have been trolling, 'cause, I mean, come on.

philwelch15y ago

"Angels and Airwaves" is a syntactically encapsulated name in American English. Americans still say "Black and Decker is a company" or "Emerson Lake & Palmer is a band"--and those are non-metaphorical uses of "and" to name the members or founders of the group!

1 more reply

tptacek15y ago· 1 in thread

Once again, an "infographic" at InformationIsBeautiful.net contributes very little beyond the underlying prose it's based on (in this case a Google spreadsheet, which is actually easier to read).

ajdecon15y ago

Unfortunately, InformationIsBeautiful.net basically exists to be an advertisement for the author's book, The Visual Miscellaneum. Which is a very pretty book--I own it--but not really full of informative infographics. There's some original content in the blog, but far too much of it is reposts of graphics from the book.

For a better (or at least more varied) selection of infographics I like:

* Chart Porn (http://chartporn.org/)

* Flowing Data (http://flowingdata.com/) which also covers datavis software

* Information Aesthetics (http://infosthetics.com/)

* We Love DataVis (http://datavis.tumblr.com/)

(edit: formatting)

aufreak315y ago

I cracked up when I saw the "war" about the time signature of Pink Floyd's song "Money" - 7/8 or 7/4 or 21/8 :D

ErrantX15y ago

I'm pretty sure they are still arguing over the Jesus article (I got sucked into it once, not pretty)

mynameishere15y ago

Every article is a potential unsuspecting victim of an edit war.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse