Based on a study of the edit history of Wikipedia, here are the ten most controversial topics in the crowd-sourced compendium of all knowledge:
- George W Bush
- Anarchism
- Muhammad
- List of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. employees
- Global Warming
- Circumcision
- United States
- Jesus
- Race and intelligence
- Christianity
Those are the most controversial topics across language sets not just in English. In some language editions there are topics that are not controversial in others, e.g. the Islas Malvinas/Falkland Islands is controversial in the Spanish version.
Most are not surprising but employees of the WWE? I guess that falls under the category of “Religion”.
Hmmm, I wonder if United States is really controversial, or that its a big, very important topic to which new things are happening all of the time, and thus more opportunities for additions and thus reverts.
Compare that with entirely historical figures, such as the Big Three — Jesus, Muhammad and George W. Bush. There are no contemporary events, just believers and their discontents continuing to rehash older arguments.
Slightly OT, but has anyone else felt Wikipedia slipping lately? I feel I’m seeing more misspellings, lazier grammar, just a sort of general IQ decline.
Most of what I read there is specialist stuff and in that it’s still pretty good.
Should we understand “circumcision” to include both male and female genital mutilation? Sadly, circumcision events are occurring more frequently than action in the US Congress or global warming.
On the WWE personnel list, this warning is on top of the “talk” page:
“This article is a frequent target for editors to add a week-by-week synopsis of storyline events, unconfirmed information, rumors, and other content inappropriate to an encyclopedic article. Please make sure to familiarize yourself with what Wikipedia is not, and consider whether your additions to this article will serve to make the article larger and harder to edit for style, clarity, and grammar.”
Theory: Most fans (fanatics) of a regular program direct their obsessive tendencies to some web application dedicated just to their interest and do not use the Wikipedia encyclopedia to do so. Either WWE fans lack the programming capabilities and dedication to grammar to do so, or WWE licensing entanglements have precluded any meaningful attempt.
I think they’ve clearly used a bad proxy for “controversial.”
Unbelievable.