Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars/Redirects and disambiguation pages
 | This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous. Such material is not meant to be taken seriously. |
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.
Redirects
editCorn redirects to Maize to the dismay of every midwesterner in the U.S. This has resulted in multitude of move requests ...
- RM, Maize → Corn, No consensus, 20 June 2007, Talk:Maize/Archive 2#Requested Move
- RM, Maize → Corn, No consensus, 21 February 2011, Talk:Maize/Archive 3#Requested move
- RM, Maize → Corn, No consensus, 11 August 2013, Talk:Maize/Archive 4#Requested move 3
- RM, Maize → Corn, Not moved, 22 June 2015, Talk:Maize/Archive 4#Requested move 22 June 2015
- RM, Maize → Corn, No consensus, 11 September 2022, permalink
... and a long list of protests going back 15–20 years.
With the release of the iPod classic, there was a lot of confusion on whether the new iPod is in the same line as the original iPod. Can a new product be "classic"? Should it just be part of the iPod article?[1], [2], [3] Should previous generations be incorporated into the "classic" article? Maybe there should just be an article for every generation of the product? What about the iPod photo – is that part of the iPod classic family or some freaky half-cousin? Eventually "original" and "classic" became synonymous and the iPod photo was deemed unworthy as a member of the classic family.
Should it redirect to Main Page as a shortcut for Firefox users? Or should it link to printf (where it serves as a shortcut to print text). How about transcluding the Main Page as a compromise? And isn't it because of printf that Firefox uses %s? Involved page protection, a vote, and an appeal. In the end, as User:This, that and the other observed, more than 64 KB of discussion was recorded over a redirect for a two byte title.
After being featured in the webcomic xkcd, an article on this term was created and deleted three times in one day before being turned into a redirect and listed on Redirects for discussion. The discussion was one of the most epic and passionate ever to take place at RFD, with almost 200 users participating; and that's despite being closed early. In the end, the redirect was kept, but on the talk page the arguments over it rage on.
Disambiguation pages
editWhat do you get when a country has the same name as a U.S. state? You get one of the longest running debates on Wikipedia. It seems to have everything but the kitchen sink. Which of the two should receive the coveted title as "primary topic", and thus get to have the disambiguating phrase in its article name removed? The archived discussions are full of endless content and tables regarding search engine results, population statistics, and the number of English speakers in each (enough material to create its own encyclopedia). This is followed by the many accusations of either U.S.- or European-systemic bias, along with accusations that one side is holding the other "for ransom". Is the fact that Wikipedia's web servers are located in the United States relevant? Does Wikipedia's method of disambiguation make topics "less important or notable"? Well, if the pages are move protected for now, then which article gets to be listed first on the Georgia disambiguation page? And do flag icons make a difference on that disambiguation page? Does this entire debate make the English Wikipedia "out of step" with all other Wikipedias? Or are we just flogging a dead horse? This debate has been going on for so long that there have been occasional requests on Talk:Georgia for brief summaries of the previous discussions! Did we mention that Wikipedia's web servers are located in the United States?
Should the Gay Nigger Association of America be at the top of this irrelevant disambiguation page, or somewhere in the middle? The ongoing dispute leads to the page being protected and one administrator being blocked for WP:3RR. After 18 Articles for Deletion nominations, the association's article was deleted for lack of reliable sources (see below), and the dispute mutated into whether the page should include a redlink to the deleted article or not. This critical issue of a single Wikilink led to full protection (three times) and a Request for Comment on a disambiguation page. The situation calmed down only when the disambiguation page for a 4-letter acronym joined the tiny number of articles with indefinite full protection (it has since been reduced to semiprotected). Recently, the association's article has been recreated as a result of a deletion review.
Phenomenally lame, multi-stage edit war at the disambiguation page for Lolita over the purpose of disambiguation pages. Is the Manual of Style written in stone, or is it merely a "recommendation" that can be ignored? Vladimir Nabokov's novel is currently located at Lolita, making it the de facto primary use: should it be listed at the top of the disambig page, as the MoS says, or below the etymology for the name Lolita which had no article? Should the page include a list of Japanese fashion styles that include the word "Lolita" in the name? Will anyone type in "Lolita" looking for Amy Fisher? The one thing that never occurs to anyone is that they have better things to be doing. The debate gets so heated that one user moves the page to "Lolita (non-disambiguation)" to free it from the tyrannical restraints of the MoS, believing that WP:3RR doesn't apply to the new creation, and continues reverting. A sloppy cut-and-paste merge back follows, ensuring that no one is happy with the article's condition. In the end a level-headed admin fixes the mess and protects the page for a week, and at least one user takes a long wikibreak over the ordeal. The contention still pops up occasionally, especially after the creation of a stub for the name "Lolita" and the debate over whether Nabokov's novel should really be the primary target.
The August 29, 2008, announcement of Sarah Palin as the presumptive Republican nominee for Vice-President of the United States set off a firestorm at (among other places) the Palin disambiguation page (which had previously been edited three times since it was created nearly a year before). Should Palin redirect to Sarah Palin? Is Sarah Palin more famous than Monty Python member Michael Palin? If she's more famous now, will she continue to be more famous in the future? Should Sarah and/or Michael Palin be listed in their own section at the top of the dab page, or just on top of the list of other Palins, or should the sorting be purely alphabetical? Following a handful of polls and rampant accusations of bias, a consensus seems near, but who knows what the future will bring?