Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars/Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation
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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.
Spelling
editShould 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 archæïc ſpellings ensues on the talk page.
Researchers and producers of element 13 have variously called the stuff "alumine", "alumium", "aluminium", and "aluminum". Speakers and writers of American and Canadian English spell it "aluminum" (as does the ACS). The non-American English-speaking world spells it "aluminium" (as does the IUPAC), which is where the article typically stands – with two letters 'i'. There are occasional attempts to put the word back to aluminum. See here and here for the gory historical details. As a gauge of the scale of this territorial feud, the talk page specifically devoted to this debate is over 40,000 words of um/ium debate.
Editors constantly change spellings of the country name to Brasil, because this is the local name of the country. But since both pronunciations have the same sounding as z, but the correct spelling in Portuguese is s, Brazilians/Brasilians consider the z spelling an error. There have been heated debates about the spelling, saying that it is American imperialism naming Brasil with a z.
Is it "jerkwad" or "jerk wad"? Made it to AN3 [1].
Many editors have made corrections to this word, even though both versions are technically correct. Much like honor/honour, program vs programme. Toe-may-toe, toe-MAH-toe.
This Soviet Ukrainian film director is an example of wars over whether the first name of Ukrainians should be Olexandr instead of Russian Aleksandr or international Alexander.
Native species in North America where the dominant spelling is gray. Invasive species in the United Kingdom where they call it grey. Nationalistic tempers simmer for two years in slow and remorseless edit war after a content request for comment supposedly settles the issue in favor (favour) of the Americans. Dissatisfied Brits continually tiptoe back, changing a to e, without ever actually proposing a title change for the article. The British are coming! The British are coming! To arms!
Is it "Graham" Bauer, or "Graem" Bauer? The official site had it listed as "Graham" at one point, but several online sources called it "Graem". The series of micro debates on the talkpage were not resolved until episode six of 24 (season 6) revealed that his name was indeed "Graem" Bauer. After a move, all seems settled...right? Apparently not; the new argument is whether Graem's nickname is "Gray", "Grey", or "Grae".
One "n" or two letters "n"? Filling up many talk pages and much time.
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. (Let's just hope this doesn't get the Christians and Muslims fighting all over again.)
Should the name of this Japanese tea be spelled using the non-standard and uncommon romanization "maccha"? Does its article need a five paragraph rant arguing why it should? To some persistent editors (or one very persistent editor using multiple accounts), the answers are yes and YES! The Great Matcha/Maccha/Mattya Spelling Debate is preserved for posterity here.
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. Similar wars over the correct spelling of the word "colo[u]r" have happened far more times than anybody cares to count.
According to the article on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, "Pittsburgh is one of the few American cities to be spelled with an h at the end of a burg suffix. From 1890 to 1911 the city's 'h' was removed but, after a public campaign, it was officially restored by the United States Board on Geographic Names." In the course of describing an event, namely Merkle's Boner, dated 1908, an author used the “Pittsburg” spelling when mentioning the Pirates’ baseball team. A subsequent editor decided that this was a mistake, and changed it back to “Pittsburgh.” Thus is created a cycle in which someone notes the edit history and reinserts the contemporary spelling, and the next editor assumes simple stupidity of the last and adds back the “h.” This new version of Merkle’s Boner makes Pittsburg(h) the ping-pong capital of Wikipedia, and we will likely never get the “h” out of here.
Should a short shwa sound that almost nobody actually pronounces anymore in the plural form of this word be represented in the transliteration by an "e"? What about the one in the abstract "psak/pesak din" that people will naturally say whether the "e" is there or not? More than a dozen reverts both ways, two page protections later, and over ten pages of debate on the talk page, this question of immense import remains without consensus. At one point, The Great Apostrophe Compromise ("pos'kim" and "p'sak din") was proposed, but following its rejection as "[the] most rificulous idea", the "e"less status quo remains.
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 became seasoned. And are they not talking about crisps, anyway?
Much time has been spent on if the name of the wolf deity in the series should be spelled Holo or Horo. Beginning in January 2008, the war still continues eight years later into 2016. Sources have been provided for the spelling as Holo, but this continuously gets changed back to Horo due to popularity of the spelling in the anime fandom community. A lengthy discussion has occurred on the issue which would even make your Engrish teacher faint.
Should it be spelled the American or the British way? While the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has ruled in favor of the American spelling, both variants make appearances in IUPAC's literature. It's still occasionally possible to find alternating spellings of Sulphur and Sulfur throughout the text of the Wikipedia article.
A Japanese author with a habit of inventing "foreign" names whose spellings harken more to H.P. Lovecraft than anything in English creates a group of characters called the vaizādo. The term is supposed to be some word in English, but nobody's quite sure what. Should Wikipedia refer to them by the archaic and wrongly pronounced but fan-favorite vizard, or by the grammatically awful but officially supported visoreds? Editors take the official line; thousands of IPs disagree! The article is eventually semi-protected, but it doesn't stop edit wars over the spelling on the dozen-odd other pages in which it appears.
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, and several editors change their votes Support to Neutral or Oppose.
Does it need the 'h'? Is "Yoghurt" the "traditional" spelling, and is it American cultural imperialism to not have it as such?[2] Apparently, the "correct" spelling is worth fighting for – again and again and again. And again. Et cetera. For over eight years, before an RFC restored Truth and Justice to dairy products; for more news, see Strained yoghurt (or is that strained yogurt)?
The first time around, this controversy spawned a thread on ANI and led to a wheel war over a block placed due to a move of the page. Later occurrences involved arguments over the meaning of "stable" in the context of WP:ENGVAR, competing interpretations of WP:MOS, suggestions that editors should really not care so much about spelling variations, and LOTS of Google page counts. This active cultural war re-fermented in November 2003, June 2004, November 2004, May 2005, February 2006, October 2006, April–May 2007, June 2009, July 2009 (which spilled over into this ANI report), and again in November-December 2011, which then produced yet another ANI report and an edit war (with added full page protection and unprotection) over whether or not to close another requested move so soon after the last one [3],[4]. Fortunately, Wikipedians realised that after wars get boring on one page, you can continue it on another page, leading to discussions on whether the requested moves process should be changed to allow a rename to Yoghurt. Or maybe to change WP:CREEP to allow a change to the requested move policy to allow the article to be moved. There was even a heated debate and edit war about the article's entry on this page. Apparently, some people don't know when to get the "H" out of there ... or not.
Capitalization
editWas 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.
Should "Cougar" be capitalized? What better time to revert-war over this all-important issue than on June 11, 2007, when it is Today's Featured Article? The war over capitalization erupts again a few months later, this time simultaneously in Cougar and Cheetah, and leads to full protection of both articles.
She writes it as danah boyd. Some say that the official style guidelines say it should be written Danah Boyd; others say they allow for exceptions for the subject's personal preferences. Are the extant references using all-lowercase sufficient and sufficiently independent to allow the style guide exemption? Or are scientific publications by her and her colleagues biased and not admissable references? Cue extensive edit (and rename) warring…
In addition to the debate over whether or not it is "actually" a number, the page has seen a pagemove controversy between whether the article's title begins with the letter "E" or the symbol "𝑒" (which resembles the letter "e") due to technical limitations on article names versus a desire to avoid having to tag the article as {{wrongtitle}} or {{lowercase}}.
Huge dispute on Zendaya's article on whether "from" was capitalized or not. Discussion went nowhere and just left the word capitalized.
Is it "Into" or "into"? A simple capitalized letter led to, as xkcd neatly summed up, "Forty thousand words of debate", before suggesting the "compromise" solution of "~*~ StAr TrEk InTo DaRkNeSs ~*~". And that's over three months before the film's opening. Starfleet representatives have neglected to comment.
For this CD by "Weird Al" Yankovic, a dispute about whether "outta" should be capitalized spawned lengthy threads on the admin noticeboard, as well as accusations of abuse, and page protection. Arguments focus on whether "Outta" is a preposition, whether it's relevant that it's not shorter than five letters, and whether the way the title is spelled on the actual CD is more important than our manual of style. Until a naming convention change, Straight Outta Lynwood may be SOL (or SoL).
Punctuation
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A slow-moving edit war that centred over the use of ... an exclamation mark. As User:C12H22O11 exclaimed on the talkpage talk page, "Come on guys, you can't actually be having an edit war over one tiny exclamation point!" (Which of course would have been better punctuated as “Come on, guys: you can't actually be having an edit war over one tiny exclamation point!”) There is also the matter that the "of course" in "Which of course" should be set off by commas, making it: "(Which, of course, would have been better punctuated as...)" And we haven't even touched the unnecessity of the colon after "making it", as well (aswell?) as the missing period after the sentence. While we are at it, should it be punctuated as...).", or punctuated as...)".? And is "unnecessity" even a word? The possibilities are endless infinite endless (infinite) infinite (endless) endless-infinite Endless endless endlessly and infinitely endless.
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
editFrequent edit wars over whether there are spaces around the en 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. (The title of this section is not a hyperlink because this is a very general lame edit war; it has actually happened on several different articles!)
An edit war over spacing, which led to the article being protected.
If...., formerly If... (film)
editShould the ellipsis have three dots, or four? An edit war was not totally resolved when the article was renamed from the three-dot version to the four-dot version.
Not quite punctuation, but the question nevertheless remains: should the discussion of Ms. Storm's arrest for DUI and subsequent no contest pleading be put in one paragraph or spread over two?
HUUUGE edit war over line breaks vs commas in a list of genres. Leads to a WP:ANI case and is still ongoing despite total irrelevance to anyone.
An edit war involving three sysops over whether there should be commas in "10,000" and "1,000" led to a blocking and liberal use of the rollback button. During Christmas, yet.
Three-way edit war (or "three way" edit war depending on interpretation) over whether the phrase "Fatal Four Way/Fatal Four-Way" contains a hyphen. This riveting debate, so important that violations of WP:3RR occurred, resulted in the page being fully protected for a month with the protector declaring it the lamest edit war they had ever seen.
Or should that be Russell T. Davies? Over the years, it's been moved three times to lose the dot, and then moved back three times due to "article naming conventions". Most recently, a sysop moved it to regain that all-important(?) dot, and then immediately move protected it. Doctor Who fans are not to be trifled with, so two separate complaints against admin abuse were duly lodged. As it currently stands, the article has been moved back to the form without a dot.
How many students does the school have, 1,019 or 1019, and does "(With all one's might)" belong in the school's motto?
Is the usage of dash and hyphen between "Mexican" and "American" more important than the disagreements which led to this historic struggle? Some people would think so. This led to a long thread on WP:AN and a topic ban proposal for no fewer than six editors, as well as the essay Wikipedia:Short horizontal line. The action at WP:AN may be seen as the lamest part of the whole affair so far, since it involved an attempt to swat every editor within the perimeter (peacemakers and seekers-after-order included) with a topic ban! That thread is now closed, as an elaborate joke that got out of hand. But fans need not fret: Jarndyce and Jarndyce II continues at WT:MOS, with clowns for the amusement of all. Merchandise is available in the foyer. One recent suggestion was to change the name to "Mexican War" and be done with it. A move request for Battles of the Mexican–/—American War ran for six weeks, opening with the fatal words "I hope this will be an uncontroversial request".