this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
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chapotraphouse

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66
Most controversial Wikipedia articles, as measured by total size of talk page archives (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
51 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

This page lists Wikipedia pages by the total amount of text in all of their talk page archives put together. It is the best measure there is for determining how much squabbling has gone on behind the scenes for a given page.

Here is a ranking of all 63 of the listed pages that are actual articles (as opposed to policy/administrative/user pages), in descending order:

  1. Donald Trump
  2. Intelligent design
  3. Climate change
  4. Barack Obama
  5. United States
  6. Jesus
  7. Race and intelligence
  8. Catholic Church
  9. Circumcision
  10. Homeopathy
  11. Muhammad
  12. Gamergate (harassment campaign)
  13. Chiropractic
  14. Abortion
  15. Monty Hall problem
  16. Gaza War (2008-2009)
  17. Evolution
  18. Prem Rawat
  19. Sarah Palin
  20. India
  21. Israel
  22. World War II
  23. Christ myth theory
  24. Mass killings under communist regimes
  25. Jehovah's Witnesses
  26. September 11 attacks
  27. Cold fusion
  28. Climatic Research Unit email controversy
  29. Armenian genocide
  30. Anarchism
  31. Atheism
  32. Falun Gong
  33. Neuro-linguistic programming
  34. Jerusalem
  35. Control of cities during the Syrian civil war
  36. Kosovo
  37. British Isles
  38. Transcendental Meditation
  39. United Kingdom
  40. George W. Bush
  41. Christianity
  42. COVID-19 pandemic
  43. Libertarianism
  44. Acupuncture
  45. Thomas Jefferson
  46. International recognition of Kosovo
  47. Israel and apartheid
  48. Adolf Hitler
  49. United States and state terrorism
  50. Syrian civil war
  51. List of best-selling music artists
  52. Julian Assange
  53. Russo-Georgian War
  54. Historicity of Jesus
  55. Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
  56. Tea Party movement
  57. List of common misconceptions
  58. Murder of Meredith Kercher
  59. Genesis creation narrative
  60. Taiwan
  61. Hillary Clinton
  62. Electronic cigarette
  63. Michael Jackson

Bubbling under (present in earlier versions; I have gone back to 2015 so far here, though the page history goes back to 2010):

  1. 0.999...
  2. European Union
  3. Chronic fatigue syndrome
  4. Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
  5. Shakespeare authorship question
  6. Fascism
  7. Astrology
  8. The Holocaust
  9. Joseph Smith
  10. Chelsea Manning
  11. List of scientists who disagree with the scientific consensus on global warming [NOTE: now deleted]
  12. Gibraltar
  13. Ayn Rand
  14. Fox News
  15. Shooting of Trayvon Martin
  16. Human
  17. Canada
  18. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
  19. Race (human categorization)
  20. Iraq War
  21. Elvis Presley
  22. Islam
  23. Philosophy
  24. Terri Schiavo case
  25. Black people
  26. White people
  27. Palestinians
  28. Mitt Romney
  29. HIV
  30. Occupy Wall Street
  31. Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
  32. Elizabeth II
  33. Asperger syndrome
  34. Centrifugal force
  35. Transnistria
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Monty Hall problem

Really not sure where there can be any controversy.

Israel

How could a page about a math problem end up more controversial there than a page on Pissrael?

0.999...

This is hilarious. How is this in any way controversial? Every person who diligently studies calculus for just a few weeks understands that 0.999... = 1, and why.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago

I haven't actually read any of the talk pages but I'm reckoning that the Monty Hall problem and 0.999... is just people going limmy-what

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You don't even need calculus, you need fractions. 1/3 = .333..., 2/3 = 0.666..., then 3/3 = 0.999...

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You need to prove that 0.333... is, indeed, 1/3 (and also that 0.999... = 0.333...*3) for that. Without being familiar with any sort of construction of real numbers, i.e. without understanding what real numbers are, you are just going to be doing a lot of hand-waving.
But yes, if one already accepts that 0.333... = 1/3, then that proof works. However, if one understands the reasons why 0.333... = 1/3, there are easier ways to prove that 0.999... = 1. Or, rather, why 0.999... = 1 is obvious to such people.

And sure, one might be familiar with any of those constructions without studying calculus, but if one does study calculus, they are going to study what real numbers are.

Also, fun fact for the onlookers: every repeating decimal represents a rational number, and every rational number can be represented by up to two repeating decimals (counting terminating decimals as repeating here). This can be generalised to natural bases other than 10, as well. Furthermore, if you have a repeating decimal that represents some rational number x, such that -1 <= x <= 1, then x = p/10^n^+x/10^n^, where p is some integer and n is a natural number, from where it follows that x = p/(10^n^-1).
Some examples:
-0.999... = 9/10+0.999.../10 => 0.999... = 9/(10-1) = 9/9 = 1
-0.123123123... = 123/10^3^+123123123.../10^3^ => 0.123123123... = 123/(10^3^-1) = 123/999

More generally, when working with other natural bases, we have (x = p/b^n^+x/b^n^) => (x = p/(b^n^-1)), where b is the base. As such, 0.111... (base 2) = 1/10+0.111.../10 (base 2) => 0.111... (base 2) = 1/(10-1) (base 2) = 1/1 = 1.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah 1/3 being periodic is just an artifact of using base 10, because 10 isn’t evenly divisible by 3. If you use say base 60 as the Babylonian did then the artifact vanishes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not sure about calling it an 'artifact'. Repeating digital representations of numbers are still a thing in every relevant base.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes repeating happens in every base because every base has integers not evenly divisible by its base. Whether a fraction repeats is a particularity of which base is chosen to represent it.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

race and intelligence being 7th most controversial Wikipedia article is crazy

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  1. Transnistria

This is that tiny country that is self governing and their president takes the average salary and drives around in a 40 year old rust bucket right?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Transnistria

Ah yes, the, as western liberals call it,

Russian-occupied territory in Moldova

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Yes, and recently the country was removed from Google Maps and now it appears as Moldavian territory (cope mechanism)

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

redditpedia

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (4 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Monty_Hall_problem/Arguments

I don't have any meaningful commentary on this other than "lol"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I just learned about this problem now. Took me a minute, but it makes sense when I think about my logic in certain card games where you're making decisions based on new cards being entered into play.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I read one attempt at the refutation of the widely-known solution, and it's quite hilarious.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

JFC, I remember having online arguments with people over this twenty years ago lmao

I'm not even exaggerating, it's been twenty years and people are still going on about this fucking thing

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

the funniest thing I've read is that if you present the monty hall problem to pigeons they get it immediately and switch every time because they literally dgaf and just want the food reward

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I would switch but I also feel in my bones with 100% certainty that if I ever got on a game show I would do all the correct things and lose anyway just through bad luck.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The most confusing one to me is the best-selling music artists. It’s just an amalgamation of record sale data, not sure where the controversy would be coming from.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I actually had a conversation about this on another forum just the other day and it was surprisingly difficult to find a clear answer. Like every single source people looked up said something different, kinda strange really.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sarah Palin in the top 20?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

yeah I was wondering about that too. she probably has someone hired to scrub her record clean. I can't think of any other reason why she would still be that relevant in this metric.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

On the F-35 talk page I complained about what was missing. It's my custom to complain on the talk page. If stuff gets fixed - great. If not - oh, well. I don't want to argue or get into an edit war. It works well for me. But that talk page was different. Within about an hour my comment was - I don't remember the term - "refractored" or something. They hid it.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

curious, so there is a sizable amount of editors arguing in favor of Homeopathy?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some of these have to just be because the defenders are rabid, even if there's not a lot of them.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

oh right, I think I'll check a few of these talk pages later

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

We should never have allowed the Germans English fluency.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

wikipedia mods who police their favorite articles will literally just archive the talk page if the conversation isn't going their way. it's amazing how some articles you can get away with shit talk for years but other articles it gets scrubbed day 1. Some articles you'll get banned for vandalism on the fucking talk page and they'll invoke the "wikipedia is not a forum" nerd rule, while other articles you'll see completely forum-tier discussion going on for years and years in the talk page, dating back to like 2004.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Chronic fatigue syndrome

What fr? Why?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most people who have it know why, and it has to do with the large swathes of chuds (and libs too) who insist it isn't real, just in your head, an excuse to be lazy, etc. etc. Almost any chronic illness that is hard to diagnose and can't be pinned with complete unambiguous medical certainty to a single clear cause gets that sort of treatment. There are still so many people who don't even believe Lyme disease is real.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lyme disease isn't real

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Case in point.^

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, and it isn't a problem that there are so many people who don't believe Lyme disease is real, because it isn't.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Neither is long Covid. Just a big hoax by lazy whingers. 🙄

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Stop trying to hook the chronic lyme scam bandwagon to other stuff. Your posts are very much "one of these things is not like the other".

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Um... stop accusing me of weird bullshit while denying reality and calling a medical reality and the experience of countless disabled people pseudoscience?

Anyway, ashiniadash, here you can see why that topic is high on the list of controversial wikipedia pages. Libs gonna lib ig.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The medical reality is the symptoms people experience. The complete bullshit is telling people this is due to mystical nonexistent spirochetes in their blood that can only be treated with a long course of IV antibiotics. This has absolutely fucking nothing to do with liberalism, jfc.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

telling people this is due to mystical nonexistent spirochetes in their blood that can only be treated with a long course of IV antibiotics.

Right, that's exactly what I said. Just like I said Long Covid is actually the result of vaccines. Seriously, you're telling me "my posts" (btw, what are you even referring to? Do we have a history or something?) are this thing you've made up in your head about me because I am pointing out the FACT that a condition exists despite many misled denialists. Chronic Lyme is as real as long covid is even though we don't know what the underlying cause of it is.

The medical reality is the symptoms people experience

No shit! Which is because Lyme Disease is real! Fucking hell, what is your problem?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Calling it chronic lyme links it to a mechanical explanation that is totally nonsensical. Just call it chronic fatigue syndrome then, or fibro. You can't play games here, you know what calling it chronic lyme means. There isn't even a coherent agreed-upon set of symptoms.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

No, because that denies that it is linked to the initial Lyme infection somehow and may well have a completely different cause than the more general chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia. Again, that would be like telling people just to call long covid "chronic fatigue."

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Acute Lyme disease is 100% unarguably real, the issue is chronic Lyme disease which is based on pseudoscience. The people are most likely suffering from some other idiopathic disease and are being taken advantage of for profit

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Right yes, I was referring to chronic lyme.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

fantastic link thank you

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