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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.
24 (season 7) edit
Should Chloe O'Brian be close to the top of the cast list, or closer to the bottom? Is Tony Almeida more important, therefore should be closer to the top? Users and anons constantly reverted each others' edits over the position of the character. The war was eventually (bar one or two attempts) finished when the cast was organised by surname.
Adria (Stargate) edit
Is the language being spoken Latin? Or is it Ancient? Is it Ori? Is it Ancient-based-on-Latin? Is it Latin-based-on-Ancient? Is it Ancient or Ori rendered as Latin? All of the above? No? Oh, I'm so confused ... Ergo, ipso facto columbo oreo.
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin edit
Is it a turn-based strategy game, or a turn-based tactics game? Apparently in an interview with the developers, the "s" word was used. But the back of the box uses the "t" word. One user cared so much about it that he resorted to sockpuppetry and was consequently banned multiple times. Although the user pops up every once in a while under another sockpuppet, the debate fizzled out.
Amerime edit
A term created to define American anime, Amerime was deleted as a neologism, then reborn, then deleted, then reborn, then deleted, and then stuck when the software jammed. It was then deleted and reborn again, at which point it managed a sufficient rally on the AfD to survive, roughly 18 months after the original was first posted; however, it has been moved to another location.
Baby (Dragon Ball) edit
Is this character canon? Is Dragon Ball GT canon? Who decides what is and is not canon, anyway, and is it fact or opinion to say so? An eight-hour duel between two editors culminates in nearly one hundred assorted reverts, arguments posted in edit summaries, and both parties blocked for ignoring 3RR, which brings to mind the 30+-episode battles the series is famous for (with 5+ episodes being used to launch a single attack.)
The Beatles edit
Actually waged at Template:The Beatles and Portal:The Beatles/Intro, was an edit war over the order in which the four members of the group should be listed. Should they be listed in the "traditional" order or in alphabetical order? And if you think that's ridiculous, edit wars over whether to identify the band as "The Beatles" with a capital T or "the Beatles" with a lower case t have gone on longer than the group's existence. One such installment of this saga was brought before the arbitration committee (by an administrator, no less) where it was quickly declared "silly". This monumental lameness was even the subject of an article in The Wall Street Journal!
Because You Left edit
A certain character who appeared before in the show has his name revealed as Pierre Chang, but while shooting a video uses an alias from previous episodes, Marvin Candle. Is this fact relevant enough to warrant inclusion? An IP seemed to think so, and the insistence on adding by one party/deleting by everyone else was described as "nonsense" on the talk page. To render it even worse, the IP went to complain in both the Lamest Edit wars page – this one and the original entry – [1] [2] [3] and the article's GA review (as his persistence was the only thing that prevented it from passing), before the page was protected.
In a frustrating portrayal of blind and ignorant persistence, the user (under a series of different IP addresses) continued his frankly tiring edit warring as soon as the page became unprotected. His first edit to the article was on the 3rd March 2009 and he has continued to war into May 2011.
The DHARMA Initiative could start a whole experiment on this.
Boxxy edit
After eight deletions and five restores, image drama, a deletion review, and an AfD, the important questions regarding this hyperactive 16-year-old on YouTube were faced. First, is the discussion about a meme with a girl, or a girl with a meme? Is she underaged, or pretending to be? Is she more important because we're talking about her? And most importantly, is this Guardian story a blog or a news article?
Stargate SG-1 (season 9) edit
Should the identity of the Daedalus class battlecruiser destroyed at the end of the Stargate SG-1 season 9 episode "Camelot" be mentioned? The show left this as a cliffhanger for the next episode but widely available casting information and episode summaries for upcoming episodes make the answer obvious. Is such information canon? Is this a "worse" spoiler than other spoilers already present elsewhere in Wikipedia? The edit war continued in fits and starts over the entire between-season hiatus, when the season opener aired and confirmed the information.
Daffy Duck edit
Did Daffy Duck father any children? Should the events of certain animated films be taken to have occurred in "real life" while others should not? Daffy to Wikipedia: "No comment". A Barbara Walters special is reportedly in the works.
The Devil Wears Prada edit
Not the film or the novel it was based on, but the band. Are they metalcore, Christian metalcore, or just metal? It sounds like just another one of many brushfire edit wars over a musical artist's exact genre, until you learn that this has been taking place on the disambiguation page.
Frank Iero edit
Page about a member of a rock group. This article has been subject to several long term, slow pace edit wars. One is about his height, of all things, with the number being changed several times a week. Another slow edit war is over whom he is dating/engaged/married to, and whether this GF/fiancée/wife is pregnant. (Considering how long this slow edit war has been going on, if she's pregnant it's one of the longest human pregnancies ever.) And a third slow edit war is over how to pronounce his name.
Gadsby (novel) edit
Ernest Vincent Wright wrote this novel as a lipogram, omitting the letter e. Should the article be written in the same way as an homage? Despite the facts that this would make the tone of the article bizarre, and that neither the full actual title nor the author's name could be stated due to containing four and three e's respectively (and, to avoid the disambiguation "novel", was at the very obscure early working title Gadsby: Champion of Youth), war raged on the talk page, and in the article for an exceedingly lame amount of time, with some warriors on the talk page even posting in lipograms (eliminating e does not a stronger argument make). At one point a few editors made an effort to eliminate the letter from the headers and the markup, leading to the removal of the Table of Contents, edit buttons, and reference tags. The caption to an image of capital and lowercase e's near the bottom of the talk page sums things up nicely: "This page needs more of these. Please give generously."
Garfield (character) edit
The cat who stars in the eponymous comic strip had been undeniably portrayed as male for 39 years. But then a satirist/troll changes the gender to "None" due to a quote by creator Jim Davis, and a war regarding whether the cat should be listed as "gender-fluid" ensued, being even covered by The Washington Post. (There was also a brief period where Garfield was listed as Shiite Muslim for unknown reasons during this war.) Garfield had only this as a response.
Godney edit
A lame edit war between two vandals, one pro-Britney Spears and the other anti-Britney Spears, on an article which has nothing to do with Britney Spears.
Goofy edit
Is the cartoon character an anthropomorphic dog or just an anthropomorphic animal?[4] Or a dogface?[5] Editors back-and-forth accusing each other of OR[6] led to an RfC with suggestions including "zoomorphized human" and "anthropomorphic character with both human and dog features".
Grace Kelly and Cher edit
Edit wars over whether each is a gay icon. Sources were given for Cher's iconic status, but not for Kelly's.
Homestar Runner edit
Are the official facts canon, or are they part of a universe? Should we even care?
House, M.D. edit
What's up with the lack of Asian diversity on the show and on medical dramas in general? Are you a racist for not wanting mention of this? Isn't Kumar Asian? What about Sandra Oh from Grey's Anatomy? Back and forth this went, with only one thing being certain: It's not lupus. Or is it?
Iron maiden edit
A two-week revert duel (with accompanying Talkpage debates) over whether this should redirect to the band, the torture device, or the disambig page. Is a heavy metal band more popular than a medieval torture device, or vice versa? What will be the case one hundred years from now? And what would Google do?
Jay Jay the Jet Plane edit
New episodes of the children's show begin with a "Jay Jay's Mysteries" segment whose featured characters include the dump truck Trekkie ... or is the name Truckee? Two anonymous editors change that single name back and forth as humanity weeps.
Jak and Daxter edit
Is the video game Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier canon to the main story, or is it a spin-off? The stating of standpoints, references, page protection and even a consensus haven't stabilised the article, and the four years of flip-flop edits continue.
Jimmy Wales edit
Did he found Wikipedia or co-found it? Does using current WMF press releases count as promoting a 'revisionist history'? Does it really matter all that much? And why am I asking you? Not surprisingly, those who actually were around at the time and know the answer stayed far away from this one. The casualty list has yet to be compiled, but no doubt editor egos will be among the worst hit.
Kanto (Pokémon) edit
A huge discussion broke out regarding the notability of a particular truck appearing in some iterations of the Pokémon series and whether the accompanying images fell under fair use. The article's talk page ballooned over ten times from 12,000 bytes to 140,000 bytes and spilled over onto several users' talk pages.
Krystal (Star Fox) edit
Revert war on over the contents of the redirect; i.e. whether it should keep the original text or only have the redirect link. The text advocate repeatedly attempts to cite the character's popularity, and nobody bothers to assist him. The slow speed of the edit war never surpasses the limits imposed by the 3RR, and the war ended only when the page was permanently protected.
Link edit
Revert war over whether the Japanese word for "Link" should be transliterated as Rinku or Rinkū.
List of fictional ducks edit
You read that right; edit warring over nonexistent waterfowl. Page protections, admin interventions, accusations of vandalism and sockpuppetry fly like ... well, like things that fly, anyway.
List of Konoha ninja/Naruto Uzumaki edit
When a character casually notes that Naruto Uzumaki is just like his father immediately after noting that Naruto was also just like another prominent character, does that imply that Naruto's previously unmentioned father is that prominent character? Featured revert summaries like "I hope they DAMN WELL ban you!". The battle of interpreters was so intense that two articles needed full protection in order to move the battlefield to various talk pages. Luckily, the truth (they are one and the same) eventually came out of the series itself ... many weeks later.
Lucky Star (manga) edit
A very slow, and long-running edit war regarding the demographic of the series. Is it seinen or is it shōnen? In order to rectify further edits, a neutral "male" demographic was included, but even this still continued to be changed, and reverted on a regular basis. The demographic field has even been removed entirely, only to be included again. At one time, both demographics were included. Finally, since the manga is serialized in Shōnen Ace, the demographic was changed to shōnen for good.
Marilyn Manson edit
Every album has a title track. No they don't. Yes they do. Smells Like Children? Not an album. Live drummer? Studio Drummer? Ginger doesn't record drums. Yes he does. He hasn't been on an album in over a decade.
Micronations edit
Two self-proclaimed leaders of micronations in a lengthy revert war in this and other articles about the comparative value and notability of their made-up countries.
Mojo Jojo edit
A long running revert war that began in June 2004 and continued into August 2005 over whether categorizing a mad scientist – whose goals are to destroy The Powerpuff Girls, crush their hometown, and conquer the world – under Category:Villains violates NPOV. Fortunately, the category has since been moved and deleted.
Money (Pink Floyd song) edit
Sure, it's a song with an odd rhythm, but what exactly is the time signature? The band, which had no formal musical training, have said 7/8, most people say 7/4, experts will go as far as to say 21/8.
More cowbell edit
A single Saturday Night Live sketch generates a remarkable volume of strong feelings among Wikipedians, with a particularly lengthy debate over whether an animated GIF of the sketch in question is too irritating for inclusion.
Mudkip edit
A debate has lasted, more or less, since 2006 over whether the "So i herd u liek mudkipz" meme is notable for inclusion anywhere on Wikipedia and, if so, where. Looks like someone doesn't liek.
My Little Pony edit
Is Baby Cuddles blue or green? Is Fizzy blue or green? Editors resorted to uploading photos of their own ponies to debate the point, possibly indicating ten-year-old girls are more computer savvy than ever ... or perhaps Bronies are more prevalent on Wikipedia than previously thought.
Pokémon Diamond & Pearl edit
Is it an RPG or is it a Console RPG? Or is it a fish! Who knows! Yet, oddly enough, no wars have occurred on the pages for the Generation I games, Generation II games, Generation III games, Generation I remakes or Generation II remakes.
Pwned edit
Slang term which originated from a typo (for "owned") displayed on a computer screen during an online multiplayer video game and is now the subject of heated debate as to its actual meaning. Does it mean to reduce your opponent to such a state that no actual words exist to express your dominance over them? Does it mean you possess "ownage" over them? Or does it mean to soundly defeat an opponent? Also, who invented it? What is the correct oral pronunciation of it? What is its phonetic spelling? is it "powned", "pooned", "poughned", or something else? No, it's "pewened'! All these are the subject to serious and heated debates in academic style language mixed in with vandals who type in ALLCAPS, curse like sailors, and call everybody n00bs. Is it a Dutch television broadcaster or is that just a hoax?
Spy (Team Fortress 2) edit
Is he French? Is he British? Is he Russian? German? Franco-Russian? South African? Algerian? Believe it or not, there was (before reveal of nationality) an extensive debate on where this (confirmed French) character class from the video game Team Fortress 2 inherits his accent from – despite having only a handful of spoken lines in-game at the time. To be fair, this was mostly the result of every other class in the game (except the Pyro, who is near-unintelligible under his her his her the her its their the gas mask) having a clear regional upbringing, whereas the Spy's accent was a more vague European one. However, nowadays, voice lines with the Spy speaking French are most prominent in the English version of the game (such as cries of "Mon dieu!"). At the very least, it proves that the Spy is good at his job of causing confusion, frustration, and panic (and everyone turning the world upside down to sort him out).
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith edit
Are Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader considered one character or two separate ones? Do they deserve separate listings in the "credits" section? This seemingly trivial disagreement degenerates into a full-fledged revert war, complete with allegations of vandalism, 3RR violations, aggressive edit summaries, and a week-long page-protection.
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope edit
Site of an edit war over whether Star Wars Episode III should be listed as the 'preceding film' in the infobox. Opponents argue that it's crazy to say a film released in 2005 'precedes' one released in 1977; supporters argue that it's equally crazy for a series to begin with Episode IV! After an WP:RFC, consensus settles on listing the films in production (rather than in-universe) order. Much blame is placed on George Lucas for creating the mess in the first place. Again.
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and other Star Wars film articles edit
Revert wars over whether or not the credit list should duplicate the official credits at the end of the film, or be edited by Wikipedians to include uncredited roles. Both sides seem to feel they have the weight of policy on their side, but no one actually points to policies. Thankfully this seems to have eventually resolved itself, with an "official credits" section, and notes made afterward about uncredited roles.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens edit
Should it say "also known as Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens"? Is it officially an alternative title? Much edit warring and most of the talk page is used on this vital question after the premiere. Who cares what the film is about?
Susan Hawk edit
Was she in Survivor: Pulau Tiga or Survivor: Borneo? Considering both were in heavy use, one really shouldn't have precedence over the other (although Pulau Tiga was the term used for years before Jeff Probst introduced the term Borneo for the first season); in any case, the edit war between the older term and the newer term has gone on for months.
System of a Down edit
Are they alternative metal, or should they be on the list of nu metal musical groups? See the "mature" arguments at the talk page, such as YES, THEY ARE NU METAL, OK! And you know it, don't you?! This band also spawned a few more lame edit wars regarding two of its albums.
Tommy (The Who album) edit
Do you think it's alright to leave the boy with Uncle Ernie edit-warring on Wikipedia? By Pete Townshend's own admission, the plot for Tommy is not exactly straightforward and has been changed in various adaptations. Does the father kill the lover or the captain, or is it the other way round? When you come to Wikipedia, the edit warring's foreveeeeeeeeeer - ha ha!
Triple Crown Championship edit
Debate rages over whether the WWE United States Championship is included among criteria for becoming a WWE Triple Crown Champion. Edits for and against the inclusion of the title lead to several reverts, many angry people, and one fairly active user retiring due to the edits (he later returns on a semi-active basis). Eventually the US Title was given its own section separate from the main list, though the debate is still going on. A similar case is made for the ECW World Championship, but due to its newness in the WWE, it is generally agreed on that it does not count. It's a prestigious title anyways, let's put it that way.
Turn Left (Doctor Who) / The Stolen Earth / Journey's End (Doctor Who) edit
Several disputes over whether past companions should be listed as companions (even before the episodes had aired) or additional/special guest stars and whether "Turn Left" was isolated or joined to "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End". The refusal of the episodes' writer to settle the latter question in interviews only exacerbated the dispute. Another dispute erupted over the use of the word penultimate for "The Stolen Earth" after an editor insisted that the current standard usage of the word was incorrect despite BBC usage of the word in their press release and its definition in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Wild Arms (series) edit
Or should it be Wild ARMs (series)? Akari Kanzaki started an arms conflict demanding that Wild Arms (series) be renamed to Wild ARMs because the company later decided Arms was an acronym and another editor disagreed.
WWE Armageddon edit
A lame edit war erupted at the page for the then not-yet-aired WWE pay-per-view event over whether the match between The Undertaker and Mr. Kennedy should be listed second or third. The official website for the event had the match listed third, but since the "order doesn't matter", others continued to make it the second listed match. The ensuing argument led to the page being fully protected and spilled into the talk page, the WP:PW talk page and even the page for the following pay-per-view.