Wikipedia talk:Lamest edit wars/Archive 6

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Archive 6

Requested move 22 January 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Consensus is still not quite in favour of the move. Some editors weren't convinced that the language is offensive, and others felt "silliest" was not an improvement. (non-admin closure) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:41, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars → Wikipedia:Silliest edit wars – In the most recent article about this page (disclosure: I am quoted but hadn't seen the article until it ran), the author notes at the top that this page uses ableist language (specifically our use of lame). There was a March 2019 change suggesting Most ridiculous which did not have consensus. I'm starting a new discussion, with a new proposed title, to see if either consensus has changed and/or this new title might meet our needs. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:57, 22 January 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:27, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

• STRONG Support. There's little point in keeping the current title other than "Well that's how it's always been". And, in addition to avoiding a somewhat-controversial word, "silliest" is also a more accurate description. (Also, pinging @Rosguill and PrimeHunter:.) Paintspot Infez (talk) 20:14, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Also, if this page is moved, all the items and subpages in "Category:Wikipedia lamest edit wars" (including the category) should also be moved as well. Paintspot Infez (talk) 20:17, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

• STRONG Oppose. This is a rehash of the March 2019 discussion, which was snowclosed within a day. In that discussion, I stated that the title had been stable for "a decade and a half", despite multiple previous discussions about the alleged slur. This appears to be a knee-jerk reaction to the Ringer article by someone who didn't understand the last RM all that well, and for that reason I once again prefer to keep the current title. O.N.R. ^(talk) 03:33, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

  I think I understand the March 2019 requested move just fine. The argument for keeping it here is that this has been a stable article name for a long time, there hasn't been a problem, and ridiculous was not the right alternative. Did I get that right? If not please let me know, but I will finish this reply assuming that's correct. My response to that is that we could name this whatever we like. I did not say lame was a slur, I said it was ableist language. Since we can name this whatever we want, we could keep it here, or we could choose a different name that captures the same idea but doesn't have that downside, but isn't ridiculous. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:52, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

• Both sides have a point here. "Silliest edit wars" is also an accurate title, and tradition is not infallible. However, changing the title at this point will break things; at the very least, we will have to update the entire page to reflect the new title. And Wikipedia is not censored. If we're not going to delete things because they offend the Right, we can't delete them because they offend the Left either. The meaning of the word "lame" has shifted over time; except in religious texts, it is universally understood to mean "silly and trivial," not "handicapped," especially in the context of edit warring. Unless there are stronger reasons to move the page than avoiding ruffling the feathers of those who build their careers on outrage, just leave it where it is. ChromaNebula (talk) 04:03, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

  Wikipedia is not censored. So I would be against renaming Lame duck or Lame or Lame (armor) or any of the other uses of the word found at Lame (disambiguation). That is actual encyclopedic content that is protected by WP:NOTCENSORED and I believe in that. However, this is a project page documenting our history not for our readers at large but for other Wikipedians and so we can call it whatever we want. Like if there is consensus we could call have it at WP:Laugh attack. I'd be against it, but my point is that we have the freedom to document these events wherever we want. Personally I enjoy a lot of these entries and I hope others would too and since it costs me nothing, except some volunteer time to sort out a move (which we technically can do), I'd rather have it at a name that invites more people in to enjoy this page's content. I expect to be done replying to commenters but I had been expecting a NOTCENSORED point and adn't expected to find I might not have understood the last discussion. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:12, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

  The "lame duck" example is a good example of why I think "silliest edit wars" would be a better example. When I see the title "lamest edit wars" I think of that usage first and question what it means. "Silliest edit wars" is just a clearer name. HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 05:47, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

  Agree with these points about WP:NOTCENSORED. Beyond the fact that this isn't part of the encyclopaedia so those guidelines don't apply the same way anyway, WP:GRATUITOUS would still counteract that when there are other titles don't have the same potential to cause offense while conveying exactly the same meaning. HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 09:27, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support per my original proposal in the previous section. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 06:01, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. "Silliest" is better than "most ridiculous", but I still disagree that lame in this context is ableist, unless seen through an archaic lens from the stone age. The linked page doesn't even 100% incriminate this title, simply saying that there's a "discourse" before pointing to an article from 2015. (Besides, "silliest" has ancient usages on Wiktionary that mean "mentally retarded". Where's the line?) Nohomersryan (talk) 17:55, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support. Second choice to WP:Sadest edit wars (which is how I view this page.. as in most pathetic). At least this will finally match WP:SILLY. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 18:37, 23 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. I respect the clearly good intentions behind the supports; however, I see no evidence that anything other than

a tiny minority of disabled people would be offended by this title (and no more, proportionately, than among the able-bodied). In these times of social media and when even mainstream papers have clickbaity or sensational opinion pieces, there will always be someone offended (or claiming to be) by anything (which applies to "silliest" too, as noted by Nohomersryan). ChromaNebula noted that some "build their careers on outrage". If anyone (without presuggestion as happened to us here) thinks of the disabled when reading the common colloquial "lame", the problem is them. By the same logic, since war is a horrible thing that has killed and traumatized millions, we should not be calling these "edit wars" so as not to make victims of war feel excluded by our privileged trivializing and retraumatizing discourses. (To be clear, I do not believe that is actually something that can occur, because people naturally and subconsciously recognize that words have totally different meanings in different contexts and that meaning changes over time.) Crossroads ^-talk- 05:41, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. Aside from the "WP:FORUMSHOP until we WP:WIN" problem, this is absurd. Lame in this sense has been part of the vernacular for generations (definitely since at least the early 1980s), and in the original sense relating to walking ability has been defunct since around the 1950s. For all intents and purposes, the word has completely switched meaning. This proposal is about as sensible as demanding to ban the phrase "travesty of justice" because travesty is etymologically connected to the origins of transvestite. Oh, shit, I hope that wasn't a WP:BEANS violation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:17, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support, and it's embarrassing that people are so hung up on this. ThadeusOfNazereth^{Talk to Me!} 21:34, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support - "Silly edit war" is a far clearer description than "lame edit war". A "lame edit war" sounds to me like an edit war which is happening in slow motion or something similarly vague. A "silly edit war" is clearly an edit war which is occurring on frivolous or pedantic grounds. HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 04:06, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose It ain’t broke, don’t fix it. “Silly” does not really explain the complete and utter stupidity of pointless squabbles over trivial matters. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:01, 31 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose: The current title is in common use and gets the meaning across better (per Ritchie). As a disability rights advocate, the vast majority of accusations of ableist language are spurious at best, and actively harmful to disabled and neurodivergent people at worst -- this is lucky to just be a spurious one. Vaticidalprophet (talk) 15:58, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose: It's good as it is. "Silliest" just seems less humorous than the current title and seems more immature and outdated. Don't change it. Bywok (talk) 22:45, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose, I don't believe that the term "lame" has ever been used as a pejorative term to people with physical disabilities. And therefore the whole argument for change is a house of cards. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 11:40, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose, Wiktionary includes the term as an accepted use, and per discussion, lame duck, stutter step, blindside, Cripple Creek, Colorado, and many similar examples of people using a commonly recognized disability as a recognizable descriptor. There are many other societal uses of the word referenced in Wikipedia. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:11, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose “lame” would be a good descriptor for the silly and trivial edit wars documented on this page. “Silliest” just doesn’t cut it. In addition, is anyone actually offended by the title? Padgriffin ^{Griffin's Nest} 02:21, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose A solution in search of a problem. No one really cares. Keep it lame. Glendoremus (talk) 02:45, 4 February 2021 (UTC)
• Support Consensus is not there yet, but that doesn't mean this isn't the right thing to do. Daniel Case (talk) 04:12, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
• Support, "silliest" gets the point across just fine. Wikipedia should be seen as welcoming and diverse, using ableist language does the opposite. NemesisAT (talk) 15:59, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
• Neutral I know a little about 'lame' and 'silly' when it comes to their meanings... Aside from my neutral stance, I have a new name proposal for the page - "Notable Wikipedian edit wars" which covers not only the lamest edit wars, but ALL SEVERE edit warring that had occured and I'm still okay if the page name will be changed or not so I'm not choosing any side. 『Umay loads 🅱️🅾🅰️🆖 』-Yram (talk) 15:49, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I've been stewing over this closing statement and its smug sense of "don't worry, we'll steamroll over you soon enough" for months, at varying levels of bottled-up-ness, so I will simply leave a note for the next person who gets a bee in their bonnet about this name: God willing we will never have consensus for abled people to talk over disabled people about our lives, experiences, and the discrimination we face. Disabled people do not care about the word "lame"; it is more offensive to insist ordinary slang is offensive than anything else. Stop talking over us -- you are making things worse. There are children being murdered every week. (And that article didn't exist until after this RM was closed.) Vaticidalprophet 21:16, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

A single entry for related edit wars?

Last year, we had several edit wars for images pertaining to the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, most notably on Hurricane Delta and Hurricane Eta, but also on Hurricane Teddy involving some of the same editors and reverts on both the storm pages and season page. Namely, the wars were over which images should go in the infoboxes of their respective storms. Lamness factors include several page protections, two AN3 entries, one user being blocked, and accusations of sockpuppetry. Could these go under a single entry? TornadoLGS (talk) 20:10, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Julius....

Veni, Vidi, Veggie.
Yours, Wordreader (talk) 23:21, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Steele Dossier (2016-2022) Both sides have a point here, but one is stuck in sept 2017

The editors of the article and controversy around the Steele Dossier have done a herculean effort in representing support of some original sources from 2015-2017 but today those sources have disappeared, been edited or been pulled. The lightly sourced controversy turns out to be a pollical action by party and campaign operation.

The updates to the media reporting get stuck at the bottom of the section, without clearly stating the first 10,000 words of the section are highly doubtful coverage of coverage. Most Lameness is about presented in paragraph one and stated un true in paragraph 86

That very act of reporting on the reporting is guts of the layness but major rewrites are not forth coming and the POV wars are insane.

At some point running all down the sources, that have corrected in 2018-2022, and incorrect reporting can be clearly tagged in a section with a timeline Modification of adjectives and adverbs about unsupportable news stories from the past are impossible. I am not expecting the coverage of President Lincoln in the south during the civil war type clarity, but the Steele Dossier as a piece of information is a press failing of epic order. The papers of record own editorial board has pulled support for entire classes of new stories but the editors are resilient and stick to factual adverbs and adjective near hearsay from 2017.

I wonder what Wikipedia modern event coverage of the Spanish–American War without Yellow Journalism and Propaganda of the Spanish–American War, Temped to say editors until the American MSM gets their partisanship under control, returns to the objective standards of 1990-2008 this will be a issue of who has the most energy to chase the edit war.

Loopbackdude (talk) 21:46, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Adding a guideline

Should we add a guideline saying that linking is preferrable to no links to the actual edit war? I support this guideline --Jinnayah (talk) 17:26, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Pronoun usage

Surely not every editor referred to here is a he? ISaveNewspapers (talk) 01:32, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Add to main "edit wars" page or to sub-page for the category?

I have an item to add to "Personal involvement." Do I add it at Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars/Personal_involvement or at Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars#Personal_involvement? The former has one more item currently, but the latter is maybe more likely to be seen? Jinnayah (talk) 17:37, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

I think we should keep this page, it´s a fun little Wikiepdia Easter egg. Astatoxid (talk) 12:41, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

RESOLUTION: Merging the sub-page into the heading of this page. The ONLY DIFFERENCES between the two pages are the (newly copied [[here) first entry "Daniel Brandt"; and an instruction
'''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.Jinnayah (talk) 02:51, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

NOTE: the subpage had no 'Talk' page content: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Lamest_edit_wars/Personal_involvement&redirect=no Jinnayah (talk) 03:05, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 November 2022

Change:

Are they are a British or an Australian group?

To:

Are they a British or an Australian group?

In the Bee Gees section Opz eng (talk) 04:36, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

 Done 💜  melecie  talk - 05:14, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Similar to the lameness over "Star Trek Into/into Darkness"...

Spider-Man: Far From Home has had several reverted attempts to redirect it to "Spider-Man: Far from Home", and there have been no less than four official requests to move it debated on the talk page, none of them getting a consensus, sometimes triggering allegations of misconduct. Many of the comments are like, "Oh no, we're turning into another Star Trek Into Darkness."

The lame-ity has spilled over into the histories and talk pages of related articles, like Zendaya. 2604:3D09:A97D:E200:10A3:A0EB:AC3F:F1FD (talk) 07:21, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Pattern vs patern

One of the subsections of "bot wars" has typo "patern" should be "pattern" 70.31.173.210 (talk) 01:17, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Hello, and thanks for bringing a concern here. The section seems to be correct, and the misspelling is itself part of the bot edit war. Randy Kryn (talk) 01:21, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

Kyiv / Kiev

Perhaps this one should be retired? This was a case of there being a genuine dispute in the outside world, and since many people have actually died in the past year over Russian / Ukrainian tensions, this feels a lot less "lame" and more "tragic." More generally, there's a difference between lame disputes and tough disputes. I think Kyiv vs. Kiev, especially back pre-2014, was merely a tough dispute. The fact it happened wasn't lame; the usage really did shift in the past decade, so it's not like the people asking for the move to Kyiv were just sore loser whiners. SnowFire (talk) 23:06, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Metre vs Meter

Honestly its pretty funny seeing americans fight over the spelling of a measurement unit they dont even use. Americans are constantly fighting over this in the weirdest ways possible including misinterpreting rules and even making up rules that didnt exist in the first place. The edit war including 3 offical move discussions and several more unofficial move discussions.

For some reference here are some of the many discussions that took place:

Talk:Metre/Archive 1#Requested move

Talk:Metre/Archive 2#Metre → Meter

Special:PermanentLink/948269358#Proposing a Move to 'Meter'

Talk:Metre/Archive 2#Metre → Meter

Talk:Metre/Archive 4#Specious and non-NPOV arguments for misspelling the title of this article

NotOrrio (talk) 04:26, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Was that actually an edit war, though? RM discussions, even repeated ones, are not necessarily "lame" nor in bad faith. SnowFire (talk) 05:32, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Toby fox infobox image

Can someone add a section about the edit war regarding Toby Fox where he requested that someone make a image of him covered in foam his infobox image? I don't think it's a particularly large edit war, but it is funny and lame. 77551enpassant (talk) 22:15, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Acupuncture

@CastJared: It's not the Boudry claim that irked me, it is the claim that acupuncture is legal and therefore not quackery. Many forms of quackery are perfectly legal. tgeorgescu (talk) 03:58, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Recent addition

@CastJared: Can you please slow down? I'm inclined to just mass revert all the additions you've made. This page is already very large, and is intended to be a curated list of the lamest edit wars, not any editing disputes whatsoever. It's great to be enthusiastic, but seeing that you only joined Wikipedia recently, I can assure you that these are not in fact major, lame edit wars. Your example of All your base are belong to us is one random new editor trying to add something than being reverted. This happens all the time, constantly. The big edit war blow ups are things like Star Trek Into Darkness - a truly staggering amount of edits and talk page discussion in the archive, and most importantly, it being good faith discussion rather than a newbie or a troll. This page isn't really about shaming newbies who don't know the rules (which is probably the AYB example) nor about celebrating trolls; it needs to be real, good faith Wikipedians acting real stupid, and having a genuine edit war, not just a few reverts. SnowFire (talk) 21:12, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Upon further examination, I'm inclined to just revert back to the page version as of January 23 before CastJared started editing, and then add back in others' edits. Every article I've investigated that CastJared added does not appear to qualify. The tone is off, too - this is not the edit warring noticeboard to talk down to editors about how very wrong they were, but rather a humorous, poking fun at ourselves when self-serious editors go at it. At least that's the intent. Too many of these incidents recently added are just not funny, they're ordinary POV-pushing or undue weight or whatever that doesn't need to be highlighted. Thoughts? This would be a bit extreme. SnowFire (talk) 21:18, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Is it a POV fork? CastJared (talk) 02:38, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Er... what? I'm basically proposing reverting your additions (although happy to investigate if you have some specific articles you feel qualify). I don't follow the comment about POV forks. (POV forks are potentially worth listing on this page, sure. I'm just talking about general tone - a lot of your additions are talking about just how very wrong a single editor is, which is not the spirit of what we're going for.) SnowFire (talk) 04:28, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I'll put the undue weight template. CastJared (talk) 04:35, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Update: Undue weight template added, problem is, "Some articles are not qualified". CastJared (talk) 04:37, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Snowfire; I've reverted the article back to January. Small bouts of edit-warring and vandalism shouldn't be added to that list haphazardly. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 15:13, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Resolved already, undue weight template removed. CastJared (talk) 15:36, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Note: Last edit was made on 22:27, 23 January 2023‎. CastJared (talk) 15:52, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to add that having witnessed all of these edits, some of these appear... strange. There seems to be a desire to add photos of young female celebrities and (poorly) write dialogue for them participating in edit wars. Very weird indeed. Paragon Deku (talk) 01:43, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

"Lame" is a slur.

"Lame" has been considered an ableist slur for quite some time now [1][2]. Can we replace it with a synonym like ridiculous, frustrating, sad, silly, ludicrous, absurd, awful, tragic, or inane. Thanks. Stix1776 (talk) 08:19, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

I have mixed feelings about this personally, but I will note that you are far from the first person to point this out. There were formal move discussions in January 2021 and March 2019, and before that there have been at least three informal discussions about the usage of "lame". (Warning: a lot of these also mention some other, more unambiguous slurs.) So far none of these proposals have ended up coming to fruition. Ionmars10 (talk) 01:25, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree. Unfortunate that proposals haven't led to change. L-word being a slur coming from the term used to describe disabled people is not an opinion, many outdated medical terms used to describe disabled people are later used as pejorative terms maybe somewhat similar to how people use the word "gay" to deride things they don't like even though being gay is not a bad thing just like having trouble using your legs is not a shameful thing. The word affects real people, physically disabled people who contribute to Wikipedia, physically disabled people coming across this page, etc. 2600:4040:A034:A300:284C:819A:306E:AF84 (talk) 06:47, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Not only is it offensive to some (myself included), it is not friendly to people who speak English as a second language. "Silly" would be both unoffensive and clear. Can we be bold and just change the name? Or have there already been edit wars over this, in which case the page would potentially become self-referential? Thisisnotatest (talk) 04:44, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with the word, its meaning is pretty clear. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 05:15, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree. its meaning is very clear. Hi me bye (talk) 13:01, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Whatever word it is replaced with will also be considered a slur in a few years. Language is annoying that way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Lifespan IAmNitpicking (talk) 12:35, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

I think the fact that the meaning is clear is what worries people who find the word offensive! Having said, while this may depend on what type of English is used, as a physically disabled person (not, admittedly, with significant trouble walking in the way traditionally described as "lame") I don't consider lame a slur unless used in a context where it is clearly intended to be insulting to actual people with disablities. There would seem to me to be a strong distinction between using a word describing a disablity analogically, "Politicians have rarely acted with such blindness," where the point of the metaphor is the impairment not the people, and using it to insult a person in a way that involves the disability being part of that person's experience, "You blind twat". Unless research suggests that the analogical use disconnected from people has a real impact on the negative attitude towards people with disablities, I think it would be better to leave the matter alone. There is good reason to argue that disabled people are the most discriminated against group there is in some Western countries - I do sympathise with concerns, but I would suggest not worrying about this particular issue for the most part. Censorship of language and reasonable expectation of respect and sensitivity are sometimes annoying close. The last thing I want as a disabled person is for people to be afraid of offending me with some random phrase! FloweringOctopus (talk) 07:18, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Adam Levine is different from his page

On here, it says the removal of the alleged (?) scandals from his page is unreasonable given the level of coverage, but the page on him has removed them as far as I can see - apparently some time ago. If the accusations or facts of the matter are well attested, they should presumably be on his page in a neutral a manner as possible, if they aren't, it shouldn't say that they are well attested here! FloweringOctopus (talk) 08:09, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Talk:Godwin's Law

A short section "Wikipedia's favourite put-down gets sucked into a tetchy and bamboozling statistics analysis. And the winner (for now) is an editor named ... Mike Godwin." was recently removed, apparently referring to lengthy discussions in 2007: Talk:Godwin's law/Archive 3 What I actually find more interesting now, that in the years since there were multiple accusations against Godwin that he is pushing the article in an inappropriate direction (to the extent that there is now a topic named "Sorry, but this page is very self-indulgent and needs editing by someone who is no Mike Godwin"), and a disclaimer about his conflict of interest was added, despite the fact (noted in that very disclaimer) that Godwin has not even edited the article once! Isn't it amusing? Ain92 (talk) 11:01, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Purpose of subpages?

Looking through the subpages, noticed that Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars/Dates is listed as the main article of its corresponding section, but right now it's just a transclusion of the corresponding section of this page. Can someone clarify what the intended use of the subpages is supposed to be? Arcorann (talk) 07:04, 11 July 2023 (UTC)