Talk:List of Wikipedia controversies

Skip to table of contents

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the List of Wikipedia controversies article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4: 60 days

The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information.

This article was nominated for deletion. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination:

Keep, 16 April 2013, see discussion.
No Consensus to endorse the close, but a rough consensus exists that relisting would not be helpful or necessary, 23 April 2013, see DRV.

Fram controversy was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 30 June 2019 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into List of Wikipedia controversies. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

Internet culture Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Internet culture, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of internet culture on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Internet cultureWikipedia:WikiProject Internet cultureTemplate:WikiProject Internet cultureInternet culture articles

Low

This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Internet culture To-do:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : View all requested internet culture articles
Expand : Pick an article from here or here
Photo : Category:Internet culture articles needing images
Stubs : All stubs are located here
Other : Category:Internet self-classification codes (!?); Try to get YouTube to FA; Tag all articles you find with {{WikiProject Internet culture}}
- See also Category:Internet culture articles needing attention

Websites: Computing Low‑importance

	This article is part of WikiProject Websites, an attempt to create and link together articles about the major websites on the web. To participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page.WebsitesWikipedia:WikiProject WebsitesTemplate:WikiProject WebsitesWebsites articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Computing.

Wikipedia Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Wikipedia, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's encyclopedic coverage of itself. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page. Please remember to avoid self-references and maintain a neutral point of view, even on topics relating to Wikipedia.WikipediaWikipedia:WikiProject WikipediaTemplate:WikiProject WikipediaWikipedia articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Lists Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Lists, an attempt to structure and organize all list pages on Wikipedia. If you wish to help, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.ListsWikipedia:WikiProject ListsTemplate:WikiProject ListsList articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

Amanda Filipacchi (30 April 2013). "Sexism on Wikipedia Is Not the Work of 'A Single Misguided Editor'". The Atlantic. Retrieved 30 April 2013. According to a Wikipedia article entitled "List of Wikipedia Controversies," "When the 'American men novelists' category was first created, its only entries were Orson Scott Card and P. D. Cacek (who is female)."

Text has been copied to or from this article; see the list below. The source pages now serve to provide attribution for the content in the destination pages and must not be deleted as long as the copies exist. For attribution and to access older versions of the copied text, please see the history links below.

Copied Wikipedia (oldid, history) → List of Wikipedia controversies (diff)
Copied Wikipedia biography controversy (oldid, history) → List of Wikipedia controversies (diff)
Copied Essjay controversy (oldid, history) → List of Wikipedia controversies (diff)
Copied Scott Kildall (oldid, history) → List of Wikipedia controversies (diff)
Copied Conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia (oldid, history) → List of Wikipedia controversies (diff)
Copied Rambot (oldid, history) → List of Wikipedia controversies (diff)

Tip: Anchors are case-sensitive in most browsers.

This article links to one or more target anchors that no longer exist.

[[Community of Wikipedia#Anonymity of editors|anonymous]] The anchor (#Anonymity of editors) has been deleted by other users before.

Please help fix the broken anchors. You can remove this template after fixing the problems. | Reporting errors

Redisgn[edit]

In early 2023, Wikipedia redesigned their site to punish competent professionals who still use desktop computers. The new design completely discards the old format for a new one that destroys the linearity of articles and implements reduced line length. The reduction in line length is intended to cater to those with poor reading comprehension, though they did not beta test the design on simple.wikipedia.org for an unknown reason.

I put this in talk so as to not get an IP ban from wikipedia.

Proposed merge[edit]

Alan Mcilwraith (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) is an unencyclopedic and mean-spirited biography of an obscure Wikipedia hoaxer. I suggest a minimal merge to the Wikipedia controversy list as an alternative to deletion. Cheers, gnu 57 02:04, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how this is a controversy. Guy made his bed and will have to lie in it. E Eng 02:42, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, it looks pretty well-referenced to me. It might be better off with some copyediting for tone, but I don't know about a merge. jp×g 🗯️ 09:14, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There is not presently anything in the article connecting this person to Wikipedia, so no, it shouldn't be merged. I'm skeptical that we should even have such a bio... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:52, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
lol yea 2603:6000:AB00:4E1F:A817:5AF2:7F26:C49B (talk) 23:17, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Rambot an actual controversy?[edit]

I was surprised to see the story of Rambot listed as a controversy, as from what the article says about it the bot to me seemed primarily innovative and helpful. So I started looking around, and I could not find any public mention of the Rambot from before Mr Lih wrote about it in a book twelve years after the fact. Not a single public expression of anything, not of it being found controversial, nor of any public support for it. Nothing whatsoever before the publication of mr Lih's book, and also nobody else opining by themselves even after it's publication. Only references to Mr Lih's description.

What I did find however, was a lemma on Wikipedia about bot-history on the site, where it turned out similar bots were being used in several other-language wiki's concerning other countries' administrative divisions, around the same time as Rambot had been used (Wikipedia:History_of_Wikipedia_bots#Small_town_bots).

So with the benefit of hindsight I wonder: was the 2002 use of Rambot actually controversial simply because one person said so in 2014, even if that one person is a serious researcher and author? Or was it actually an innovative thing to do which was primarily accepted practice among the community as soon as it occurred?

I'm not gonna mess with the page, do not see myself as able to judge in this matter, and I am not a very experienced editor. But this listing just seemed weird/off to me. Jutte Brøtbørda (talk) 17:00, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

All the discussions should still be here, although I will warn anyone who tries to delve into this that page histories start to get real shaky around 2002-01 (people were just discussing stuff on article pages themselves, comments weren't getting signed reliably, etc). It's totally possible that people were hopping mad about it, but it was far before my time. jp×g 🗯️ 09:11, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Add Wikipedia controversy about BFDI[edit]

Can anybody add a Wikipedia controversy about BFDI? Many BFDI articles were deleted on Wikipedia. 2001:448A:11A3:1155:51B1:ED4C:48D3:CB9F (talk) 17:14, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If you can find an independent, reliable source about it, then feel free to add it to the article. Jurta ^talk/_he/they 17:39, 6 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

For the uninitiated, see WP:BFDI. jp×g 🗯️ 09:09, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Source 121[edit]

Source 121 under the false reporting of the deaths of Byrd and Kennedy doesn't fit the info of the source. Source 121's preview is a contemporary Fox News story, however clicking on the link goes to a 2021 Fox News story about Larry Sanger criticizing Wikipedia for supposed left wing bias. XCBRO172 (talk) 16:33, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]