![Representation of edit wars on Wikipedia by Czech illustrator Pavel Reisenauer [cs] Wikipedia Edit Wars.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Wikipedia_Edit_Wars.jpg/220px-Wikipedia_Edit_Wars.jpg)
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that allows its users to write and edit articles via wiki software, which also allows users to revert each other's edits. Disputes on Wikipedia between editors, concerning content within articles, may give rise to edit wars, in which a repeated exchange of opposing edits is published on a contested article. Some edit wars have received media and academic attention.
Wikipedia is a free, collaborative, online encyclopedia which allows its users to write and edit articles via wiki software. [1] [2] The website provides a user-friendly interface for both editing on articles and reversing other users' edits. [3] : 189 Conflicts over content within articles often arise among editors, which may result in edit wars. [4] : 62 An edit war is a persistent exchange of edits representing conflicting views on a contested article, [4] : 62 [5] [6] or as defined by the website's policy: "when editors who disagree about the content of a page repeatedly override each other's edits." [7] Edit wars are prohibited on Wikipedia [8] : 146 and editors are encouraged to seek consensus through discussion, however administrative intervention may be applied if discussion is unfruitful in resolving the conflict. [9] Generally, edit wars are provoked by the presence of highly controversial content, [5] such as abortion or the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, but can also occur due to other disputed matters, such as the nationality of artist Francis Bacon. [6]
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Various edit wars have received coverage outside the website, and media articles noting several such wars have been published. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]
| Article | Edition | Start date | End date | Description | Outcome | Refs. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Austro-Hungarian Empire | English Wikipedia | c. 2003 | c. 2020s | There were a lot of debates about whether the Austrian-Hungarian Flag is official flag or not. | Add Flag of Austria-Hungary page and remove the flag from Austria-Hungary | [15] |
| Gdańsk | English Wikipedia | December 24, 2003 | March 4, 2005 | Whether to use the German name, Danzig, or the current official name of the Polish city, Gdańsk, was a subject of dispute and edit warring. | A vote was held to determine the choice of name, with 80 editors casting 657 votes in two weeks. A clear majority of votes decided on the Polish-language name on the modern city, while references to the city in the period from 1793 to 1945 would use the German name. | [16] [17] [ verification needed ] |
| Yogurt | English Wikipedia | December 25, 2003 | c. 2012 | Editors conflicted over the spelling used in the title of the article, with some promoting the American English yogurt and others the British English spelling yoghurt. | Consensus was established in 2012 to title the article yogurt, and to note variant spellings in the article's lead sentence. | [18] [19] |
| Nanjing Massacre | English Wikipedia | May 13, 2004 | July 25, 2004 | A Japanese-language translation label in the article's introducing sentence was repeatedly replaced and rewritten. | A temporary consensus decided on the inclusion of 南京大虐殺 (transl. Nanjing Massacre). A second label, Nanjing Incident, was also added. | [20] |
| Ganges | English Wikipedia | c. 2006 | Unclear | The name used for the river, whether Ganges (familiar to English speakers in Western countries) or Ganga (familiar to English speakers in India) has been contested. | — | [21] [22] |
| Caesar salad | English Wikipedia | September 11, 2008 | December 1, 2024 | There were three debates in this article. The first was its origin, where it was debatable if it was invented in Mexico by Caesar Cardini in 1924, or sometime in Ancient Rome in honor of Julius Caesar. The second was if anchovies were a main ingredient. The third is how "Caesar" is spelled, debating between "Caesar", "Cesar", and "Cesare". | The article says the salad is invented by Caesar Cardini, anchovies are listed as one of the main ingredients, and spelled "Caesar" | [23] |
| Star Trek Into Darkness [a] | English Wikipedia | c. December 2012 [b] | February 21, 2013 | The capitalization of into in Star Trek Into Darkness was a matter of debate as some wished to have it capitalized and others preferred "Star Trek into Darkness." | Consensus was reached that the article be titled Star Trek Into Darkness, with a capitalized into. | [24] [25] [26] |
| Gamergate (harassment campaign) | English Wikipedia | c. August 2014 | c. 2015 | Various editors accused the article covering the harassment campaign of having bias towards a feminist viewpoint. | Following a decision by the Arbitration Committee of the English Wikipedia, several editors were banned from editing on articles relating to sex and gender. Although this decision did not end the edit war, the harassment campaign lost momentum during 2015. | [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] |
| Heights of presidents and presidential candidates of the United States | English Wikipedia | 2016 | August 1, 2024 | Various users made conflicting edits about the height of Donald Trump and about whether or not he is taller than Lyndon B. Johnson and Abraham Lincoln. | All edits that have put Donald Trump as being taller than Lyndon B. Johnson or Abraham Lincoln, or have made Donald Trump's height taller or shorter than 6 ft 3 in (190 cm) have been reverted. | [33] |
| Garfield (character) | English Wikipedia | February 24, 2017 | February 27, 2017 [c] | The infobox of the cartoon cat Garfield, protagonist of the Garfield comic strip, was changed multiple times to indicate an indeterminate gender, after podcaster Virgil Texas claimed in a tweet that an interview of strip creator Jim Davis indicated so and subsequently updated the infobox to reflect this. | The argument ended in the consensus that Garfield was male, citing four strips. Jim Davis later clarified to The Washington Post that he was indeed male. | [34] [35] |
| Donald Trump | English Wikipedia | July 16, 2018 | July 26, 2018 | Various editors wished to emphasize criticism of Trump's comments during the 2018 Russia–United States summit. | After a vote "which clarified little," Wikipedia admin Awilley concluded the discussion with the article noting bipartisan criticism of Trump's comments. | [36] [37] |
| History of the Jews in Poland | English Wikipedia | May 15, 2019 | June 4, 2019 | A group of nationalist-aligned editors attempted to exaggerate the phenomenon of Poles returning looted Jewish property in the postwar period. | After two weeks of edit warring, the nationalist group abandoned editing the article, which led to the article being corrected to show a much lower extent of property return than previously described. | [38] |
| Once Upon a Time in Hollywood | English Wikipedia | July 23, 2019 | July 26, 2019 | Several editors expressed backlash over the inclusion of movie spoilers in the article's plot summary prior to a more public release. The article was also repeatedly vandalized with erroneous plot summaries. | As public access to the film increased, editors swiftly resolved to include the entire plot. | [39] [40] [41] |
| Recession | English Wikipedia | July 14, 2022 | July 30, 2022 | A dispute broke out among Wikipedia editors over the definition of an economic recession given in the article on that subject. Right-wing commentators accused editors on the platform of being influenced by the Biden administration's interpretation of the term, inciting further edit warring. | After the page was placed under protection from edits by new users, a consensus arose to explain the varied definition of the word among scholars and in common usage. | [42] [43] [44] |
| Yasuke | English Wikipedia Japanese Wikipedia | May 15, 2024 | Unclear | Following the announcement of Yasuke as a playable character in the video game Assassin's Creed Shadows , editors conflicted on if the historical Yasuke was ever granted samurai status. | — | [45] [46] |
| Nuseirat rescue and massacre | English Wikipedia | June 8, 2024 | Unclear | An edit war erupted concerning whether an Israeli military raid during the Israel–Hamas war should be titled a "massacre" or a "rescue operation." | — | [47] [48] |
| Leon Schreiber | English Wikipedia | June 30, 2024 | July 3, 2024 | South African politician Leon Schreiber's article was edited multiple times over his birthplace and nationality. Schreiber was born in South Africa, however several users changed the article to indicate he was born in Zimbabwe. | On July 3, the article was protected from arbitrary editing and his birthplace was stated as South Africa. | [49] [50] |
A wiki is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.
MediaWiki is free and open-source wiki software originally developed by Magnus Manske for use on Wikipedia on January 25, 2002, and further improved by Lee Daniel Crocker, after which development has been coordinated by the Wikimedia Foundation. It powers several wiki hosting websites across the Internet, as well as most websites hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, Wikiquote, Meta-Wiki and Wikidata, which define a large part of the set requirements for the software. Besides its usage on Wikimedia sites, MediaWiki has been used as a knowledge management and content management system on websites such as Fandom, wikiHow and major internal installations like Intellipedia and Diplopedia.
The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition.
The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been criticized since its creation in 2001. Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established volunteer users, process, and rules. Critics have questioned its factual reliability, the readability and organization of its articles, the lack of methodical fact-checking, and its political bias.
The reliability of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition, has been questioned and tested. Wikipedia is written and edited by volunteer editors, who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. The reliability of the project has been tested statistically through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process. The online encyclopedia has been criticized for its factual unreliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and editorial processes. Studies and surveys attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have mixed results. Wikipedia's reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has been improved; its English-language edition has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
An edit conflict is a computer problem that may occur when multiple editors edit the same file and cannot merge without losing part or all of their edit. The conflict occurs when an editor gets a copy of a shared document file, changes the copy and attempts to save the changes to the original file, which has been altered by another editor after the copy was obtained.
The Japanese Wikipedia is the Japanese edition of Wikipedia, a free, open-source online encyclopedia. Started on 11 May 2001, the edition attained the 200,000 article mark in April 2006 and the 500,000 article mark in June 2008. As of January 2025, it has almost 1,445,000 articles with 12,869 active contributors, ranking fourth in the latter metric behind the English, French and German editions.
Wikipedia has been studied extensively. Between 2001 and 2010, researchers published at least 1,746 peer-reviewed articles about the online encyclopedia. Such studies are greatly facilitated by the fact that Wikipedia's database can be downloaded without help from the site owner.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to Wikipedia:
Conflict-of-interest (COI) occurs when editors use Wikipedia to advance the interests of their external roles or relationships. The type of COI editing that compromises Wikipedia the most is paid editing for public relations (PR) purposes. Several policies and guidelines exist to combat conflict of interest editing, including Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline and the Wikimedia Foundation's paid-contribution disclosure policy.
Gender bias includes various gender-related disparities on Wikipedia, particularly the overrepresentation of men among both volunteer contributors and article subjects, as well as lesser coverage of and topics primarily of interest to women.
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is an affinity group for contributors with shared goals within the Wikimedia movement. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sibling projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration.
The Signpost is the English Wikipedia's online newspaper. Managed by the volunteer community, it is published online with contributions from Wikimedia editors. The newspaper's scope includes the Wikimedia community and events related to Wikipedia, including Arbitration Committee rulings, Wikimedia Foundation issues, and other Wikipedia-related projects. It was founded in January 2005 by Wikipedian Michael Snow, who continued as a contributor until his February 2008 appointment to the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees.
CheckUser is a function of MediaWiki that investigates the IP addresses of an account to enforce blocks. Together with manual inspection, it assists in uncovering illegitimate behavior such as spam. This protects the wiki from disruption by any particular group or individual. It can also show all edits from an IP including those by registered users.
On Wikipedia, ideological bias, especially in its English-language edition, has been the subject of academic analysis and public criticism of the project. Questions relate to whether its content is biased due to the political, religious, or other ideologies its volunteer editors may adhere to. These all draw concerns as to the possible effects this may have on the encyclopedia's reliability.
The COVID-19 pandemic was covered in Wikipedia extensively, in real-time, and across multiple languages. This coverage extends to many detailed articles about various aspects of the topic itself, as well as many existing articles being amended to take account of the pandemic's effect on them. Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects' coverage of the pandemic—and how the volunteer editing community achieved that coverage—received widespread media attention for its comprehensiveness, reliability, and speed. Readership increased during the pandemic.
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been covered extensively on Wikipedia. This coverage has often been criticized for perceived bias. External groups have initiated editing campaigns, and the Israel–Hamas war intensified editing in the topic-area. Wikipedia coverage on the conflict differs significantly between the encyclopedia's language-versions.
Disputes on Wikipedia arise from Wikipedians, who are volunteer editors, disagreeing over article content, internal Wikipedia affairs, or alleged misconduct. Disputes often manifest as repeated competing changes to an article, known as "edit wars", where instead of making small changes, edits are "reverted" wholesale. Disputes may escalate into dispute resolution efforts and enforcement.
