Wikipedia Is 15, so Let’s Look at Their Top 15 Most-Edited Articles

Wikipedia is now deep into its teen years, fully explaining its insistence on knowing everything. With the online, user-edited encyclopedia passing 15 years old, the Wikimedia blog has put out a list of the most-edited articles of each year, as well as a list of the most-edited of all time (for the English-language site).

Wikipedia has come a long way over the years from dubious knowledge source fraught with editing wars and potentially false information to generally thoroughly cited knowledge source fraught with editing wars and potentially false information. For any faults it still has, though, it’s become one of the most useful, informative sites on the Internet overall—and probably more factually accurate than your average blog post, honestly.

Highlights of most-edited articles throughout the years include:

• Creationism (#1) and Feminism (at #3) in 2001, two things that mysteriously continue to be contentious
• George Bush in 2004, presumably because no one could understand how he got elected again
• The Lebanon War, closely followed by the Wii (at #3) in 2006
• Sarah Palin in 2008
• “Deaths of the year” topped 2007, 2013, and 2015, which hits a little too close to home this week

As far as most-edited pages cumulatively over the past 15 years, here’s the full list:

• George W. Bush
• List of WWE personnel (?)
• United States -Yeah, it’s clear none of us can agree on what this should be in real life, either.
• Wikipedia -Maybe for “Wikipaedia” pronunciation corrections?
• Michael Jackson
• Catholic Church
• List of programs broadcast by ABS-CBN
• Jesus
• Barack Obama -Probably from people repeatedly editing to compare him to Hitler.
• Hitler -Probably from people repeatedly editing to compare him to Obama.
• Britney Spears
• World War II -Have there been major changes to WWII since 2001? Why weren’t we informed?
• Deaths in 2013 -That must really have been a rough year.
• The Beatles
• India

(via BBC News, image via Wikipedia)

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Dan Van Winkle

Dan Van Winkle (he) is an editor and manager who has been working in digital media since 2013, first at now-defunct Geekosystem (RIP), and then at The Mary Sue starting in 2014, specializing in gaming, science, and technology. Outside of his professional experience, he has been active in video game modding and development as a hobby for many years. He lives in North Carolina with Lisa Brown (his wife) and Liz Lemon (their dog), both of whom are the best, and you will regret challenging him at Smash Bros.

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