Blog P.I.

Although All the Rage exists as a feature for the purposes of examining the top 10 most-edited articles on the English-language Wikipedia for the week ending Saturday, sometimes it’s almost more interesting what doesn’t make the list. Today we’ll do both:

1. Article: UEFA Euro 2008
   Why: The 2008 UEFA European Football Championship is under way right now in Austria and Switzerland, and at least some English-speaking country must still be alive.
   Detail: Possibly the UK? British subjects (the articles, not the citizens) dominated the top slot for the past month now, and we can assume plenty of them are involved here.


2. Article: The Incredible Hulk (film)
   Why: It’s the number one movie in America this week.
   Detail: Just as British articles have been landing in the top 5 edited articles for several weeks now, so have the top-grossing U.S. films on their opening weekends.


3. Article: Kung Fu Panda
   Why: The number one movie in America last week.
   Detail: See above.


4. Article: Lukas Podolski
   Why: This Polish-born German soccer player made both goals in a 2-0 victory over Poland on June 8. Then he scored the Germans’ only goal in a 2-1 defeat by Croatia.
   Detail: I’m not sure if he’s just really good or Germany is really just not that good. And if you assumed that the German-language Podolski article would be longer than the English one, as I did until just a moment ago, you’d be wrong.


5. Article: Treaty of Lisbon
   Why: This EU treaty, apparently in the works since at least 2001, was rejected this week by Irish voters, thus throwing its future into question.
   Detail: I’d never heard of this treaty once, I’ll admit. But if I wanted to find out more about it, this is probably the best place to find it. I am sincerely impressed by the quality of the article. When I first saw it, I assumed it was a historical subject that had made Featured Article. Well, it’s not — but it should probably be up for Featured Article status. The editors who assembled this page are among Wikipedia’s most sophisticated.


6. Article: ICarly
   Why: It’s another one of those Nickelodeon “sitcoms” aimed at “tweenagers”, and it’s back on this list after appearing once, in this feature’s second week.
   Detail: Given the target age range for this show noted above, I’m surprised this show is so frequently edited. It can’t be my sisters and their friends; though they’re a precocious wireless generation more advanced than the wired childhood of my generation, I doubt they’re editing Wikipedia just yet. The youngest editors I’ve seen are still a few years older, maybe late middle school. Does this show have an adult following? A few questions I can’t answer: Why hasn’t Hannah Montana been on this list? And do you think SpongeBob SquarePants would have made this list during its heydey?


7. Article: Deaths in 2008
   Why: The most consistently-ranking Wikipedia article on WikiRage is back after a couple off-weeks.
   Detail: If that’s how you want to put it. Passing this week: Washington’s most respected journalist, Tim Russert, the politician uncle of Rep. Jeff Flake, a 28-year-old Armenian chess grandmaster, by heart attack (perhaps even more tragic than the 58-year-old Russert) and the suicide of a Polish-German footballer (stay happy, Lukas Podolski).


8. Article: Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
   Why: It’s the new Coldplay album, released in Europe last week and available in the United States on Tuesday.
   Detail: They are English, but somehow I doubt that’s it. For one thing, they’re in all those iTunes commercials right now. I’m one of those Radiohead fans who views all Coldplay fans as easily entertained if not actual philistines, but I’ll admit the section played before the Apple logo comes onscreen is catchy.


9. Article: Jurassic Park (film)
   Why: Front-paged on the English Wikipedia as a Featured Article on June 9.
   Detail: Meanwhile, the article about the novel Jurassic Park “needs additional citations for verifications.” That’s a damn shame.


10. Article: George I of Great Britain
    Why: The Featured Article on June 11.
    Detail: For the first time this week, the first and last articles on this list concern something British.

• Holdovers this week: Nothing, actually, for just the second time.


• Falling off the list: Last week’s list.


• Recurring themes: British articles of all kinds, American blockbuster films, Featured Articles, I try to be polite when I don’t care about the subject.


• Honorable mention: Tim Russert made it just to #24 according to WikiRage as of Sunday afternoon. That’s fewer than the apparently unintentionally hilarious new M. Night Shyamalan flick, the two-weeks out Adam Sandler vehicle, and a Tamil-language film released in “many theaters.” Hmm.

On the other hand, according to Brian Cubbison at the Syracuse Post-Standard, Wikipedia beat the AP to announcing Russert’s death on Friday afternoon. John Robinson at the Greensboro News-Record praises Wikipedia for getting there first. Indeed, if you follow breaking news, you know AP almost never gets beaten on getting there first. Plus, I’m pleased that newspapers have reporter-bloggers following Wikipedia this closely.

But I’d also like to salute the anonymous first-time editor at 66.187.200.74 in New York City for rolling the page back until the rumors could be verified. As I understand it, MSNBC held back the news until it could notify Russert’s wife, Maureen Orth, and the other TV networks held back until NBC News could break it. Plus, the Verifiability requirement for new information is one of the central tenets of Wikipedia. It’s what keeps the sometimes unreliable website anywhere in the neighborhood of reliable. Wikipedia is supposed to be a research site, and it shouldn’t try to be a news site. I suppose that’s what Wikinews is for, but it hasn’t really caught on.

I don’t really know what else to say about that, except my best to his friends and family. I’m going to miss the hell out of Russert on “Meet”.


• One more thing: Notice something missing? How about the 3G iPhone? In fact, this article is at #20 overall at the time of this writing. I’m not sure if it’s counting edits still, because the article has been “merged” with iPhone. The announcement last week was covered heavily by the business and tech press in addition to the Apple and gadget blogs, but on this website full of geeks, that’s as good as it can do? Does this bode ill for Apple and the new iPhone, or does it say something about the type of people who are and are not on Wikipedia? I’ll leave you with that thought.

Image courtesy queenkv on Flickr.