Blog P.I.

Like we always do about this time, let’s check in with the top 10 most edited Wikipedia articles of the past week, courtesy of the online statistical tool WikiRage.

1. Article: Virginia Tech massacre
   Why: April 16 is the first anniversary of the tragedy in Blacksburg, Virginia.
   Detail: As you might expect, there was some controversy in choosing this to be the Featured Article on the very first anniversary. And yet Wikipedian self-importance still manages to shine through. Take this comment from the Talk page: “Has anyone else brought up the idea that MAYBE it might be a bad idea to list this as a featured article? I wonder how many other mentally disturbed people like that man might think ‘Wow, I might even get a featured article out of doing something like this!’” Um, that may be overstating the case. Others have pointed out that stories only can be Featured once, so this will not be on the cover again. Meanwhile, debate continues about whether the article should be called something else, such as “Virginia Tech shootings,” “Virginia Tech Tragedy” or “Virginia Tech episode,” as some feel the term “massacre” expresses too much a point of view.


2. Article: Mark Speight
   Why: The British children’s television show host committed suicide by hanging.
   Detail: That increasingly rare (it seems) most-edited article which is not a “FA,” in Wikipedia short hand, this is a story so sad I hesitate to even explain it here. But in short, I first heard of Speight in January when his fiancee and co-host Natasha Collins was found dead in the couple’s bathtub. After a night of hard partying — too hard by any standards: lots of cocaine, vodka and sleeping pills — Collins was found dead in the couple’s bathtub. Whether overdose or overheat from the bath, Collins’ body was scalded by the water. Speight was initially arrested, but her death was soon ruled “death by misadventure.” Distraught, Speight quit his television show in late February, went missing a few weeks later, and was found just this week. I said it was sad. Meanwhile, Wikipedians try to figure out how and what to say about it.


3. Article: Over Logging
   Why: In happier news, the latest episode of “South Park” again returns to the list of most-edited articles.
   Detail: In one of this season’s better episodes, the Internet “dries up” and the show turns into an extended riff on “The Grapes of Wrath” as Stan’s family heads to “Californee,” where the old-timers believe there’s a “whole mess of Inernet.” The Internet itself is represented as a ginormous Linksys router in an underground military facility, and the humans try to communicate with it like the spaceship from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Eventually, Kyle figures out they just need to unplug it from the wall and plug it back in. Meanwhile, Wikipedians wrestle with the question of references — “Ghostbusters”? Almost, but not obvious enough to warrant mention. “Moonraker”? No, that too was riffing on “Close Encounters.” The recently-cancelled “Jericho”? Apparently not enough people have seen the show to agree or disagree.


4. Article: The Fires of Pompeii
   Why: Here’s where the U.S.-centric bias of this list comes into play: this was the latest episode of “Doctor Who” on BBC One.
   Detail: I can speak at great length about “South Park” and not at all about “Doctor Who” but when it comes to who produces the better articles — it’s the Brits. Perhaps this owes something to the fact that “Doctor Who” has been on the air for much, much longer than even the veteran cartoon show, and perhaps this owes something as well to the fact that more people are involved in writing, acting and shooting those episodes. This seems to generate coverage that “South Park” — usually written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone the week before it airs — just doesn’t get. That said, fans of the Doctor are in the habit of breaking the article into sections, whereas “South Park” fans tend to write one big paragraph summarizing the episode.


5. Article: Prom Night (2008 film)
   Why: This PG-13 horror/thriller was released in theaters last weekend.
   Detail: The what? The who? I hadn’t even heard of it until just now, but Box Office Mojo says it was the number one grossing film in America last week, and this weekend it’s holding on to third place. The plot summary is very long already, so that appears to be most of the editing activity. And like “American Idol” edits in recent weeks, this article is edited by a significant percentage of unregistered users. In this case, they may even be a majority.


6. Article: Lisa del Giocondo
   Why: FA on April 13.
   Detail: You know the woman who posed for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa? No? Well, this is her. The article was the target of an unusual level of vandalism, even for a FA. Worse, most of it wasn’t even clever.


7. Article: Trevor Immelman
   Why: He beat Tiger Woods to win the 2008 Masters.
   Detail: I think it’s interesting to look at his his article on the day before won and the state of the article today. It’s not substantially longer or better, but if you compare the Biography sections, there is no question the writing is much stronger.


8. Article: Ailanthus altissima
   Why: FA on April 15.
   Detail: Yes, but what is it? A tree. The tree of heaven, it’s called in China to which it is native. Unlike most topics, this one has acquired a (potentially short-lasting) editor who has given themselves the handle Ailanthus altissima editor.


9. Article: List of Omnitrix aliens
   Why: If I understand this correctly, there is a Cartoon Network show called “Ben 10,” and in this show he can turn into a variety of aliens to fight a variety of villains. A bracelet-like device called the Omnitrix allows him to transform into these creatures. I think the show has just completed its run, and now another series is beginning, “Ben 10: Alien Force.”
   Detail: All I can tell you is that apparently there is a lot to be said about these aliens. And all of a sudden, I can imagine what my parents must have thought when I once might have tried to explain the game “Mega Man.”


10. Article: Rob & Big
    Why: Another recently concluded television series I’ve never heard of.
    Detail: This one ran on MTV2 and seems to have been a reality show about a professional skateboarder and his best friend/bodyguard. This article might be of some interest to the philosophical debate between Wikipedia “mergists” and “separatists” (don’t worry, it’s not like racial separatism). Roughly speaking, the issue at stake is whether more information should be included in a main article to avoid creating too many short pages vs. whether to break out information into multiple pages to avoid making the main article too long. In this case, every single episode of Rob & Big’s three-season run is summarized on this, the main page. My preference would be to create three new pages, one for each season. However, that would leave almost no content on the main page. So what we have here is an article without much information besides capsule summaries of each episode. A real dilemma. But also not of any great importance compared to, say, the Virginia Tech massacre. I’ll be an Eventualist on this one and assume someone else with more knowledge will come along and improve the article another time.

Holdovers this week: For the first time in the five weeks I’ve been writing this, there are none.

Falling off the list: Everything from last week.

Recurring themes: Nothing really, besides the predictable prominence of FAs and pop culture.

Honorable mention: Deaths in 2008, a hardy perennial of the WikiRage top-edited articles, is nowhere to be found this week. Either nobody you’ve heard of died this week (which is probably true) or WikiRage occasionally misses some. (This may have happened last week with the previous episode of “South Park.”) Considering that this page has been edited more than 500 times since April 14, that’s my guess. I’ll look into the situation a little more, but it’s a reminder that on the web, frustratingly, no metric is completely reliable.

Images courtesy KeyExpert, ciro@tokyo and spike555151 on Flickr.