Blog P.I.

Our periodic look at the top ten most-edited articles on the English language Wikipedia, made possible Craig Wood’s Wikirage monitoring tool, is back this week. It’s been two weeks since our last installment, the previous week’s edition being canceled on account of travel.

However, it also marks the beginning of a new direction for this recurring feature, or at least a new frequency for its recurrence. When July ends in two more weeks, All the Rage will start appearing on a monthly basis. I think we’ve pretty well established a week-by-week pattern, and here is a brief outline of the kinds of articles that usually make the list:

• Weekly installments of popular television shows in the U.S. and UK are frequently represented.
• The highest-grossing film in North America each week almost always makes the list.
• Pay-per-view professional wrestling events are not unheard of.
• Other entertainment genres popping up from time to time: Nickelodeon sitcoms aimed at tweenagers, televised elimination-style competitions produced by Simon Cowell, sports playoffs and championship series.
• Deaths in 2008 is the list-based article most likely to appear in the top ten articles, and prominent passing figures sometimes earn a spot of their own.
• Those who write the breaking/current news articles — on terrorist attacks, natural disasters and many things government-related — are among the most sophisticated and motivated Wikipedians of all.
• If an article attains the status of Featured Article, thereby giving it 24 hours on the front page of Wikipedia, the resulting vandalism and reversions thereof can push it into the most-edited articles of the week.

Now that we’re going monthly (and between these three installments, bi-monthly) I wonder what different patterns will emerge. What’s likely is that some or all of the above article types will remain, but they won’t all and their relative chart positions may prove to be different as well. Or maybe the trends will look no different on a month-by-month than week-by-week basis. Stay tuned and we’ll find out.

Also, this is not to say that Wikipedia commentary on Blog P.I. itself will be reduced, and this may also be a good place to announce that I will introduce, in the next few days, a new recurring feature also focused on evaluating Wikipedia articles. The angle will be different and the frequency will be a little more when-I-feel-like-it-and-have-the-time, and I’ll have much more to say about that very soon.

And in the meantime, how about that list for the past week:

1. Article: Rafael Nadal
   Why: Spanish tennis player Nadal, long the #2 in the world, won Wimbledon 2008 over Roger Federer, long the #1 in the world.
   Detail: This article is very long and well-developed, and was so going into the final two days of the tournament. And while new information has been added to the 2008 section, making it a few paragraphs longer, it is now recognized as being of lower quality. Specifically, the “Playing style” section has been slapped with a warning that says it “may contain original research or unverified claims.” This despite the fact that it’s a paragraph or two shorter and already cited several sources. Among the claims disputed enough to be removed entirely is his being known for “ultra-precise drink bottle positioning on changeovers.”


2. Article: Roger Federer
   Why: Despite losing to Nadal last week, Swiss tennis player Federer is still the #1 ranking player in the world, for a record consecutive 232nd week.
   Detail: As with the Nadal article, it is very much the same article as it was just a week ago, and the differences are not always apparent on first glance. On second glance, however, we see that the old section “Personal life” — listed above the “Tennis career” section — has been broken up into two constituent parts and reordered. The article now begins with a section called “Early life” containing a basic biographical sketch. Information about his dating life and charitable works has been relocated to the end of the article and is still titled “Personal life.” Meanwhile, context has been given to the “Tennis career” section, which is itself broken into “Junior tennis” and “Career on the ATP.”


3. Article: WALL-E
   Why: Pixar + robots × space = intense fan interest.
   Detail: Seriously, this is the third week in a row WALL-E is on the list, after consecutive weeks in the number one position. I could be wrong, but that might make it the single most-edited article in the three-plus months I’ve been writing this feature. Based on the discussion page, it looks like much of the recent editing has focused on dealing with the extraneous info added by some editors — an Apple references section existed at one time — and debates over how much a critique of consumerism it represents. In its current form, the “Commentary” section largely focuses on disagreements among conservatives about whether the film is “leftist” or reinforcing of “traditional conservatism,” and whether the culprit is big business or too close a tie of business to big government.


4. Article: List of characters from Total Drama Island
   Why: Let’s see if I’ve got this right: it’s a Canadian television show modeled on Survivor and Drawn Together, now being shown on Adult Swim.
   Detail: Why not the main article itself? Why the list? Well, the show seems to have a lot of characters, and the show has apparently struck enough of a nerve that fans are compelled to fill out as much information as possible about them. And the place for that has been designated this page, not the main article.


5. Article: I Love Money: Challenge Show
   Why: This one is about a reality game show, rather than the above article, which is a parody of a reality game show.
   Detail: I must say, this is a terrible article — written by fans and for fans but not giving outsiders any idea what the show is like or why it is interesting or how it works different from other shows. Most edits, so far as I can tell, have gone into meticulous updates of the chart showing contestant and episode progress, with detailed but impenetrable episode summaries. Too much detail. Not enough background. Just goes to show that even highly active articles are not necessarily good articles.


6. Article: Journey’s End (Doctor Who)
   Why: Marking its second week on the list, this is the final episode of the “fourth series” of Doctor Who — after 26 “seasons” that is.
   Detail: To be fair to the fans of I Love Money, I am sure it is much easier to write an “encyclopedic” article about Doctor Who. The show has been around since the 1970s, continuity and the TARDIS-associated universe has a detailed history to explain and even summarize when it gets too long. While there is very little discussion on the I Love Money series talk page, the talk page for this individual episode of Doctor Who is already very long, and fairly sophisticated. And it surely can’t hurt that there is a WikiProject Doctor Who.


7. Article: To Kill a Mockingbird
   Why: It was the Featured Article (FA) on July 11.
   Detail: Featured Articles are frequently vandalized (sometimes amusingly but more often not), articles with racial components are especially vulnerable, literary disputes can get very contentious, and damage done by these edits will bring people to the talk page complaining about how this terrible article was made, FA by editors who may or may not have a bone to pick with other editors or WikiProjects. That more or less describes what’s happened here.


8. Article: Atom
   Why: The Featured Article on July 9.
   Detail: More FA vandalism. After watching this list for some time, I would probably be willing to vote for temporary semi-protection of Featured Articles. Wikipedia prides itself on openness and in its site policies prefers not to create barriers for new editor participation (in its behind the scenes clique-ishness, it can be a bit different). However, policing vandalism on these articles seems like a real drain for editors on “Recent changes (RC) patrol”, aka vandal watch. A semi-protect would only apply to unregistered users and very new accounts, and would only last the period on which the FA was front-paged. I am sure this has been proposed before and shot down in a vote or debate, but if I ever become aware of a discussion to implement this, I would certainly weigh in on its behalf.


9. Article: Deaths in 2008
   Why: The hardiest perennial makes another showing.
   Detail: Passing this week: former White House press secretary and Fox News anchor Tony Snow, medical pioneer Michael DeBakey, the founder of Benihana, a producer of Woody Allen films, and an Indonesian serial killer.


10. Article: 34th G8 summit
    Why: As mentioned above, the government and news-focused Wikipedians do a damn good job of creating detailed articles about recent events in record time. Editors of, say, I Love Money expended many edits on not that much result. Editors of this article added a great deal of information in fewer edits.
    Detail: It seems strange to me that President Bush’s joking conclusion, “goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter,” didn’t make the article. I could understand, though, that it may be a little too U.S.-centric given the global scope of the article, although with equal treatment of similar news coverage of leaders’ statements in other countries, it would not be out of place. But then it seems even more curious that the statement was not raised at all on the discussion page. These people mean business.

Holdovers this week: WALL-E and Deaths in 2008.

Falling off the list: Everything else from two weeks ago.

Recurring themes: Doctor Who episodes, reality TV, Featured Article vandalism.

Honorable mention: Tony Snow, the 50th most-edited article for the concluding week. More and more this section reads like an obituary, which I really don’t need to be doing on a weekly basis. But on Saturday morning, as I learned of Snow’s passing from the morning television news, I did what came natural and checked out the Wikipedia page. While the article obviously reflected current events, as a Wikipedia article it was only mediocre at that point. I made a few edits of my own, removing extraneous information. Did his “pay cut” comment upon leaving the White House need to be mentioned in the second paragraph? Did Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan need to be mentioned in the first paragraph? I said no, and on both counts, other editors have since agreed.

Images courtesy Graham Hodgson, agentjon and davidsilver on Flickr.