Most controversial Wikipedia articles, as measured by total size of talk page archives
Most controversial Wikipedia articles, as measured by total size of talk page archives
This page lists Wikipedia pages by the total amount of text in all of their talk page archives put together. It is the best measure there is for determining how much squabbling has gone on behind the scenes for a given page.
Here is a ranking of all 63 of the listed pages that are actual articles (as opposed to policy/administrative/user pages), in descending order:
- Donald Trump
- Intelligent design
- Climate change
- Barack Obama
- United States
- Jesus
- Race and intelligence
- Catholic Church
- Circumcision
- Homeopathy
- Muhammad
- Gamergate (harassment campaign)
- Chiropractic
- Abortion
- Monty Hall problem
- Gaza War (2008-2009)
- Evolution
- Prem Rawat
- Sarah Palin
- India
- Israel
- World War II
- Christ myth theory
- Mass killings under communist regimes
- Jehovah's Witnesses
- September 11 attacks
- Cold fusion
- Climatic Research Unit email controversy
- Armenian genocide
- Anarchism
- Atheism
- Falun Gong
- Neuro-linguistic programming
- Jerusalem
- Control of cities during the Syrian civil war
- Kosovo
- British Isles
- Transcendental Meditation
- United Kingdom
- George W. Bush
- Christianity
- COVID-19 pandemic
- Libertarianism
- Acupuncture
- Thomas Jefferson
- International recognition of Kosovo
- Israel and apartheid
- Adolf Hitler
- United States and state terrorism
- Syrian civil war
- List of best-selling music artists
- Julian Assange
- Russo-Georgian War
- Historicity of Jesus
- Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
- Tea Party movement
- List of common misconceptions
- Murder of Meredith Kercher
- Genesis creation narrative
- Taiwan
- Hillary Clinton
- Electronic cigarette
- Michael Jackson
Bubbling under (present in earlier versions; I have gone back to 2015 so far here, though the page history goes back to 2010):
- 0.999...
- European Union
- Chronic fatigue syndrome
- Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
- Shakespeare authorship question
- Fascism
- Astrology
- The Holocaust
- Joseph Smith
- Chelsea Manning
- List of scientists who disagree with the scientific consensus on global warming [NOTE: now deleted]
- Gibraltar
- Ayn Rand
- Fox News
- Shooting of Trayvon Martin
- Human
- Canada
- Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
- Race (human categorization)
- Iraq War
- Elvis Presley
- Islam
- Philosophy
- Terri Schiavo case
- Black people
- White people
- Palestinians
- Mitt Romney
- HIV
- Occupy Wall Street
- Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
- Elizabeth II
- Asperger syndrome
- Centrifugal force
- Transnistria
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Monty Hall problem
Really not sure where there can be any controversy.
Israel
How could a page about a math problem end up more controversial there than a page on Pissrael?
0.999...
This is hilarious. How is this in any way controversial? Every person who diligently studies calculus for just a few weeks understands that 0.999... = 1, and why.
I haven't actually read any of the talk pages but I'm reckoning that the Monty Hall problem and 0.999... is just people going
You don't even need calculus, you need fractions. 1/3 = .333..., 2/3 = 0.666..., then 3/3 = 0.999...
You need to prove that 0.333... is, indeed, 1/3 (and also that 0.999... = 0.333...*3) for that. Without being familiar with any sort of construction of real numbers, i.e. without understanding what real numbers are, you are just going to be doing a lot of hand-waving.
But yes, if one already accepts that 0.333... = 1/3, then that proof works. However, if one understands the reasons why 0.333... = 1/3, there are easier ways to prove that 0.999... = 1. Or, rather, why 0.999... = 1 is obvious to such people.And sure, one might be familiar with any of those constructions without studying calculus, but if one does study calculus, they are going to study what real numbers are.
Also, fun fact for the onlookers: every repeating decimal represents a rational number, and every rational number can be represented by up to two repeating decimals (counting terminating decimals as repeating here). This can be generalised to natural bases other than 10, as well. Furthermore, if you have a repeating decimal that represents some rational number x, such that -1 <= x <= 1, then x = p/10n+x/10n, where p is some integer and n is a natural number, from where it follows that x = p/(10n-1).
Some examples:
-0.999... = 9/10+0.999.../10 => 0.999... = 9/(10-1) = 9/9 = 1
-0.123123123... = 123/103+123123123.../103 => 0.123123123... = 123/(103-1) = 123/999More generally, when working with other natural bases, we have (x = p/bn+x/bn) => (x = p/(bn-1)), where b is the base. As such, 0.111... (base 2) = 1/10+0.111.../10 (base 2) => 0.111... (base 2) = 1/(10-1) (base 2) = 1/1 = 1.
Yeah 1/3 being periodic is just an artifact of using base 10, because 10 isn’t evenly divisible by 3. If you use say base 60 as the Babylonian did then the artifact vanishes.
Not sure about calling it an 'artifact'. Repeating digital representations of numbers are still a thing in every relevant base.
Yes repeating happens in every base because every base has integers not evenly divisible by its base. Whether a fraction repeats is a particularity of which base is chosen to represent it.