Yuna Kim is the 8th most controversial entry in the Japanese Wikipedia | Golden Skate

Yuna Kim is the 8th most controversial entry in the Japanese Wikipedia

Serious Business

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 7, 2011
By now, if you're not familiar, Wikipedia has become the most frequently used source of basic information on a vast, comprehensive variety of topics. And it got this way because it's an open-source encyclopedia: anybody can edit it, and millions have. Of course, people sometimes disagree on things. This leads to instances on Wikipedia where an entry on a topic is changed one way by one editor and then reverted back by another editor, and so on and so forth. A study has come out using the amount of those reversions, weighted towards editors who are more active on the site, to come up with a list of the most controversial entries on the website in a variety of languages.

For a summary of the study and a top ten list of controversial entries in each of the languages used, read this blog entry by one of the study's authors.

A name in the top ten lists immediately popped out to me. It seems in addition to dominating women's figure skating and lists of the most bankable South Korean athletes, Queen Yuna also tops the list of the most controversial individuals in the Japanese Wikipedia! Kim comes out ahead of Mizuho Fukushima, an anti-nuclear activist/politician in Japan, and Shintaro Ishihara, the former governor of Tokyo who may be best known in the US as the co-author of the book The Japan That Can Say No that drastically and hilariously altered US/Japan relations in the 80s/90s. You'd have to go down to #25 to find Yuna's long time rival, Mao Asada. Although it's predictable that Asada would inspire less controversy among her fellow citizens. For a long list of the most controversial entries in Japanese and other languages, refer to this site. Sadly, Korean isn't one of the languages used in the study, so we don't know if Yuna is similarly controversial on the Korean Wiki, or whether her counterpart, Mao, occupies a similar spot.

That Yuna can inspire so much debate and passion among internet posters who speak Japanese probably isn't a total surprise to us skating fans. We've seen plenty of Kim-bots and Mao-bots descend on even our tiny forum during Olympic years to dazzle us with their passion and vitriol. Any skatefan who tried to search for skating related clips around the time of Vancouver were probably bombarded by pro/anti Yuna/Mao clips instead of what they were looking for. As long as no one is really hurt (and no one has been, as far as I know), I think it's pretty wonderful that skating can inspire so much passion in so many people in at least one part of the world.
 

venlac

On the Ice
Joined
Dec 22, 2012
I'm getting exhausted
Aren't there many other good/valuable topics in figure skating?
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Wow, that's cool. Yuna's in good company at that number eight spot. Number eight on the English list is Jesus.

As for me, I like French the best. Here are the top five: Marie-Ségolène Royal, Unidentified flying objects (I keep warning mankind, but the gullible fools and the advance agents keep changing it back), Jehovah's Witnesses, Jesus, and Sigmund Freud. :rock:

One time Charlie White and Evan Bates altered the entry for Alex Shibutani to read that Alex had been voted the sexiest figure skater on the planet.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Although.. the Czech list is right up there with Homosexuality, Psychotronics, Telepathy, Communism, and Homophobia -- and then Jesus.

No, wait! Romanians find the Disney Chanel to be the third most controversial topic of discussion. Following a college football team at number one and a television satirist at number two.
 

gimble

On the Ice
Joined
Feb 26, 2010
Looking at the list for Japan, the top most controversial topic is Korean Japanese or Koreans closely followed by "Korea origin theory".
 

gmyers

Record Breaker
Joined
Mar 6, 2010
I am not surprised. The Maobots and Yuna fans can turn English language forums into war zones!!!

I am surprised that Kris kristofferson is so controversial in Hungary!!!
 

plushyfan

Record Breaker
Joined
Jun 27, 2012
Country
Hungary
I am not surprised. The Maobots and Yuna fans can turn English language forums into war zones!!!

I am surprised that Kris kristofferson is so controversial in Hungary!!!

What is Kris Kristofferson? What do you mean?
 
Joined
Aug 16, 2009
I am not surprised. The Maobots and Yuna fans can turn English language forums into war zones!!!

I am surprised that Kris kristofferson is so controversial in Hungary!!!

Yipes! Really? From what? His role in the last remake of A Star Is Born???
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
I think some of these entries are not necessarily controversial, they just lend themselves to frequent updating. The Disney Channel, for instance, lists a partial schedule of current shows.
 
Joined
Jun 21, 2003
Last edited:

Serious Business

Record Breaker
Joined
Jan 7, 2011
Yipes! Really? From what? His role in the last remake of A Star Is Born???

Maybe there are some Hungarians who really, really don't think "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose". Personally, it's one of my favorite lines from any song ever, courtesy of Mr. Kristofferson's genius soul.

I think some of these entries are not necessarily controversial, they just lend themselves to frequent updating. The Disney Channel, for instance, lists a partial schedule of current shows.

The paper only measures reversions, though, not updates. A reversion is when one editor chooses to undo the edit of another editor, which is a rebuke/disagreement almost all the time. I say almost, but I actually can't think of any scenario when it's not the result of a disagreement. I speak from experience, as someone who, once upon a naive time, edited Wikipedia fervently in some subject areas I know a lot about. Disagreements happen constantly behind the scenes on Wiki, and they can get pretty heated. And what's more, under the Wikipedia system (both in its software and in its ad hoc rules), there's really never any resolution to disagreements. If there are enough people on each side of a disagreement, it can go on forever.

Edited to add: Lest you think a page on the Disney Channel should be relatively uncontroversial, you'd be very surprised. The thing that got me to quit Wikipedia editing was one guy who stalked my edits about comic book characters to revert all of them, or argue for their reversion when he couldn't do it. At some point, I was surrendered the paper empire to him. Wiki itself keeps a list of the most frivolous edit wars on its site. One such war was waged over the list of fictional ducks.

Oh wow, that's pretty remarkable.

Where/how can you find the article?

For an even deeper list of what Wikipedians argue endlessly over, check out the WikiWarMonitor.
 
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