From December 1, 2012, until January 31, 2013, a stylistic disagreement unfolded between editors on the English-language Wikipedia as to whether the word “into” in the title of the Wikipedia article for the 2013 film Star Trek Into Darkness should be capitalized. More than 40,000 words were written on the article’s talk page (a page for editors to discuss changes to the article) before a consensus was reached to capitalize the “I”.

Edit: I should add that I got there from this page, which I’ve been enjoying immensely this morning-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars

The Star Trek one was definitely a favorite, but it can’t beat the edit war over the entry for ‘feces.’

Revert wars, alleged sockpuppetry, and page protection: should the article on feces include this picture of a large human turd? As of early July 2005, the discussion on this issue alone had reached 12,900 words. Someone commented “Seriously, guys. You’re arguing about poo.” Brace yourselves for a second round when the editor who contributed the ejaculation video (see above) gets the idea of a companion video for this article.

  • @Deceptichum
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    423 days ago

    The 2016 Christian Science Monitor article “The Source Code of Political Power”, by Simon DeDeo of Indiana University, used the debate as one example of how Wikipedia is an evolving system of ideas and found comparison to the Talmud. Accordingly, DeDeo opined that Wikipedia was moving towards increased complexity, refinement, and bureaucracy.

    Why? Why come to such a useless conclusion and why add such useless information to the article.

    • Flying SquidOPM
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      323 days ago

      Yeah, that was pretty odd. But then the fact that there’s an article at all is pretty odd.