The Wikipedia Elections Edit War

In this video we will discuss one of Wikipedia's largest new edit wars, being waged across the entirety of its election articles. This war involves the controversial admin "Number 57", and their countless edits across hundreds of pages, and the many attacks against them by other users, Twitter mobs and more.

Timestamps
- 00:00 - Introduction
- 00:50 - The Twitter Mob
- 01:53 - BATTLE for 1898 France
- 02:50 - Battle Aftermath
- 03:16 - History of Parliamentary Elections
- 05:05 - Sourcing French Elections
- 06:20 - Infobox Aesthetics
- 08:48 - BATTLE for Botswana
- 10:28 - The Saga of "Leader's Seat"
- 11:25 - Conclusion

------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography
- Cagé, Julia, and Thomas Piketty. A History of Political Conflict: Elections and Social Inequalities in France, 1789-2022. Paris: Le Seuil, 2023.
- Caramani, Daniele. Elections in Western Europe 1815-1996. 2000 ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan Limited, 2017.
- Nohlen, Dieter. “France.” In Elections in Europe: A Data Handbook, edited by Nohlen Dieter and Philip Stöver, 639–722. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010.

Online sources
- The Twitter Thread:
- 1898 French Election talk page:
- 2024 Botswana Election talk page:
- Argument archive:
- Discussion on removing paramaters:
- RFC restoring paramaters/adding documentation change:
------------------------------------------------------------
#wikipedia

[jsmedia-wwgb]

57 being the one who wrote the rule was an amazing twist

[DanMan]

Another thing to notice about Number 57 is that he generally only edits obscure elections to align with his visual preferences, he never does it to any American or large European elections. Likely because he knows the opposition there will be too strong

[atzouff]

When the wikipedia page edit war is more intense than the election it is about.

[shade]

10:42 ah yes, the fantastic wiki phenomenon of "the information you added isn't formatted correctly, so i'm going to remove everything you added entirely instead of correcting it"

[Lagmachine-ersz]

7:55 "I don't see how outgoing/incoming members are relevant to an election"...Arguably, that's the MOST important thing. You know, the people actually elected or not?

[History-and-stuff]

If it wasn’t for all those brave elections, we’d all be speaking Wikipedia today

[pezpeculiar]

This dude is insane. He literally just fucks up infoboxes with sourced information out of personal preference even if everyone else disagrees with him

[CambrianChronicles]

It wouldn’t be a niche Wikipedia article without a random unarchived website source from 2002, and at least one major rewrite destroying what was once a decent article.
Bonus points if it then ends up being used as a source by a YouTuber.

Great video!

[johnsmith-vtjd]

I think the parameters should be kept and used. 57's rule seems designed to support his visual preference, not because it leads to more informative pages. Removing stuff like "leaders's seat" and "outgoing members" just makes the page less useful.

[Kris-jutj]

Having interacted with Numbert 57 in the past, I personally believe that they fall into the trap many other editors do: it's easier to simply remove unsourced information from an article than it is to find and add a source for it. I find this is especially the case for highly active editors who monitor thousands of pages at at time. On my side of Wikipedia, I've seen inexperienced editors add correct information only for it to be reverted because no source was provided. In this instance, where does the fault lie? Do we get peeved at the editor who added an uncited claim? Or do we lash out at the editor who (ironically) adds back in incorrect/outdated information in an effort to prevent new unsourced information from cropping up?

[JB-nuqs]

Wow this was wild. Obviously I agree that info needs to be accurate, but Number 57 clearly has a minimalist preference and was far too eager to remove info in my opinion. I don't like his argument for Botswana at all. The entire concept of an infobox being "too cluttered", thus making the info "inaccessible" is just ridiculous to me. An extra link in the box doesn't suddenly turn the box into a mess where you struggle to read anything. Plus, you have to think about it from the perspective of someone going to this page to check things. People interested in this election are probably going to the page to see who was elected or not, that link is the type of thing they'd be looking for.

[guillemedina]

When I found out about number 57 I rushed to his account to see if he had edited Paraguayan elections, what I found was that the man edits dozens of election articles a day and apparently that's all he does

[Lanosrep]

This is why I retired from wikipedia editing. The longer and more established an editor or admin is, the more their edits are respected and accepted, even if they are downright idiotic and make the user-experience infinitely worse.

[tradracemixer]

"Enjoy your Friday night as all your others, on Wikipedia! Cheers." That was cold-blooded murder, Number 57 was K.O'ed

[Enjgine]

57 is the sort of admin you remove and ban from admin for being insufferable, they can come back in 2 years if they can prove to the staff that they will be more amicable

[LiminalQueenMedia]

For context, 57 is an ADMIN. He is one of only slightly under 500 active english users with complete permissions to the site. He is a true shut in.

[proxyprox]

There was once a giant edit war about whether or not Stanley Kubrick should have an infobox

[mjr_schneider]

Whenever I read a Wikipedia article that I think looks really professional and objective, taking a quick peek at the talk page never fails to destroy that illusion.

[GmKaiser]

As long as the information is well organized, Wikipedia articles should try to contain as much sourced info as possible.

[pickyphysicsstudent]

Even if 57 was right regarding the information, there were better ways at going about it than stealth editing a sh1tload of articles. Surely, there should be some method to prevent one guy from editing a buttload of stuff. Maybe have a bot which tallies admins editing articles by categories. If someone edits ~20 articles of the same "genre" in a single day, it might set an alert.
Also the excessive amount of "admin talk" I read from him gave me a headache. You know that style of speech of appearing very formal while seething venom underneath, as they talk down to you.