George W. Bush has one of the most controversial Wikipedia page of all time - and the edits are fascinating
APPart of Wikipedia's charm is that it can be both an authority on topics and yet completely inaccurate at the same time.
The world's most popular encyclopedia moves faster than traditional collections of "objective" knowledge, but it's involved in a constant war of small edits amongst its most passionate users vying to control how a subject will be portrayed to the world.
This is especially evident in the most heavily-edited pages. In these edits you can see what subjects are still being fought over. They are a repository of the most controversial topics of our society.
And the most contentious of these topics is former president George W. Bush. The more than 45,000 edits on his page tell a story of a former president whose legacy is divisive, and who can still inspire expletive-filled ire, even while he is in retirement working on his painting skills.
Phrasing:
Many of the edits are language-centric, picking obsessively at certain words. This edit changed the words "as proof" to "claim" and "unfit to be" to "not a good":
It was later thrown aside and the original restored by another editor:
The reason? According to the second editor, the "first part is weasely almost to the point of mush."
WikipediaA sample of words flagged as problematic by an editor.
Relevance:
If "phrasing" is one pillar of debate, another is "relevance." A Wikipedia page is meant to be a succinct look at a topic. All the definitive facts, but no digression into unnecessary fluff.
A reference to Bush's current approval ratings was recently removed:
The true objection to that grain of information might be the politicized implications, but the editor who removed it simply cited irrelevance: "2015 poll when he hasn't been president for 8 years is not noteworthy."
This passage was also once completely removed:
The editor deemed the text: "Irrelevant, every President has his supporters and protestors. Stating that there were protestors of President Bush is just gloating by liberals who hate Bush." (sic).
This removal was eventually rejected and the information reinstated. But that doesn't mean it was the end of the controversy.
Sourcing:
The same passage:
Was later modified to this:
The tactic this time was to cite improper sourcing: "The phrase, 'highly controversial figure' is no where to found in that article. That article does not speak to whole world just UK."
WikipediaA history of recent edits.
Bad Words (Note: The following section contains obscenities)
Of course, some of the most amusing edits are the ones that sink into pure profanity. The page was recently edited from calling George H.W. Bush a "president" and "father" to "prick" and "twat." In the same edit, George W. Bush's "birth name" was changed from "George Walker Bush" to "Twatface!!"
His picture was also changed to one named "Collage of Nine Dogs.jpg," which can be found still on Wikimedia Commons.
In fact, the earliest edit of the page seems to be an act of vandalism. A sentence was changed from this:
To this:
According to a recent post on Reddit by data miner Ramiro Gómez, some of the other most heavily edited "normal" Wikipedia pages are Michael Jackson, Jesus, Adolf Hitler, and Britney Spears.