Wikipedia, having just completed 15 years, recently released data on the most-edited articles of all time. The surmise also was that most-edited equals most controversial. And guess who’s made it to the list from India? No, not Narendra Modi, but Ilathalapathy Vijay and Superstar Rajinikanth.
Ilayathalapathy Vijay
Wiki drew up a list of 127 persons whose page has been changed more than 10,000 times in the past 15 years. There are 6 Indians on the list and everyone, except for Mahatma Gandhi, is from cinema. Vijay’s page has been edited 17,736 times during this time, and Rajini’s 11,360 times. Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan also made it to the list.
Apparently, the number of edits is an indicator of how much web users care about the content of a Wikipedia page. Therefore, the data has been interpreted to mean that ‘most edited’ means ‘most controversial’ . Forbes.com wrote that ‘The number of edits can be used as a surrogate measure of controversy because frequent revisions over a long period of time are caused by underlying conflicts of interest between Wikipedia editors. Fans will promote their hero’s positive image and add details that many readers would consider trivial, going against Wikipedia’s guidelines on article size and a neutral point of view, for instance.’
Wonder what Vijay and Rajini have to say about this unexpected ‘honour’!
