On Jan 1, 2014, at 8:45 AM, Mike Palij wrote:

> (believe
> it or not, January 1 commemorates the circumcision of Jesus -- ask
> your Lutheran and Anglican friends about it)

I celebrate the date of my own circumcision by wearing diapers with a lit 
"sparkler" sticking out the top.

I just read a new book chapter that reported that the Wikipedia article on male 
circumcision is one of the 10 most-controversial articles in the 
English-language edition (Yasseri, Spoerri, Graham, & Kertész, in press; 
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.5566.pdf).

Here is the top-10 list for the English-language version:
1. George W. Bush
2. Anarchism
3. Muhammad
4. List of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. Employees
5. Global Warming
6. Circumcision
7. United States
8. Jesus
9. Race & Intelligence
10. Christianity

Who would have imagined that the article about "World Wrestling Entertainment, 
Inc. Employees" would be more controversial than the ones on "Global Warming" 
and "Race & Intelligence"? I guess I need to learn more about pro wrestling ....

Figure 3 in the chapter is particularly interesting: it is a "Cluster View of 
the overlap structure of the most contested Wikipedia pages in English, German, 
French and Spanish."

Best,
Jeff

REFERENCE
Yasseri T., Spoerri A., Graham M., & Kertész J. (in press). The most 
controversial topics in Wikipedia: A multilingual and geographical analysis. In 
Fichman P., Hara N., (Eds), Global Wikipedia: International and cross-cultural 
issues in online collaboration. Scarecrow Press. Retrieved from 
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1305/1305.5566.pdf

Abstract
We present, visualize and analyse the similarities and differences between the 
controversial topics related to “edit wars” identified in 10 different language 
versions of Wikipedia. After a brief review of the related work we describe the 
methods developed to locate, measure, and categorize the controversial topics 
in the different languages. Visualizations of the degree of overlap between the 
top 100 lists of most controversial articles in different languages and the 
content related to geographical locations will be presented. We discuss what 
the presented analysis and visualizations can tell us about the multicultural 
aspects of Wikipedia and practices of peer-production. Our results indicate 
that Wikipedia is more than just an encyclopaedia; it is also a window into 
convergent and divergent social-spatial priorities, interests and preferences.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffry Ricker, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scottsdale Community College
9000 E. Chaparral Road
Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626
Office: SB-123
Phone: (480) 423-6213
Fax: (480) 423-6298


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