The 20 most-edited Wikipedia pages of 2016 reveal what topics people cared about this year — and fought over

Wikipedia may look smooth on the outside, but just below the surface there is an ongoing discussion over how certain people and events are going to be remembered.

This process involves the editing of pages, sometimes over and over again, by the site's most passionate users. If you look at the most-edited pages, you can see the topics that our society is trying to make sense of, or fighting over. Some of these pages have over 45,000 edits, and range from individual entertainers to religions to wars.

Every year Wikipedia releases an official list of the most-edited English language pages for a given year. There are some big ones that often show up: deaths, sports results, music releases, and so on. But there are also topics that are very particular to a given time, and show what our obsessions were that year.

For 2016, there should be no surprise over the one that loomed large: The 2016 US presidential election. Donald Trump took the number two spot, the list of Hillary Clinton's endorsements took the third, and election itself took the fourth. Pop culture events that made it into the top 20 were Kanye West's album "The Life of Pablo," "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," and painter Vincent van Gough, who was the subject of a big page rewrite this year.

Here is the full list: 

Most-edited Wikipedia pages in 2016

1. Deaths in 2016 (18,230 edits)

2. Donald Trump (8,933)

3. List of Hillary Clinton presidential campaign endorsements (6,527)

4. United States presidential election, 2016 (6,162)

5. Republican Party presidential primaries, 2016 (5,715)

6. 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting (5,540)

7. Bailando 2015 (5,342)

8. Donald Trump presidential campaign endorsements, 2016 (5,328)

9. 2016 in sports (5,277)

10. 2016 in South Korean music (5,074)

11. Beverly Gray (4,957)

12. Statewide opinion polling for the United States presidential election (4,743)

13. Panama Papers (4,659)

14. 2016 in Philippine television (4,600)

15. 2016 Pacific typhoon season (4,244)

16. 2016 Atlantic hurricane season (3,874)

17. Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2016 (3,736)

18. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (3,593)

19. The Life of Pablo (3,574)

20. Vincent van Gogh (3,551)

While many of these are constantly updating lists, which makes sense, one of the most fascinating areas of debate in Wikipedia centers around people, and the list of public figures whose legacies are in dispute. We also looked at which people had the all-time most-edited pages.

You have those you might expect, like ex-presidents or dictators, but also a run of professional wrestlers you probably never knew were so disputed.

We have compiled a list of the top 29 most-edited pages of people on Wikipedia, along with a sample edit from each. Edits removing portions of the text are shown in red, and edits adding new text are shown in blue.

Here is the list:

29. Bill Clinton

AP

Before edit:

Born and raised in Arkansas, Clinton became a student leader and a skilled musician.

After edit:

Clinton was born and raised in Arkansas.

28. Kelly Clarkson

Mark Metcalfe / Getty Images

Before edit:

Her sixth studio album, 'Piece by Piece' was released in March 2015 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, thus collecting her third number one album and tying Carrie Underwood for most number one albums for an American Idol alumni. 

After edit:

In 2015, Clarkson released her seventh studio album, "Piece by Piece", becoming her third number one album on the "Billboard" 200 Chart.

27. Big Show (wrestler)

Getty/Leigh Vogel / Stringer

 

Before edit:

Big Show at Fort Bragg.

After edit:

Big Show arriving at a hamburger eating contest.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider