User:RM395/Course/Edit wars/Cow tipping

This could be one of the few reasons that teachers/professors do not like the use of Wikipedia in their class. I researched the edit war involving the page cow tipping. The edit war that occurred was about the picture and caption on the page. The picture was a cow standing up with a caption that read “ An unsuspecting victim.” Here is where the hilarity ensues. On May 4th of 2005 the aforementioned image was removed with the idea that the picture on the “cow tipping” page should be a picture of a cow getting tipped over.

In December of 2005 the war began to heat up after the image was reposted onto the page. A user decided to hash out some points on why the image was bad for Wikipedia. They stated that the cow was awake, not very unsuspecting of him as the cow was looking at you through the picture. Also, the image appears to have been taken in the daytime, cow tipping is usually done at night because it is illegal.

On February 12th of 2006, the talk page moved from displeased to disgust with the image. People were stating how the fact that the image poses an edit war is a new low for Wikipedia. It was said over and over again that Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia and not CollegeHumor Probably one of the funniest posts was on July 14th 2006. Users were backing up the image and dissecting every part of the caption. One user went as far as to go word-by-word through the caption. They said the cow was “unsuspecting” because he is a cow and cow’s probably have no recognition of the activity cow tipping. On the “potential victim” part, the user stated that the cow is not immune to being tipped over, therefore it is a potential victim.”

In March of 2007, the edit war peaked. A “request for comment” or RFC was filed and placed on the talk page. This RFC was in a purple box with comments for and against the image/caption. The goal of this RFC was to find a consensus amongst the numerous editors contributing to the war. Of course, no consensus was found.

On April 18th 2007 the community attempted to take all of the humor out of it and figure out what to do. They said that everyone knows this is an Encyclopedia and that humor should not be a part of that. They tried to focus on solely the image and caption. This was to narrow down the talk page, which also failed. Someone again tried to say that the cow was an unsuspecting victim, edging others to try and prove that it wasn’t. The one-time response to that was, “its not verifiable. its a cow. no one here can claim to know what it suspects or what it does not suspect. this is idiotic.”

I couldn’t narrow down exactly where the image was ultimately changed to what it is today. The image today is one of a cow lying down, the caption says “a cow voluntarily lying down.” This only adds insult to the injury.

This is clearly one of the funniest/lamest edit wars out there. --Thepresidenthal (talk) 15:12, 18 March 2013 (UTC)