Wikipedia's 171 Greatest Articles and 56 Best Categories - What'd I miss?

[Christoff]

Original thread


http://forums.somethingawful.com/sho...readid=2842901

copy/paste

My 171 Favorite Wikipedia Articles, and 56 Favorite Wikipedia Categories
Please feel free to suggest any I missed, or to suggest refinements to my ranking procedure.

tl;dr Crowd: Feel free to scroll down to the hyperlinks...

Well, Wikipedia's a ****ing amazing place filled with amazing ****. If you disagree, then this is not the thread for you.

I had been meaning to do this for quite a while... My original plan was to look through my bookmarked Wikipedia pages, pick my 100 favorites, and email them to my friends. I didn't think that this would take all that long. But when I saw that I had 4,200+ Wikipedia pages bookmarked -- Well, an afternoon project turned into a "couple hours, here and there, spread-out over a month" project. I also suck at paring things down, so "top 100" turned into "top 171", and I also added a second section dealing with only categories and lists. Unbelievable. If I spent as much time studying as I do dicking around with **** like this, I'd be a Doctor of something by now.

I also like to quantify things, whenever possible... regardless of whether it's appropriate to, or not. So to rank my "favorite" pages, I assigned each article zero to two points on each of five different scales: Interesting(ness), Informative(ness), Novel(ty), Useful(ness) and Depth. The idea was that I could then total these five and get a score out of a possible ten that would then make it easy for me to rank my favorites. In practice, I don't know that I would've picked the same categories if I had it to do over again... the meanings sorta started blending together for me at the end. Plus I got tired of it. If you have any suggestions for categories that'd make some better metrics (or any other suggestions, for that matter), I'd love to hear them.


So here are the two lists. Individual articles first, categories/lists second. First number is the rank, then the name of the article, and finally the score I gave it (representing the aggregate score mentioned earlier).

Here's a (Rapidshare) link to the Excel file, if you wanna see the sub-scores or wanna **** with the data for some reason.

I hope this is useful to someone, and by all means, please DO suggest any articles that YOU think should've made it. (I know I've already found 3 since I finished this list.

...and if you're the type or person who enjoys such things, please feel free to psychoanalyze me based on my selections... I'm narcissistic enough to welcome the attention. Cheers.

INDIVIDUAL ARTICLES
1 Marree Man 7.8
2 War Plan Red 7.4
3 Vela Incident 7.2
4 Tybee Bomb 7.2
5 United States Numbered Highways 7.1
6 Wow! Signal 7.1
7 Tube Bar Prank Calls 6.9
8 Kola Superdeep Borehole 6.8
9 Back to the Future Timeline 6.8
10 Year Without a Summer 6.8
11 K Foundation Burn a Million Quid 6.8
12 Sokal Affair 6.8
13 Blue Peacock 6.7
14 Veerappan 6.7
15 Person From Porlock 6.7
16 Eternal Flame 6.6
17 U.S. Color-Coded War Plans 6.6
18 The Wedge (Border) 6.6
19 Mohave Phone Booth 6.5
20 Stanislav Petrov 6.5
21 Valery Sablin 6.4
22 The Man on the Clapham Omnibus 6.4
23 Special Atomic Demolition Munition 6.4
24 Piracy in the Strait of Malacca 6.3
25 Prometheus (tree) 6.2
26 Zone of Alienation 6.2
27 Fan Death 6.2
28 Outlawries Bill 6.2
29 Raymond Robinson (Green Man 6.2
30 Scoville Scale 6.2
31 Kardashev Scale 6.2
32 Larry Walters 6.1
33 Joshua A. Norton 6.1
34 Fabergé egg 6.1
35 Issei Sagawa 6.1
36 Joseph Jagger 6.1
37 Traumatic Insemination 6.1
38 James Joseph Dresnok 6.0
39 Ivy League Nude Posture Photos 6.0
40 Jim Corbett (Hunter) 6.0
41 Just-World Phenomenon 6.0
42 Nicholas Bourbaki 6.0
43 Humanzee 6.0
44 Old Man of the Lake 6.0
45 Alexamenos Graffito 6.0
46 Fairy Chess Piece 5.9
47 Michael Fagan Incident 5.9
48 ETAOIN SHRDLU 5.9
49 Palomares Hydrogen Bomb Incident 5.9
50 As Slow as Possible 5.9
51 Bouvet Island 5.9
52 Joshua Milton Blahyi 5.9
53 Centralia, Pennsylvania 5.8
54 The Black Book 5.8
55 Tehachapi Loop 5.8
56 Arbre du Ténéré 5.8
57 Hiroo Onoda 5.8
58 If by Whisky 5.8
59 Peaceful Nuclear Explosions 5.8
60 Planned Shrinkage 5.7
61 Predictions of Soviet Collapse 5.7
62 Clause IV 5.7
63 Marvin Heemeyer 5.7
64 Two ****s in a Kitchen 5.7
65 Octopus Wrestling 5.7
66 Cliff Young 5.6
67 Sylvestre Matuschka 5.6
68 Gustave (Crocodile) 5.5
69 Leatherman (vagabond) 5.5
70 Saddam Hussein's Novels 5.5
71 Battle cry 5.4
72 Doomsday Argument 5.4
73 Egg of Columbus 5.4
74 Technical Tap 5.4
75 Martial Races Theory 5.4
76 Buffalo buffalo… 5.4
77 Cherubina de Gabriak 5.3
78 Hapax Legomenon 5.3
79 Descent From Antiquity 5.2
80 Graham's Number 5.2
81 Laconia Incident 5.2
82 Margaret Hogg 5.2
83 Richard C. Weaver 5.2
84 Casu Marzu 5.2
85 Bummer and Lazarus 5.2
86 Rochom P'ngieng 5.2
87 Russell's Teapot 5.2
88 Bloody Island (Mississippi River 5.2
89 Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den 5.2
90 Oak Island 5.2
91 Norwegian Rocket Incident 5.1
92 Brian Douglas Wells 5.1
93 Flag of Bikini Atoll 5.1
94 Iron Pillar of Delhi 5.1
95 Shades of Death Road 5.1
96 Caste-Related Violence in India 5.0
97 Wild Bill Hickok-Davis Tutt shootout 5.0
98 Higest Unclimbed Mountain 5.0
99 Lady Be Good (aircraft) 5.0
100 Ideal German Campaign 5.0
101 Leck Mich Im Arsch 5.0
102 Atomic Bomb Go Game 4.9
103 Paris 1968 4.9
104 Dioxippus 4.9
105 Fleet in Being 4.9
106 Frontier Thesis 4.9
107 Gaëtan Dugas 4.9
108 Color of the Bikeshed 4.8
109 Burst of Joy 4.8
110 Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight 4.8
111 Cymothoa exigua 4.8
112 Harry K. Daghlian Jr 4.8
113 Kinetic Bombardment 4.8
114 Vasili Arkhipov 4.8
115 Jerimoth Hill 4.8
116 Yukio Mishima 4.8
117 Tom and Eileen Lonergan 4.8
118 Royal Fish 4.8
119 George P. Burdell 4.7
120 Cincinnati Subway 4.7
121 Dugway Sheep Incident 4.7
122 Lichtenberg's Avertissement 4.7
123 Drake's Plate of Brass 4.6
124 Hansa Carrier 4.6
125 Lace Car 4.6
126 Atari Video Game Burial 4.6
127 Blood in the Water Match 4.5
128 Cowboy 4.5
129 Degree Confluence Project 4.5
130 Lp0 on Fire 4.5
131 1973 National Archives Fire 4.4
132 Baldwin Street, Dunedin 4.4
133 Blood-Vomiting Game 4.4
134 P = NP Problem 4.4
135 Tree That Owns Itself 4.4
136 Cadaver Synod 4.4
137 Stagger Lee 4.4
138 Three Whom God Should… 4.4
139 Lake Woebegon Effect 4.3
140 Champawat Tiger 4.2
141 Minor Scale 4.2
142 Dunning-Kruger effect 4.2
143 Gaslighting 4.2
144 Lead Masks Case 4.2
145 Perfidious Albion 4.2
146 Aokigahara 4.2
147 Height of Land Portage 4.1
148 Martha Mitchell Effect 4.1
149 Ashley's Hundred 4.1
150 Dead Hand (nuclear war) 4.1
151 Man Singh (dacoit) 4.1
152 And you are lynching Negros 4.0
153 Brfxx...116 4.0
154 Locus Amoenus 4.0
155 Lloyds Bank Coprolite 4.0
156 David A. Johnston 3.9
157 Leopard of Rudraprayag 3.9
158 Adolf Lu Hitler Marak 3.9
159 Aron Ralston 3.9
160 Boot Monument 3.9
161 Mise En Abyme 3.9
162 Larry Mattlage 3.8
163 Mel's Hole 3.8
164 Eric Moussambani 3.6
165 Baghdad Battery 3.5
166 Corinthian Leather 3.5
167 Mount Yamantaw 3.4
168 Atacama Desert 3.2
169 Anaconda Smelter Stack 3.1
170 Air New Zealand Flight 901 3.0
171 Bear JJ1 2.8

* Registered users of the site do not see these ads.

[Christoff]

CATEGORIES AND LISTS
1 List of Cognative Biases 8.2
2 Narratology 7.8
3 Military Strategy 7.8
4 Stock Characters 7.7
5 List of People Who Have Disappeared 7.6
6 List of Military Nuclear Accidents 7.5
7 Mysterious People 7.4
8 List of Fatal Bear Attacks in N. America… 7.4
9 List of Military Tactics 7.4
10 List of Massacres 7.3
11 Cognative Biases 7.3
12 Stock Characters 7.2
13 Hoaxes 7.2
14 List of Numbered H'ways in the U.S. 7.2
15 List of Extremely Hazardous Substances 7.2
16 List of Famous Trees 7.1
17 The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations 7.0
18 List of Heroic Stock Characters 6.9
19 List of Paradoxes 6.9
20 List of Largest Non-Nuclear Explosions 6.9
21 List of Places Blurred Out On Google Maps 6.8
22 Plot Devices 6.7
23 Exploration 6.7
24 Paradoxes 6.5
25 List of Memory Biases 6.5
26 Ship Types 6.5
27 Rhetorical Techniques 6.4
28 Logical Fallacies 6.4
29 List of Fatal Wolf Attacks 6.4
30 Rules of Thumb 6.4
31 Extreme Points of the World 6.3
32 Gestures 6.3
33 List of Rainbow Codes 6.3
34 Semantics 6.2
35 List of Poisonings 6.1
36 List of American Defectors in the Korean War 6.1
37 List of Statues of Lenin 6.1
38 Controversies 5.9
39 List of Explorers 5.9
40 List of Self-Contradicting Words in English 5.9
41 Nuclear Tests 5.8
42 Motif of Harmful Sensation 5.6
43 Word Play 5.5
44 List of Deaths on Eight Thousanders 5.5
45 Phantom Islands 5.4
46 List of Camouflage Patterns 5.3
47 Indian Castes 5.1
48 Modern Street Gangs 5.0
49 Phrases 5.0
50 Bible Errata 5.0
51 English Words With Uncommon Properties 4.6
52 List of Unusual Personal Names 4.6
53 Unsolved Problems 4.4
54 American Old West Gunfights 4.1
55 Nuclear Warfare 4.1
56 Chord Progressions 4.0

(END)

[jbone]

Wow. I wish I had that much time on my hands.

[TurbojonLS]

This will keep me busy for a long time.

[Christoff]

Originally Posted by jjjjjjjijjjjjjj

:d: :d: :d:
ADDENDUM/UPDATE - JUNE, 2008
:d: :d: :d:

Here are 47 new articles and 13 new categories that I thought good enough for the original list. These are unranked (not giving up on that concept, but it was a pain in the ass... and didn't really work well to begin with).

(Commence "OMGgooutandgetlaid! you'rewastingyourspring! jesusyouhavefreetime !aspergers!" etc. etc.)

NEW ARTICLES (unranked):
1 Aron Ralston
2 Oath of vengeance
3 Human-baiting
4 Karl Bushby
5 Battle of Los Angeles
6 Weather Station Kurt
7 Darien Gap
8 Fire balloon
9 Prince Philip Movement
10 John Frum
11 Boyd Massacre
12 Byford Dolphin diving bell accident
13 Dagen H
14 KVLY-TV mast
15 Pitch drop experiment
16 St Scholastica riot
17 Oxford Electric Bell
18 Nine Worthies
19 Nuclear Football
20 Yanomamö
21 Pintupi Nine
22 Operation Auca
23 Sentinelese
24 Miraculin
25 Kuleshov Effect
26 Oliver Sipple
27 Darvaza
28 Wanda Tinasky
29 Iceland Spar
30 Mary's Room
31 Skeleton Coast
32 Crush, Texas
33 the Greenbriar
34 Quickfire
35 Boiling Lake
36 Action Park
37 Dyatlov Pass Accident
38 Honorary whites
39 Digit Ratio
40 Art Theft
41 Wire recording
42 Net cutter
43 Richard Honeck
44 Pruitt-Igoe
45 High-water mark of the Confederacy
46 Dean's Blue Hole
47 Mobile Bay jubilee

NEW LISTS/CATEGORIES (unranked):
1 List of common misconceptions
2 Category: Filmed deaths
3 E Number
4 U.S. islands by area
5 Sunken Battleships
6 Category: Nonexistent people
7 People who have declined a British honour
8 Rhyme Structure
9 Out-of-place artifacts
10 List of rowing blades
11 Category: Bulgarian sumo wrestlers
12 List of demons
13 List of Indian castes


...More to come (...I'll have more time once convention-season is over. It's not as easy as you'd think to maintain a lego anime stormtrooper costume. Between that and constantly helping mother with her sewing I don't have the time to do this as much as I once did. Also, lately, I've been spending longer and longer counting bathroom tiles and carpet pile [to see if it can be factored into large prime numbers]... so I have that. That and mailing this cute bank teller in my neighborhood locks of my hair every day...)

Yeah, so... more to come.

More!

[Christoff]

That's not all

Originally Posted by jjjjjjjijjjjjjj

:s: :s: :s:
SECOND ADDENDA/UPDATE - JANUARY, 2009
:s: :s: :s:

61 new articles and 28 new categories. Again, in no particular order. Cheers,

ARTICLES
====================
01 Sheela na Gig
02 Lunokhod 1
03 Chocolate Hills
04 Polar Bear Expedition
05 Glienicke Bridge
06 Green Boots
07 Universal Nut Sheller
08 Ryugyong Hotel
09 Sam Kee Building
10 Almighty Gaylords
11 Christopher McCandless
12 Feynman Point
13 Hart Island,New York
14 War of the Golden Stool
15 Cormorant Fishing
16 Magic Roundabout
17 Max Headroom Broadcast Signal Intrusion Incident
18 Dead Cat Bounce
19 Fugu Plan
20 Shooting, Shoveling, and Shutting Up
21 Seacoast Defense in the United States
22 Mobro 4000
23 Clock of the Long Now
24 Kowloon Walled City
25 Hoa Ky
26 Märket
27 Uncontacted Peoples
28 Tupper's Self-Referential Formula
29 North Sentinel Island
30 Sarajevo Rose
31 Bridge of No Return
32 Happy Valley set
33 Kenton Joel Carnegie Wolf Attack
34 Hannah Twynnoy
35 Generations of Chinese Leadership
36 Acoustic Mirror
37 Friendly Floatees
38 Japanese War Tuba
39 Orbiting Frog Otolith Satellite
40 Posthumous Name
41 Forest Swastika
42 St. Pierre et Miquelon
43 USA193
44 Mummy Brown
45 Pneumatic Refuse Collection
46 Carthago Delenda Est
47 Oakeshott Typology
48 Pit of Despair
49 Onion Futures Act
50 Copper Peak
51 USSS-51 (SS-162)
52 Niihau Incident
53 Craig D. Button
54 Bigfoot Trap
55 Axe Murder Incident
56 John Titor
57 English as She is Spoke
58 Bicycle Infantry
59 RKO Forty Acres
60 Germany Must Perish!
61 BACH Motif

CATEGORIES/LISTS
====================
01 Category: Medical Signs
02 CIA Cryptonyms
03 Category: Race riots in the United States
04 Category: Valley of the Kings
05 List of Frivolous Political Parties
06 List of Most Massive Stars
07 Category: Named Interchanges
08 Category: Fads
09 List of Most Expensive Photographs
10 List of Unused Highways in the United States
11 List of Bobsleigh, Luge, and Skeleton Tracks
12 List of Unusual Uses of Traffic Lights
13 List of Camouflage Patterns
14 Category: Road Junction Types
15 List of Individual Stradivari Instruments
16 List of Chicken Breeds
17 Category: Ski Jumping Venues
18 List of the World's Most Expensive Single Objects
19 List of world's fairs
20 Category: Model Organisms
21 Category: Submarine Telecommunications Cables
22 List of Tomato Cultivars
23 List of System Quality Attributes
24 List of Discredited Substances
25 List of Persons Known as the Father or Mother of a Field
26 Lists of Most Common Surnames
27 List of Musical Works in Unusual Time Signatures
28 List of Terms Referring to Homosexuals in Different Languages

[Christoff]

Originally Posted by jjjjjjjijjjjjjj

:c: :c: :c:
THIRD ADDENDA/UPDATE - MAY, 2009
:c: :c: :c:

50 new articles and 17 new categories. Again, in no particular order. Cheers,

ARTICLES
====================
01 Anthropodermic bibliopegy
02 Elm Farm Ollie
03 EURion constellation
04 (the) Demon core
05 Pole of inaccessibility
06 Globster
07 Hoba meteorite
08 Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic
09 GRB 971214
10 "Resolute" desk
11 Candace Newmaker
12 Cryptomnesia
13 Hans Island
14 Harrowing of Hell
15 Semantic satiation
16 Dempster Highway
17 Dalton Highway
18 Paul Felix Armand-Delille
19 Herschel Island
20 Stone spheres of Costa Rica
21 Paternoster
22 Self-immolation
23 Narco submarine
24 Louis Slotin
25 Language deprivation experiments
26 London Stone
27 Cité Soleil
28 Blood chit
29 Parsley Massacre
30 Ribbon Creek Incident
31 Art intervention
32 Impostor
33 Bata LoBagola
34 Cheating at the Paralympic Games
35 David Hempleman-Adams
36 The Kafka Machine
37 Park Young Seok
38 Houston Riot (1917)
39 Albert Pierrepoint
40 Discoveries of human feet on British Columbia beaches, 2007–2008
41 Taman Shud Case
42 Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?
43 First flying machine
44 Defeat in Detail
45 Peppered moth evolution
46 Resource holding potential
47 Saint Dismas
48 Target girl
49 Longevity myths
50 SL-1


CATEGORIES/LISTS
====================
01 Category:Water towers
02 List of leaning towers
03 List of tallest buildings and structures in the world by country
04 List of lost artworks
05 List of lost works
06 List of lost films
07 List of belief systems
08 List of areas disputed by Canada and the United States
09 Category:Self-immolations
10 List of modern pretenders to the throne
11 List of the last monarchs in the Americas
12 Categoryelusional disorder
13 List of Amtrak routes
14 Category:Shipwrecks of the United States
15 Extreme points of Earth
16 List of micronations
17 List of cattle breeds

I'll stop for now

[Christoff]

Originally Posted by CHOICE COD

Continuing this fantastic thread with my favorites...

1943 Steel Cent
6174
Bat Bomb
Benjamin Kyle
Charon's Obol
Color of Water
Contest to Kill 100 People Using a Sword
Culture-Bound Syndrome
Distinguishing Blue From Green In Language
Eddie Gaedal
Execution By Elephant
Fictitious Entry
Floater
Garden Path Sentence
Haboob
Hobo Nickel
Human Vestigiality
Malapropism
Milky Seas Effect
Mirin Dajo
Mithridatism
Mokomokai
National Personification
Paraprosdokian
Pareidolia
Pica (Disorder)
Retronym
Roman Dodecahedron
Romanesco Broccoli
Serendipity
Sieve of Eratosthenes
Smallest Organisms
Sokushinbutsu
Spoonerism
Stendhal Syndrome
Sudden Unexplained Death Syndrome
Swallow's Nest (Crimea)
Timothy Dexter
Trompe-l'œil
Turritopsis Nutricula
Venemous Mammals
Watermelon Snow
White Elephant


Lists:

Alternative Country Names
Country Name Etymologies
Countries/Capitals in Native Languages
Cryptids
English Words Without Rhymes
Eponymous Laws
Eponyms
Films Considered the Worst
Generic and Genericized Trademarks
Inventors Killed By Their Own Inventions
Megalithic Sites
Misquotations
Long-Living Organisms
People Who Have Been Considered Deities
Places With Fewer Than 10 Residents
Retronyms
Statues By Height
Words Derived From Toponyms

Categories:

Archaeological Artifacts
Forteana
Mysteries
Neologisms
Perception

Ok ok last one

[karnick]

I'm surprised I got no results after CTRL+F'ing for 'porn'.

[beethoven]

Two whats in a kitchen?

[Whitford]

I like this thread. This a thread that I like.

Thanks, OP.

[Integra96]

@ Fan Death.

[Christoff]

bumpp

[Gundoo]

thread bookmarked. reckon i can do a 'wikipedia of the day' type of thing.


thanks for being bored

[NicktheBrit]

at #101.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leck_mich_im_Arsch

[poon warrior]

Holy balls, I thought I loved Wiki.