I recently ran a contest challenging readers to send me a link to the least notable article in Wikipedia. Why? Because I was curious, and I figured this way I could get other people to do the work for me. Thanks, other people!
Herewith, the winners. Well, technically, only one winner, but also some other stuff of note.
Lifetime Achievement Award
To be honest, the best one came from my friend Chris Livingston. But I think declaring him the winner would look mighty suspicious, plus he doesn’t have a DS. So I decided to give him a Lifetime Achievement Award, which is like being the winner without actually winning.
His entry: Pumpkin-Headed Deer
There are so many reasons I love this entry. First off, the title tells you everything there is to know on the subject, rendering the article itself superfluous. Nonetheless, it goes on for six paragraphs.
Secondly, some of the deer mentioned are not, technically, pumpkin-headed deer, but plastic-pumpkin-bucket-headed-deer. One isn’t even a plastic-pumpkin-bucket-headed-deer, but a brown-or-gold-plastic-ball-headed-deer. In fact, there are no actual pumpkin-headed deer cited in the article, according to the definition set out in the first sentence. It’s as if you set out to write an article about Chewbacca but just ended up talking about this guy in your dorm who never shaved.
Finally, the very existence of the article suggests that any documentable combination of mammal head and open vessel deserves its own Wikipedia entry. I’m working on “Coin Purse-Headed Vole” as we speak.
I declare Pumpkin-Headed Deer the Least Notable Article in Wikipedia.
Grand Prize Winner
Now, on to the official entries. There were some good entries, including a year in which only one thing happened in Ireland, the precise mathematical location of a joke by Richard Feynman, and an article with a passing reference to the dolphin timekeeping system. (Sent by demaws, Fiasco, and demaws respectively.)
However, the overall winner was Cone Cow.
I think it’s great that if you drive a stick into a pinecone, you suddenly have a Wikipedia article. Put a rock on top of a leaf? Not notable. Stick pine needles into fox droppings? Not notable. Put a stick in a pinecone? Let us preserve this for posterity.
Also, of all the entries, this was the only one containing the phrase “once popular, at least in Finland.” Whatever direction my life takes, I want that on my tombstone.
I know I said I was going to avoid stubs, but this has been around since 2005. Also, cone cow. Cone. Cow. Cone cow. If that bothers you, pretend I gave it to the Feynman joke one, that came from the same guy. Congratulations, Fiasco! You’re the most notable finder of non-notable things! Mail me your address and I’ll send the Puzzle Quest cart!
Other Awards
Least notable place: Lime Village, Alaska, population six. (Sent by Nathan Grammer)
Least notable fancruft: Niners, a baseball team that appeared in one episode of Deep Space Nine. They played in the holodeck, so this is an entry about an unofficial sports team in a fictional universe playing a simulated game. (Sent by Humuhumu)
Least notable article that might actually be extremely notable: Rice’s Theorem. I got some math-based entries, none of which I understand, so I’ll pick this one. Take that, Rice! (Sent by topia17)
Most interesting least notable article: Radu II of Wallachia. Dude succeeded Dan II for the throne of Wallachia — which is apparently a place — four times, and was succeeded by him four times. Winner: Dan II! Dan I would have been so proud. (Sent by Casey Wretham)
Thanks for the entries everyone! You’re all winners, except those of you who lost!
Wallachia is indeed a place, and only 21 years after Radu II it was ruled by Vlad III, better known as Dracula.
So he was within spitting distance (temporally speaking) of something notable.
Congratulations, Fiasco. I like that the image of the cone cow is available at 2592×1944. It seems a bit excessive.
Rice’s theorem?! Oh man, it’s a good thing you didn’t take a theory of computation class. That theorem is so notable that citing it on homeworks is often disallowed, because so many problems of the sort that professors like to give right after introducing the concept of undecidability can be answered with “this is undecidable by Rice’s theorem”.
It seems to me that Feynman point is pretty notable, but then again I’m a math trivia enthusiast, a member of a group itself so non-notable that it doesn’t even appear in the Geek Hierarchy.
The phrase “cone cow” made me laugh out loud. It’s right up there with “potato chip mobile.”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/frauenfelder/155802097/
I’d just like to note for the record that the article on Lime Village, with the six-person population reads, and I quote, “For every 100 females there were 200.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 200.0 males.”
They rounded up, I assume.
I like how the article on pumpkin-headed deer starts out with a plea to make other articles link to it.
…plus the cone cow article is available in Finnish! Wow! Bilingually irrelevant!
Come to think of, “Cone Cows” would be an acceptable name for a band. As would “Pumpkin-Headed Deer.”
“The median income for a household in the CDP was $0, and the median income for a family was $0. Males had a median income of $0 versus $0 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $0, no-one was below the poverty line.”
Well, it seems an editor over at Wikipedia is a fan of yours, Lore. The article is now up for deletion for being non-notable.
I knew this was going to be good, but it absolutely had me in stitches. I had tears in my eyes by the time the phrase “cone cow” sunk in.
Congrats to Chris & Fiasco both. And my appreciation for Lore for taking on the barrage of least-notability and finding the funny side lurking within.
The Lime Village article also states ‘The median income for a household in the CDP was $0, and the median income for a family was $0. Males had a median income of $0 versus $0 for females. The per capita income for the CDP was $0, no-one was below the poverty line.’
No-one earns anything, but no-one is below the poverty line? Hrm..
I hope it doesn’t get deleted, but I’m a sentimental guy.
I looked at the 13 Moons article; the bit about dolphins was only added last week, by someone who has not made any other edits except to the list of calendars. Are you sure that it wasn’t added by someone who was participating in this contest?
The discussion for “pumpkin-headed deer” reads:
“This article is useless without pix.”
That… that is true.
Aw, the 13 Moon Calendar article was deleted.
You’re mocking the old Finnish tradition of making Käpylehmät? For centuries, no self-respecting Finnish peasant couple would bury their dead child without a Käpylehmä. (Unless I’m misreading the Finnish article, which is possible; my Suomi is weak).
Scarybug, that illustrates the worst thing about Wikipedia’s deletion policy. If an article is deleted, there’s no way to read its old version or even know it ever existed. I don’t see why this makes sense.
The article on Radu II includes the delicious sentence:
Son of Mircea cel Batran, he is probably the last voievod of Wallachia to assert control of Banat and southern Basarabia.
I like it because I recognize only 66% of the words in the sentence, and yet I can mostly get the gist. It is like reading Dr. Seuss. Plus “voievod” sounds like a Flash Gordon villian.
I especially like the year in which only one thing happened in Ireland. Not only did it take just one single day for Henry Folliot to develop the entire Ballyshannon area, but he did it on the day of his death to boot. Perhaps he died of exhaustion.
I think the best part of the “1622 in Ireland” entry is that it has “see also” links to “1621 in Ireland” and “1623 in Ireland”, but neither of those articles exists. Perhaps the fact that something happened in Ireland in 1622 is actually notable, since apparently nothing happened there during the rest of the 1620s.
Hey! I actually had read one of those articles before now! The Feynman Point one. I’m not a math geek, either… I just like Pi. And Feynman. And Wikipedia, obviously.
Again, with the male-to-female per one hundred ratio from the Lime Village article:
For every 100 females there were 200.0 males.
I’m pretty sure that’s also true of every party I’ve ever attended.
Also, this may be my inner chemist kicking in, but why on earth do the males have one more significant figure, according to the article?
More than that, how is the average family size “0.00″? Again with the sig figs, sure, but is this meant to imply that a single person cannot constitute a family unto themselves? What kind of fascist family defining…
For a non-notable place to rival Lime Village, check out Hibberts Gore, Maine.
Oh, those are the Ram-Bot articles. This guy took all the US Census data, dumped it into a bot, and had it create an article for every single official community in the US.
We’ve got articles on places with populations less than that.
The best part of the cone cow article is “made by children using material found in the nature.”
Those crazy kids, with the rock and roll music, going to the discos, making toys from the nature.
Firstly: Woohoo!
Secondly: My feelings of winnerdom are somewhat offset by the fact that I can’t find a valid email address for you, Lore. I need Puzzle Quest so I can stop playing with this damn pinecone cow. Its allure is rapidly fading.
Man, pumpkin-headed deer is the clear winner (not to be confused with this). Too bad you couldn’t include it. Damn favoritism rules. Hey, let’s get together and abolish all nepotism laws, and then rule the galaxy as father and son!
Also, I had definitely read the Rice’s Theorem article more than once before seeing it here. It’s one of the main things linked off computability theory — it’s a more general version of one of the most fundamental theorems of computer science. But I still don’t really understand it.
FOr your edification, a picture of a pumpkin-headed deer: http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2005/10/22/news/news01.txt
Lucas – of course you’re losing interest in your Käpylehmä. You’re not a medieval Finnish peasant child.
So apparently, on June 3, the article linking to Pumpkin-headed deer was deleted from the wikipedia archives by whomever saw fit to urinate in my cheerios. I came to this party late, and it seems that, in this case at least, if you snooze, you do in fact lose.
You call Dan II the winner, but come on. He got in a sever year battle over the throne with a guy who’s nickname was “empty-headed”.
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