Case History Of A Wikipedia Page: Nabokov’s 'Lolita'

There are some websites that are so interesting and extensive they are known as "black holes" or "time sucks," because once you get started, you may not be able to escape. Wikipedia is near the top of the list. Even more perilous to your workday than reading is joining Wikipedia as an editor. Before you decide to take that step, you might want to learn something about the culture of Wikipedia editing. The Awl looks at the editing history of one provocative entry:

Since 2001, the Wikipedia entry on Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita has been edited 2,303 times. It's a popular entry, too: of approximately 750,000 Wiki articles out there, it ranks at 2,075 in traffic.

In the past ten years, the entry has grown from the four-sentence description, shown above, to the detailed, 6,000-plus-word monolith of today. The two Lolita films now have their own pages, while the entry on the novel has expanded to include sections on such subjects as Lolita's Russian translation and its literary allusions. An edit is made, on average, about every other day.

Not only is the entry constantly edited, but those edits are discussed among editors. The road to the perfect entry is long and involved, and sometimes resembles sausage making. Link -via Boing Boing