I loathe these stupid widgets that show a blank map as soon as you zoom out a little (past the 1000m scale in this case). How can you fail so hard at your only job?
They have strict rules, but I’ve had no issues editing articles after my first error. It’s certainly not like posting an answer on Stack Overflow, where you will be downvoted and flamed for a correct-but-suboptimal answer.
With respect, that is naive. To demonstrate, create a new account and go ahead and make that change. It will be reverted. Wikipedia is not the democratic free-for-all it once was.
If you do perform that experiment and I am wrong, please come back and let us know.
Wikipedia is and has always been a wiki; reverting bad or controversial edits has always been expected from day one.
Also Wikipedia has developed an editorial line of its own, so it's normal that edits that go against the line will be put in question; if that happens to you, you're expected to collaborate in the talk pages to express your intent for the changes, and possibly get recommendations on how to tweak it so that it sticks.
It also happens that most of contributions by first timers are indistinguishable from vandalism or spam; those are so obvious that an automated bot is able to recognize them and revert them without human supervision, with a very high success rate.
However if those first contributions are genuinely useful to the encyclopedia, such as adding high quality references for an unverified claim, correcting typos, or removing obvious vandalism that slipped through the cracks, it's much more likely that the edits will stay; go ahead and try that experiment and tell us how it went.
While this is interesting and impressive, I kinda relate more to OP's link of more "normal" trees. Going through the list gives me a feeling how many cool trees there are all over the place.
I've been to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine forest in Inyo County, CA where the Methuselah tree lives. Though I didn't get to see that specific tree because the sun was fast setting and I wasn't prepared to hike around in darkness, I had a pretty amazing experience being the presence of 4000- and 5000-year old trees.
I read that and assumed this must be some joke article and/or art stunt. After reading the article and linked sources, I'm still not sure that ain't true.
No, but editors there are quite notorious for lacking a sense of humor. I'm not surprised it's listed, I'm surprised that particular euphemistic description remains.
However obscure this page might be, I was there just a few days ago. Clicked on it from this article about a tree that was cut down, and it was apparently a big thing in the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sycamore_Gap_tree
I've been following the story for a while and it has never been adequately explained by mainstream media. Consider this... They drove for over an hour in the middle of the night in foul weather to a remote location to cut down a particular tree. That suggests some preplanning.
I remember that incident! As a side-effect I discovered that beautiful panorama picture[0], which was perfect for my two-monitors-plus-laptop-screen set-up aside from the low resolution, so I used my stippling notebook[1] to hide that a little bit[2]. I could probably tweak the stippling settings a bit to have prettier output, but it's been my wallpaper for over two years now.
I noticed the "bicycle tree" in Scotland which has encapsulated a bicycle amongst other things as it has grown. It reminded me of a very old graveyard I would play in as a kid. The oldest side was all old trees and one day I noticed one of the trees had a couple of gravestones up in its boughs. I always wondered if these were really lifted up there by the tree and if so whether that's unusual.
Why is Pippi Longstocking's "soda pop tree" not on the list? It's dying and the whole of Sweden are freaking out. We're putting tax payer money on solving its disease. We're developing a vaccine to try and save it for gods sake. Yes, this is a very LOL type of situation to the rest of the world, I know that. But it's not a laughing matter in Sweden: https://www.slu.se/nyheter/2025/11/pippis-sockerdrickstrad-r...
“The Hungry Tree is an otherwise unremarkable specimen of the London plane, which has become known for having partially consumed a nearby park bench.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Tree
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Individual_physical_o...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_individual_a...
Even nature likes a terrible pun.
https://boomregister.nl/overzichtskaart-van-de-bomen-in-nede...
If it allows you to edit it in the first place or isn't reverted within five minutes.
If you do perform that experiment and I am wrong, please come back and let us know.
Also Wikipedia has developed an editorial line of its own, so it's normal that edits that go against the line will be put in question; if that happens to you, you're expected to collaborate in the talk pages to express your intent for the changes, and possibly get recommendations on how to tweak it so that it sticks.
It also happens that most of contributions by first timers are indistinguishable from vandalism or spam; those are so obvious that an automated bot is able to recognize them and revert them without human supervision, with a very high success rate.
However if those first contributions are genuinely useful to the encyclopedia, such as adding high quality references for an unverified claim, correcting typos, or removing obvious vandalism that slipped through the cracks, it's much more likely that the edits will stay; go ahead and try that experiment and tell us how it went.
I made an anonymous edit to the Wikipedia page of one of Hemingways short stories three years ago, and my edit is still there.
Some pages/topics are more open to changes than others, that much is true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Ent_of_Affric
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_the_Year_(United_Kingd...
The mind boggles haha
I can't believe this got past the Wikipedia editors.
[1] https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/12/07/hampstead-heaths-...
You don't see the euphemism?
Incredible
https://www.vice.com/en/article/cruising-spots-uk-london-201...
Honestly it's my first time looking at the story for a while! I just knew they got jail time for it.
[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Sycamore...
[1] https://observablehq.com/@jobleonard/a-fast-colored-stipple-...
[2] https://blindedcyclops.neocities.org/sycamore_gap_tree_pano/... https://blindedcyclops.neocities.org/sycamore_gap_tree_pano/... https://blindedcyclops.neocities.org/sycamore_gap_tree_pano/...
https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation
some of which could have made it to this list of special trees :-(
https://www.ts-adyar.org/banyan-tree
Wikipedia allows anyone to edit and contribute! (although many users don't know that and a smaller than miniscule amount of users actually do.)