This page lists Wikipedia pages by the total amount of text in all of their talk page archives put together. It is the best measure there is for determining how much squabbling has gone on behind the scenes for a given page.

Here is a ranking of all 63 of the listed pages that are actual articles (as opposed to policy/administrative/user pages), in descending order:

  1. Donald Trump
  2. Intelligent design
  3. Climate change
  4. Barack Obama
  5. United States
  6. Jesus
  7. Race and intelligence
  8. Catholic Church
  9. Circumcision
  10. Homeopathy
  11. Muhammad
  12. Gamergate (harassment campaign)
  13. Chiropractic
  14. Abortion
  15. Monty Hall problem
  16. Gaza War (2008-2009)
  17. Evolution
  18. Prem Rawat
  19. Sarah Palin
  20. India
  21. Israel
  22. World War II
  23. Christ myth theory
  24. Mass killings under communist regimes
  25. Jehovah’s Witnesses
  26. September 11 attacks
  27. Cold fusion
  28. Climatic Research Unit email controversy
  29. Armenian genocide
  30. Anarchism
  31. Atheism
  32. Falun Gong
  33. Neuro-linguistic programming
  34. Jerusalem
  35. Control of cities during the Syrian civil war
  36. Kosovo
  37. British Isles
  38. Transcendental Meditation
  39. United Kingdom
  40. George W. Bush
  41. Christianity
  42. COVID-19 pandemic
  43. Libertarianism
  44. Acupuncture
  45. Thomas Jefferson
  46. International recognition of Kosovo
  47. Israel and apartheid
  48. Adolf Hitler
  49. United States and state terrorism
  50. Syrian civil war
  51. List of best-selling music artists
  52. Julian Assange
  53. Russo-Georgian War
  54. Historicity of Jesus
  55. Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
  56. Tea Party movement
  57. List of common misconceptions
  58. Murder of Meredith Kercher
  59. Genesis creation narrative
  60. Taiwan
  61. Hillary Clinton
  62. Electronic cigarette
  63. Michael Jackson

Bubbling under (present in earlier versions; I have gone back to 2015 so far here, though the page history goes back to 2010):

  1. 0.999…
  2. European Union
  3. Chronic fatigue syndrome
  4. Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections
  5. Shakespeare authorship question
  6. Fascism
  7. Astrology
  8. The Holocaust
  9. Joseph Smith
  10. Chelsea Manning
  11. List of scientists who disagree with the scientific consensus on global warming [NOTE: now deleted]
  12. Gibraltar
  13. Ayn Rand
  14. Fox News
  15. Shooting of Trayvon Martin
  16. Human
  17. Canada
  18. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
  19. Race (human categorization)
  20. Iraq War
  21. Elvis Presley
  22. Islam
  23. Philosophy
  24. Terri Schiavo case
  25. Black people
  26. White people
  27. Palestinians
  28. Mitt Romney
  29. HIV
  30. Occupy Wall Street
  31. Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
  32. Elizabeth II
  33. Asperger syndrome
  34. Centrifugal force
  35. Transnistria
  • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    You need to prove that 0.333… is, indeed, 1/3 (and also that 0.999… = 0.333…*3) for that. Without being familiar with any sort of construction of real numbers, i.e. without understanding what real numbers are, you are just going to be doing a lot of hand-waving.
    But yes, if one already accepts that 0.333… = 1/3, then that proof works. However, if one understands the reasons why 0.333… = 1/3, there are easier ways to prove that 0.999… = 1. Or, rather, why 0.999… = 1 is obvious to such people.

    And sure, one might be familiar with any of those constructions without studying calculus, but if one does study calculus, they are going to study what real numbers are.

    Also, fun fact for the onlookers: every repeating decimal represents a rational number, and every rational number can be represented by up to two repeating decimals (counting terminating decimals as repeating here). This can be generalised to natural bases other than 10, as well. Furthermore, if you have a repeating decimal that represents some rational number x, such that -1 <= x <= 1, then x = p/10n+x/10n, where p is some integer and n is a natural number, from where it follows that x = p/(10n-1).
    Some examples:
    -0.999… = 9/10+0.999…/10 => 0.999… = 9/(10-1) = 9/9 = 1
    -0.123123123… = 123/103+123123123…/103 => 0.123123123… = 123/(103-1) = 123/999

    More generally, when working with other natural bases, we have (x = p/bn+x/bn) => (x = p/(bn-1)), where b is the base. As such, 0.111… (base 2) = 1/10+0.111…/10 (base 2) => 0.111… (base 2) = 1/(10-1) (base 2) = 1/1 = 1.

    • davel [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      Yeah 1/3 being periodic is just an artifact of using base 10, because 10 isn’t evenly divisible by 3. If you use say base 60 as the Babylonian did then the artifact vanishes.

        • davel [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          6 months ago

          Yes repeating happens in every base because every base has integers not evenly divisible by its base. Whether a fraction repeats is a particularity of which base is chosen to represent it.