r/wikipedia • • 5d ago

Meta Discussion Wikipedia Questions - Weekly Thread of October 12, 2026

1 Upvotes

Welcome to the weekly Wikipedia Q&A thread!

Please use this thread to ask and answer questions related to Wikipedia and its sister projects, whether you need help with editing or are curious on how something works.

Note that this thread is used for "meta" questions about Wikipedia, and is not a place to ask general reference questions.

Some other helpful resources:

Scam warning: Please be careful with solicitations via DMs. Scammers may pretend to be Wikipedia volunteers or a professional Wikipedia public relations firm, and then ask you to pay them for "premium Wikipedia services" – to create an article for you, accept or publish a draft article, etc. This is a scam. See here for more information.


r/wikipedia • • 3h ago

The Patterson–Gimlin film is a 1967 American short motion picture that depicts an unidentified subject that the filmmakers stated was a Bigfoot

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77 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 2h ago

The Ewoks are a fictional species of small, furry bipeds in the Star Wars universe. They inhabit the forest moon of Endor and live in arboreal huts and other simple dwellings. Ewoks debuted in the 1983 film Return of the Jedi before appearing in other media, including two live-action TV movies.

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46 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 21h ago

Rolling coal (also spelled rollin' coal) is the practice of modifying a diesel engine to deliberately emit large amounts of black or gray diesel exhaust, containing soot and incompletely combusted fuel. Rolling coal is used as a form of anti-environmentalism protest.

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1.3k Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 7h ago

Aryamehr (lit. ‘Light of the Aryans’) was a title used by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran. The title demonstrated the Pahlavis’ affinity with pre-Islamic Iran, whose achievements they cited to emphasize the alleged "supremacy" of the Aryan peoples over the "mediocrity" of the Semitic peoples.

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62 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 13h ago

Reza Shah modernised Iran by forcing Bakhtiari nomads to settle, replacing leaders with army officers, and banning traditional clothes for Western suits. This policy ultimately failed due to WWII, but caused immense tribal distress and a 60% livestock loss.

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189 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 21h ago

"Women in refrigerators" is a term coined by Gail Simone in 1999 to describe a literary trope which involves female characters facing disproportionate harm, such as maiming, assault, or even death, to serve as plot devices to motivate male characters, an event colloquially known as "fridging".

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633 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 6h ago

Stigmergy is a form of self-organization. It produces complex, seemingly intelligent structures, without need for any planning, control, or even direct communication between the agents.

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28 Upvotes

On the Internet there are many collective projects where users interact only by modifying local parts of their shared virtual environment. Wikipedia is an example of this. The massive structure of information available in a wiki, or an open source software project such as the FreeBSD kernel could be compared to a termite nest; one initial user leaves a seed of an idea (a mudball) which attracts other users who then build upon and modify this initial concept, eventually constructing an elaborate structure of connected thoughts.

In addition the concept of stigmergy has also been used to describe how cooperative work such as building design may be integrated. Designing a large contemporary building involves a large and diverse network of actors (e.g. architects, building engineers, static engineers, building services engineers). Their distributed activities may be partly integrated through practices of stigmergy.


r/wikipedia • • 14h ago

Pepsi Number Fever, also known as the 349 incident, was a promotion held by PepsiCo in the Philippines in 1992; the promotion led to riots and the deaths of at least five people.

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130 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 22m ago

The Taiwan Communist Party was a social democratic political party in Taiwan. Although the party had "communist" in its name, Wang stated in an interview that he had never read the works of Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin, and he only chose the name because he thought it would attract more interest.

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• Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 2h ago

Oguntola Sapara (1861-1935) was a doctor in Nigeria for 32 years who made many contributions to public health. Most famously, he uncovered that priests of the Shapona cult was deliberately infecting people with smallpox.

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11 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 1d ago

"Loss" is a comic strip published on June 2, 2008, by Tim Buckley in his gaming-related webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del.

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673 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 11h ago

The Battle of the Alamo left a substantial legacy and influence within American culture. According to Richard R. Flores, in the early 20th century, the Alamo was perceived by many in the majority white population of Texas as a symbol of white supremacy over the minority Mexican population.

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39 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 3h ago

It says the article for “guest house” needs more citations. I added nine citations but as they’re all for a special section I made for guest houses in the Islamic State, I think the article in general probably still needs more citations.

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8 Upvotes

Guest houses under ISIS were basically prisons.


r/wikipedia • • 5h ago

Meta Discussion I would like my Wikipedia page, or at least its page's editing history deleted, please tell me where I could request deletion.

12 Upvotes

I have a Wikipedia account with sensitive private information in its page's editing history. This includes a username change entry, which has my old username which is just my real name. I also have social media accounts in the page editing history which I really don't want to be public like that.
I mostly used this account when I was young and dumb.
Please tell me the necessary information so I could request these to be deleted, or at least hidden. Thank you.
PS: The edits to my account were made on the Hungarian Wikipedia site, not on the English one.


r/wikipedia • • 23h ago

"HLX" is a code name used for a video game being developed by Valve. Discovered by dataminers searching through Half-Life: Alyx's source code, it is thought to be the long-awaited third Half-Life game. The game has yet to be officially announced.

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319 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 1d ago

In January 2007, Joe Biden launched his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Biden’s campaign was marred by gaffes, and he struggled in the polls. He dropped out after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses, though Obama would select Biden as his general election running mate.

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454 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 20h ago

Allahakbarries was an amateur cricket team founded by Peter Pan creator J. M. Barrie, who erroneously believed “allah akbar” meant “Heaven help us” in Arabic. Throughout its existence, players on the team included Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse, A. A. Milne, and the son of Alfred Tennyson.

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80 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 4h ago

The American history wars are the ongoing academic and popular debates surrounding the character and culture of the United States. The term has been used to describe debates over the teaching of critical race theory and other issues relating to the historiography of the United States.

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3 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 22h ago

The Laconian is an extinct dog breed from ancient Laconia, in Greece. In antiquity, it was famous for its swiftness and keen sense of smell, and typically used for hunting.

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66 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 1d ago

Francis Hong Yong-ho was a Catholic prelate in North Korea who was imprisoned by the regime of Kim Il Sung in 1949 and later disappeared. After his disappearance, he was for many years listed as the Bishop of Pyongyang. Hong Yong-ho's death was finally acknowledged by the Holy See in June 2013.

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162 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 1d ago

Mount Kailash is considered sacred in Bon, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. The climbing of the mountain is prohibited by the Chinese government due to its religious significance.

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225 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 2h ago

I'm not sure is this is something on Apple’s end, my end, or Wikipedia’s end, but is it possible to get a ‘Search Wikipedia’ option here at the bottom of Spotlight Search in IOS?

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0 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 1d ago

Portuguese Macau was founded in 1557 by an agreement with Ming China. It maintained an ambiguous status for most of its history and in 1976 the Portuguese government declared it "Chinese territory under Portuguese administration". It was returned to China in 1999.

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343 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 1d ago

Slippery Bob is a historical dish made by frying kangaroo brains in emu fat. Edward Abbott provides a recipe in his 1864 cookbook The English and Australian Cookery Book

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104 Upvotes

Very fond of the "requiring a good appetite and excellent digestion" bit 🤣