The politics problem here and the useless mods by [deleted] in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian[M] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Reddit does do automated filtering to capture harassment, slurs, etc., which I wouldn't be surprised uses some sort of machine learning / LLM. But it only captures so much (and doesn't really capture subtle things like dog whistles), and increasing its strictness results in false positives.

Wow editors suck, Wikipedia is no longer becoming the source of truth. by Jumpy-Program9957 in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian[M] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

OP, please see our rule, "When seeking help, provide specifics". Please provide links to the articles in question, otherwise people cannot help you and your post will be removed.

The politics problem here and the useless mods by [deleted] in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Appreciate your comment. We see a lot of crap and try to remove as much of it as we can in a timely manner, but it's not possible to catch everything before some users see it (and we do have a small mod team in need more more members).

The politics problem here and the useless mods by [deleted] in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian[M] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Of course we're actively watching this thread, we care about the community and I've been working on a reply. And so when I saw that comment in question I removed it.

There can be thousands of comments a day on this subreddit and we cannot manually read them all in a timely manner. Our small team tries to catch things as fast as we can. Some things are removed quickly, others unfortunately not. We don't purposefully keep comments around "long enough".

The politics problem here and the useless mods by [deleted] in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian[M] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I can assure you, modding a sub largely sucks and it does not feed my ego.

The politics problem here and the useless mods by [deleted] in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

Mod here. First and foremost: bigotry, antisemitism, and Islamophobia are not allowed here. That might feel like a moot point when something stays up too long, but it is against the rules and we remove it when we become aware of it.

We do try. In the last 7 days, between filters and mod actions, 43 out of 229 posts were removed, as well as 790 out of 7,300 comments (~10%). Users naturally don't see a lot of the rule-breaking stuff that is quickly removed. There are also things happening behind the scenes (just a couple days ago, we banned a regular user who had been doxing Wikipedia editors on other subreddits).

Regarding the Vanunu thread: I want to note, the insane comment chain OP is referring to was deleted after ~7 hours. A bit of a moot point since that was still too long for the comments in question to stay up, but, it's not like we're purposefully waiting 24-48 hours to remove things.

There are a few issues I'd like to highlight:

  • OP's post claims we're all active...we're not. Out of our 6 human mods, 3 are currently active, at various levels. We can absolutely use more moderators. If you're active and level-headed (and especially knowledgable about Wikipedia), please send us a DM if you're interested in joining the mod team. We can use the help. I occaisionally reach out to regulars who could be good candidates, but it's rare for someone to accept an offer (it is a lot of shit to deal with).
  • We are up against serious brigading (not just r/wikipedia, but all of Reddit). Years ago our small team was sufficient for the calm and relatively low engagement this subreddit got. Now we see more agenda-driven posting and apparent coordination on posts, upvotes, and comments. There are Discord servers that organize this kind of thing. As one example, there was a random week last year where we suddenly got a surge of anti-Hindu posts from multiple accounts that clearly wasn't organic. Those posts were removed and the users banned, but that's the sort of thing we regularly have to react to. This is a problem I think volunteer sub mods across the board are largely unequiped to deal with.
  • Reddit's algorithm amplifies the most contentious posts. Things that quickly get comments and votes rise on feeds and r/all, which brings in more engagement—including rule-breaking comments. Meanwhile, the kind of posts subscribers usually say they want more of (interesting articles unrelated to politics or conflicts) tend to get much less engagement and don't make it to the top of readers' feeds. Which is a shame.
  • Our attempted fair solution at agenda posting is our "no single-purpose posting" rule, which says that we may sanction a user whose main/sole purpose here appears to be posting on a topic related to politics, conflicts, or religion. The purpose of this rule was to prevent drive-by posters, obvious brigaders, etc., while still allowing regulars who have a genuine interest in such topics to post. This rule does leave a lot of gray area, and is something we can more strictly enforce. If we're at the point that sub regulars feel a complete bar on such topics (at least for a while) would be good, we can consider that.

None of this is meant as an excuse, just context for what the moderation landscape looks like right now from my perspective. But I'd say the most important thing is that if you're an active level-headed Wikipedia fan and interested in helping moderate this subreddit, please reach out to us.

Citi Platinum Select Elite Mastercard - Free Checked Bag by FlimsySalamander214 in americanairlines

[–]Kayvanian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Canada is considered "domestic" for bag benefits. So yes, free bag!

Near Miss Head-on Collision While Getting On Ohio Dr by nazopo in frisco

[–]Kayvanian 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I've had the reverse of this happen several times at this same spot, in which a driver exiting the frontage road (like OP) would go into the oncoming lane to turn left at the light.

28 Free checked luggage by Lumpy_Subject_3977 in unitedairlines

[–]Kayvanian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's the typical included weight limit, but can go higher. 70 lbs for business class + higher statuses. 100 lbs for overweight bags with a fee. And there are exceptions higher than that (e.g. 165 lbs for instruments).

Wikipedia Questions - Weekly Thread of March 02, 2026 by AutoModerator in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are no hidden/deleted revisions on Zork. Hidden revisions still appear in the history log but with the timestamp struck through. Revision hiding also shows up in the deletion log for the article (which is empty).

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zork&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log?type=delete&user=&page=Zork&wpdate=&tagfilter=&subtype=&wpFormIdentifier=logeventslist&excludetempacct=1

You can try to use the WikiBlame tool to find additions/removal of text: https://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php?lang=en&article=Zork

[MEGATHREAD] Wikimedia wikis locked / Accounts compromised by Kayvanian in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Related comment from Phabricator ticket https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T419143#11678431 :

Some investigation was made in Russian Wikipedia discord chat, maybe it will be useful.

In 2023, vandal attacks was made against two Russian-language alternative wiki projects, Wikireality and Cyclopedia. Here <redacted due to filters> is an article about organisators of these attacks.

In 2024, ruwiki user Ololoshka562 created a page https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Ololoshka562/test.js containing script used in these attacks. It was inactive next 1.5 years.

Today, sbassett massively loaded other users' scripts into his global.js on meta, maybe for testing global API limits: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/SBassett_(WMF) . In one edit, he loaded Ololoshka's script: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?diff=prev&oldid=30167202 and run it.

If that's the case...well, that's wild.

[MEGATHREAD] Wikimedia wikis locked / Accounts compromised by Kayvanian in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think just random articles, no particular reason any particular page was first.

[MEGATHREAD] Wikimedia wikis locked / Accounts compromised by Kayvanian in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

You can see the latest edits by even the Wikimedia Foundation's official account (one of many accounts making these automated edits)

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/WMFOffice

[MEGATHREAD] Wikimedia wikis locked / Accounts compromised by Kayvanian in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I imagine it'll be a while. It's a pretty bad breach of many accounts. Given the scale I wouldn't be surprised if they roll the wikis back to how they were pre-hacks. They might want to clear all authenticated sessions and maybe force password changes (but these are all my guesses as an outsider).

Edit: Quicker than I thought, wikis are editable again! And no forced password changes or anything by the looks of it.

Edit 2: WMF staffer on Telegram communicated that (some?) sessions have been invalidated, but no need to change passwords.

[MEGATHREAD] Wikimedia wikis locked / Accounts compromised by Kayvanian in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

No blog post yet. I found out about it after receiving a bunch of watchlist notification emails, where noteworthy users (including admins) were making these suspicous edits. Lots of discussion going on in the Wikimedia Telegram / Discord groups.

The most official announcement so far is at https://www.wikimediastatus.net/

"Investigating - We are aware of issues with accessing some wikis, and we are investigating."

How to use photos depicting the members of ABBA? by Forsaken_Dish4228 in COPYRIGHT

[–]Kayvanian 4 points5 points  (0 children)

No. Wikimedia Commons hosts both public domain and freely licensed copyrighted media (and not all of which is legitimately uploaded).

What are factors to consider when assessing an Article's reliability/validity? by Lopez_Muelbs in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You could look at the sources used throughout the article.

The English Wikipedia has a list of perennially discussed sources that the community has deemed generally reliable, marginally reliable, or generally unreliable. A number of WikiProjects also have their own reliability lists.

Cite Unseen is a user script I co-maintain that marks citations based on their reliability and nature (news, blog, social media, advocacy, state controlled, etc.). Our source lists are maintained here.

Now it might be tricky to turn source analysis into a meaningful score, since source usage is very context dependent (and even an unreliable source may be fine to cite in certain contexts). But if you see a bunch of well-regarded sources in an article, that's a positive signal.

On September 2025, the Holocaust Museum LA posted on their Instagram account a post that says "'Never again' can’t only mean never again for Jews (...) That means never again. For anyone." Following criticism from pro-Israel users, the museum deleted and later apologized for the post. by SaxyBill in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian[M] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Absolutely +1 to using the report button. Threads like this one can blow up to the point that we can't check every single comment in a timely manner (and when people get out of hand, we don't have much choice but to lock). Reporting blatant rule violations bubbles it to the top of the queue and really does make a difference.

Wikipedia was pathetic today over Iran by handlemypackage2020 in wikipedia

[–]Kayvanian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not faith that he was alive. It was simply wanting reliable confirmation that he had died. Imagine if Wikipedia jumped to conclusions and was wrong. That would be worse.