I love Wikipedia and have donated a few times.
I would love to know how much is needed to sustain its future.

EDIT: People commenting, please be civil and stop posting Nothing Burgers, “Look it up yourself”.

I know this will probably turn into a debate about Mangione himself, but that isn’t the point I’m making.

Look at the first sentence of his Wikipedia article. It describes him, without qualification, as a man who “killed Brian Thompson.”

There is obviously important context here. Mangione has pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges resulting in death, and he admitted in court that he shot Thompson and that Thompson died. I’m not suggesting Wikipedia should ignore that, or write as though he still denies shooting him.

But the New York murder case is still pending. He has not been convicted of murder, and his lawyers are seeking to have that prosecution dismissed on double-jeopardy grounds.

That’s why the wording of the lead bothers me. Wikipedia has taken a fairly unusual and still-unresolved legal situation and compressed it into the most categorical version possible: he “killed Brian Thompson.” You have to read further to discover what he actually pleaded guilty to, what he admitted in court, and which charges remain outstanding.

That seems especially odd given Wikipedia’s own rules on biographies of living people.

WP:BLP requires particular care with contentious claims about living people. More specifically, WP:BLPCRIME deals with people accused of crimes and warns editors to take the distinction between accusation and conviction seriously. Then there’s WP:NPOV, which requires neutral presentation, and MOS:LEAD, which says the introduction should give readers an appropriate summary of the subject rather than stripping away important context.

These aren’t technicalities. Rather, they (should) act as safeguards for exactly the sort of article where wording can easily get ahead of the facts or flatten important distinctions.

And there is no shortage of accurate alternatives. Wikipedia could say that Mangione pleaded guilty to federal stalking offenses resulting in Thompson’s death and admitted in court to shooting him, while separately noting that he remains charged with murder in New York. That tells the reader considerably more about where the case actually stands.

Instead, the opening sentence gives you Wikipedia’s conclusion - “killed Brian Thompson” - and leaves the legal distinctions to be explained later.

I’m not arguing that people should disregard Mangione’s admission. I’m not asking anyone to defend him, either. He admitted shooting Thompson. That’s a fact and Wikipedia should report it.

I’m saying an encyclopedia ought to be precise about what a person admitted to, what he pleaded guilty to, what he has actually been convicted of, and what is still before a court. Those distinctions aren’t pedantry. In an ongoing criminal case, they’re part of the story.

Full protection articles are exceedingly rare. This is the first time I've ever seen that weird yellow icon in the wild.

A week after refusing to recognise their US staff union voluntarily, the Wikimedia Foundation hired Littler Mendelson, the largest union busting law firm in the US whose clients include Starbucks, Amazon and Delta Airlines. I have never worked for the Wikimedia Foundation but this really doesn't sit right with me. I have a few suggestions of things people can do:

If you are a Wikimedia contributor there are three petitions you can sign to support the unionisation effort:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Workers_United_solidarity English Wikipedia petition to show solidarity, only 150 signatures until its the largest ever proposal or petition on English Wikipedia
• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Workers_United A global solidarity petition
• https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2026_recognize_Wiki_Workers_United_petition A petition to ask the board of trustees to reverse their decision

You can also donate to local Wikimedia organisations who directly support their communities to share knowledge from their countries https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_movement_affiliates

Thanks

Wikimedia Foundation staff in the United States have voted overwhelmingly in favor of union representation.

The National Labor Relations Board reports that 158 votes were cast in favor of the union and 14 against, with 172 ballots counted and one void ballot.

The Wikimedia Foundation says it respects the outcome and will move forward with good-faith collective bargaining.

Results: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/20-RC-391740

WMF statement: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2026/09/03/us-staff-unionization-vote/

Title of this post is relatively speculative.

I was looking at the human height by country article after a video prompted my interest and something's clearly gone wrong with the table.

The tallest entry for men in the whole table is now "United States – Non-Hispanic Whites" at 176.7 cm, followed by "United States – African Americans" at 176.0.

• Countries including the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, the Baltics, Czech, Slovenia, etc have all been conveniently removed. There is not a lack of evidence for these countries, and most of them have been historically documented to have always been taller (on average) than 176.7cm.
• The US is also now the only country split into a full set of racial groups, which conveniently produces the top rows, while the multifurcation of race is irrelevant to the article.
• Some of what's left is ancient too. Switzerland is listed using self-reported data from 1987–94, when there's measured data from 2014/15 (menuCH) and other sources available too. The data remaining is not only less accurate (self-reported) but very old, and conveniently the first time where Swiss average height is below the US.

I'm struggling to see if this is has been a collaborative act from the view history and not sure on the motive as this could be (relatively innocent) vandalism, targeted supremacist action, or just bad editing, but currently it's very misleading. Unfortunately I don't know my way around Wikipedia editing circles but would be great if someone that does could provide insight?

Screenshot of the worldwide chart, sorted by average male height

What's something you've looked up and was genuinely shocked there wasn't a Wikipedia page?

I guess it's really just YouTubers for the most part

On the Wikipedia article for Pennsylvanian State Congressman Craig Williams, it shows blatant political bias in favor of Williams and the source cited is from his own website. Is this not a violation of Wikipedia’s policy of political neutrality? Link to the page below.

I’m not arguing that what he’s done isn’t impressive or that it’s bad. It just seems to be very biased in favor of a specific politician.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Williams_(Pennsylvania_politician)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Gujarat_violence

I need to know how to create a Wikipedia profile for someone. My boss has asked me to create a profile for him on Wikipedia, but I’m not sure how feasible this is or how to go about the process.

[The party leader] also called Donald Trump "the symbol of populism. He immediately shows what we stand for".[4]#citenote-:2-4) Le Singulier with AFP reported that the party "intends to be inspired by the Trumpist model".[[8]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRUMP(politicalparty)#cite_note-8) The Times likened Nicotra's initiative to the MAGA movement with reference to its protectionism and conservatism,[[5]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRUMP(politicalparty)#cite_note-:3-5) while Ici.Radio-Canada.ca described him as espousing "anti-immigration discourse". [The party leader] has additionally spoken out against the cordon sanitaire) imposed on far-right political figures in the Francophone media of Belgium.[[9]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRUMP(political_party)#cite_note-9)

I make data stories for a living. Last week I read a log file for fun.

Whilst browsing Wikipedia at night, reading article about something, and then about something, and somehow ending up reading about something completely different to realise that, Wikipedia saves every change anyone has ever made to it. Someone fixes a comma at 2am, it's in there forever with their name on it. (Which seemed obvious, and somehow I knew always)

But what I realised, which was new to me, at the end of every one of those lines there are two things you can do. Undo them. Or thank them.

That's the whole feature. No message. No reply. They can't write back, and you can't take it back.

Then I started researching about the feature, three people built it in 2013. They wanted it to be as easy to tell someone they did well as it is to tell them they didn't.

Last month it got pressed 68,948 times, in sixteen languages. One every 38 seconds.

Almost half of those people pressed it once. One person, one time, then never again. And 9,055 people were on the other end of that. Thanked once, ever.

The most thanked account on Wikipedia is a German editor called Aka. 4,590,174 edits. They mostly fix spelling. Last month 403 people stopped what they were doing to say thanks for it.

Ninth on that list is InternetArchiveBot. Not a person. It repairs dead links. 129 humans thanked it anyway.

You've probably never seen this button. It only shows up if you're logged in. Nothing to do with Wikipedia. I just like the log.

I've seen several articles like this about obscure geographic features/small towns which have weirdly opinionated/unprofessional writing. It's mildly hilarious though

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for some advice (and honestly, just needed to vent a bit).

Back in May, I started conducting extensive, painstaking research to write a brand new article on English Wikipedia called IranNastaliq. Given the subject matter originating from an unfriendly country and the lack of consolidated English documentation, gathering sources, verifying details, and drafting the entry took months of grueling work completely on my own. It was finally approved around August.

Shortly after it went live, I discovered that a third-party mirror site called HandWiki copied the entire article word-for-word, completely omitting any attribution, backlink, or mention of my authorship.

I know Wikipedia content is under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license, which allows reuse. However, Section 4(c) of the license explicitly requires proper attribution and a hyperlink back to the source. Failing to provide this violates the license terms and automatically revokes their right to use the text, turning it into straightforward copyright infringement.

As the sole author of this specific entry, I've tried taking action:

• I've reached out to Wikipedia forums/editors, but mostly got dismissed with "that's just how the internet works."
• I've sent multiple emails to HandWiki demanding they comply with CC BY-SA guidelines or remove the page, but I’ve received radio silence.
• I filed a DMCA takedown notice directly with Google Search to at least de-index the stolen page.

It is unbelievably frustrating to see months of hard individual research hijacked by scrapers who refuse to follow basic open-source licensing rules.

Since HandWiki isn't responding to emails, what are my options from here? Has anyone dealt with persistent scrapers ignoring CC BY-SA licenses? Any advice on next steps would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Noamonsol234 (In wikipedia)

Die Linke and BSW are two left wing parties in Germany. However, Die Linke is more socially liberal while BSW is more socially conservative. Why does Wikipedia label Die Linke's political position to be left wing while BSW is considered left wing to far left?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Linke

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahra_Wagenknecht_Alliance

I've checked the pages for multiple copyrighted characters and films and the Italian pages all use better/higher quality photos than the English pages:

It's not just resolution, Italian Wikipedia tends to use more copyrighted images in general

The Italian pages for Angry Bird and Katniss Everdeen uses actual screenshots from the game/movie while the English pages use a logo (that is too simple to copyright) or a picture of a wax statue

Why does Italian Wikipedia use better images?

I’m big into linguistics and etymology in an amateur/hobbyist capacity, and this serves me well in terms of Wikipedia since the etymology section is almost invariably the first section of the article (not including the intro section). For example, the article for Germany (linked) starts with the etymology of both Germany and Deutschland, and links to other articles exploring its highly variable nomenclature across the world’s languages.

However, it occurs to me that etymology isn’t necessarily a logical place to start, as opposed to history or maybe geography in the context of a country. Does anyone know why etymology has such a pride of place within most Wikipedia articles? Or think that etymology is in fact the most logical place to start?

Just curious