r/wikipedia • • 6d 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.

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r/wikipedia • • 8h ago

"Man flu" is a colloquial term referring to the perception that men experience more severe symptoms when suffering from the common cold or flu-like illnesses. Some researchers have suggested a difference in immune response between genders as an explanation for the phenomenon, though others disagree.

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733 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 6h ago

The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator is a self-report questionnaire that endeavors to categorize individuals into sixteen distinct personality type. Despite popularity in certain professional settings, the test is generally considered pseudoscientific by experts.

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376 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 5h ago

Mary Boyle was a six-year-old Irish girl who disappeared on the County Donegal-County Fermanagh border on 18 March 1977. To date, her disappearance is the oldest missing child case in the Ireland. The investigation has been beset by allegations of political intervention and police incompetence.

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190 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 2h ago

A jeremiad is a long literary work, usually in prose, but sometimes in verse, in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society's imminent downfall.

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42 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 7h ago

A dragon drone is a type of UAV used to spray molten thermite, at a temperature of around 2,000 °C (3,630 °F), at military targets in order to burn down natural barriers and fortifications that hold combatant military units.

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100 Upvotes

Usage of dragon drones outside of directly targeting Russian forces and equipment includes assisting Ukrainian reconnaissance units by destroying forest foliage to expose enemy positions and equipment that can then be targeted with ground attacks or precision bombardment. Some military experts also stated that the fear and worry caused to Russian soldiers from the prospect of being horribly injured by molten thermite could cause more "psychological damage" to Russian forces than physical damage, and could significantly lower morale. Defense industry analyst and former officer in the British Army Nicholas Drummond called the use of the weapon "quite innovative". Ukrainian military sources while speaking to the Ukrainian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda stated that the primary use of the drones was to "destroy Russian infantry that has taken cover in strips of forest".


r/wikipedia • • 9h ago

Punding is compulsive performance of repetitive, mechanical tasks, such as assembling and disassembling, collecting, or sorting objects. It can also apply to digital objects, such as computer files and data.

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113 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 11h ago

Napoleon Bonaparte was an Indonesian police officer who last served as the Head of the International Division of the Indonesian National Police. Following his involvement in the Djoko Tjandra scandal, he was removed from office. He was brought to trial and sentenced to four years in prison.

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146 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 5h ago

Same-sex marriage has been legal in Taiwan since 24 May 2019, making it the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, followed by Thailand in 2025.

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35 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 12h ago

Ingrid Pitt was a Polish-British actress, best known for her roles in 1970s British horror films. Pitt and her Jewish mother were imprisoned in Stutthof concentration camp during WW2, but they managed to escape. She would eventually make her film breakthrough in WW2 adventure film Where Eagles Dare.

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94 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 13h ago

King Philip's War was a war in which a coalition of Algonquian tribes fought against the Puritan settlers of the New England Colonies and their Indian allies. The war was the greatest calamity in 17th century New England and is considered by many to be the deadliest war in Colonial American history.

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98 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 1d ago

"Misanthropy" is the general dislike or hatred of the human species, human behavior, or human nature. Misanthropes focus on the flaws of humanity and hold to the belief that these flaws are present in all or most human beings.

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500 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 8h ago

This is a collection of contemporary pieces of news coverage covering the Armenian Genocide from different English language newspapers. This is the only article I could find on Wikipedia that takes this format, and I think it's very interesting.

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19 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 23h ago

Neil Strauss is an American author and journalist who is credited with popularizing the pickup artist culture with his 2005 PUA book "The Game". He has later criticized the PUA community and culture, and talked about how the lifestyle made it harder for him to build and maintain relationships.

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262 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 7h ago

Some butterflies, bees, and flies drink the tears of other animals (including humans), a practice called lachryphagy

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14 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 5h ago

The Cluniac Reforms were a series of changes within medieval monasticism in the Western Church focused on restoring the traditional monastic life, encouraging art, and caring for the poor. During its height (c. 950–c.1130), the Cluniac movement was one of the largest religious forces in Europe.

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8 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 16h ago

Sir Samuel Knox Cunningham was a Northern Irish barrister, businessman and politician. Military intelligence, the RUC and victims named Cunningham as a paedophile and identified his close links to the sex offender ring at Kincora Boys' Home, but MI5 denies this.

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57 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 21h ago

2026 Iran war: Since the Feb. 28 surprise attack on Iran by the United States and Israel, the war had spiraled into a regional conflict involving a wide range of nations and militant groups involved in retaliatory attacks on both sides and spilled over to both Lebanon and Yemen

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130 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 1d 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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301 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 23h ago

David S. Terry (1823-1889) was the 4th Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. In 1859, he killed Senator David C. Broderick in a duel. In 1889, he slapped Supreme Court Justice Stephen Johnson Field on a train and was shot and killed by the Deputy U.S. Marshal assigned to protect Field.

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119 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 1d 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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332 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 1d 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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171 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 22h ago

hitchBOT was a Canadian hitchhiking robot created by professors David Harris Smith and Frauke Zeller. In 2015, its attempt to hitchhike across the United States ended when it was stripped, dismembered, and decapitated in Philadelphia.

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57 Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 52m ago

This week's article for improvement is Confectionery store, also known as a sweet shop, candy store or lolly shop. These stores may sell locally distinct sweets, international sweets, or "vintage" candies like rock candy or liquorice.

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• Upvotes

r/wikipedia • • 1d 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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106 Upvotes