Thought Leadership
All Wikimedia wikis were inaccessible for editing for several hours this afternoon. What caused the incident has not been officially explained by the Wikimedia Foundation, but the Wikipedia community suspects a large number of accounts were compromised.
At 15:36 UTC, the Wikimedia Foundation reported first issues with accessing several wikis on their status page. Around 35 minutes later, at 16:11 UTC, the team announced they had identified the cause and were working on a fix. At 17:09 UTC, the wikis were switched back to read-write mode, albeit with restrictions: some editing functionality remained disabled. A further update at 17:36 UTC stated that a fix had been implemented and the situation was being monitored.
Community suspects compromised accounts
While the Wikimedia Foundation itself has not published any details about the incident, observations have already been circulating within the Wikipedia community. In an unofficial megathread on Reddit, editors report that a large number of accounts appeared to have carried out unusual automated mass edits with the Russian-language edit summary “Закрываем проект” (“We are closing the project”). Community members have speculated that a compromised JavaScript on the site itself may have been the root cause. None of this has been confirmed.
Editors locked out for hours
For the global community of Wikipedia volunteers, the incident meant a complete editing standstill. Fighting vandalism, updating articles, and collaborating on new content were all impossible throughout the entire period. The disruption apparently affected not just the English-language Wikipedia, but all wikis operated by the Wikimedia Foundation.
The Wikimedia Foundation responded by switching all wikis to read-only mode, a drastic but apparently necessary measure to prevent further unwanted mass edits.
No details yet
An official explanation of what happened has yet to be provided. The Wikimedia Foundation’s status updates are limited to brief technical notices, with no information on possible causes, affected accounts, or any potential data loss. Golem.de has contacted the organization for comment and will update this article when a response is received.
