What are the most widely translated Wikipedia articles? The answer is quite straightforward: they are primarily about countries.
Leading the list is Turkey, with entries available in 332 languages. The United States follows closely behind with 327 language versions, while Japan comes in third with 324. Interestingly, everyday words also make notable appearances on the list. The term “dog” appears in 275 languages, surpassing “cat,” which has 273. In a more surprising comparison, “Jesus” (274) outnumbers “Adolf Hitler” (242), while topics like “sex” (122) rank lower, trailing behind terms like “fever,” “Chiang Kai-Shek,” and even the number “13.”
However, had you checked this list a couple of months ago, you would have encountered a different scenario. While Turkey, the US, and Japan were still leading, the top spot was claimed by an unexpected name: David Woodard, noted for having articles in 335 languages.
Who is David Woodard? He is a composer known for his controversial “prequiem” composed in 2001 for Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber responsible for the deaths of 168 individuals. This piece was intended to be performed at a church close to McVeigh’s execution location in Terre Haute, Indiana, with the hope that it would be broadcast so McVeigh could hear it.
The Los Angeles Times quoted Woodard expressing his hopes that the performance would “cause the soul of Timothy McVeigh to go to heaven.” In a BBC article at the time, Woodard drew a parallel between McVeigh, whom he described as “33 and nearly universally despised at the time of his execution,” and Jesus Christ.
Woodard also attempted to revive Nueva Germania, a Paraguayan colony founded in the 1880s aimed at preserving German culture away from European Jewish influence. One of its early settlers was Elisabeth Nietzsche, sister of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Following her husband’s suicide amid the colony’s decline, she left for Europe. Nietzsche himself was critical of his sister’s views and distanced himself from her, yet he later experienced mental decline and resided under her care, leading to alterations in his works that aligned more closely with her perspective.
Some descendants of the original colonists still inhabit Nueva Germania today, though the area is notably impoverished, and Elisabeth’s home is almost in ruins.
Woodard expressed to SF Gate, “As an artist who is fed up with much of the pretentious nonsense that has come to define Western culture, I am drawn to the idea of an Aryan vacuum in the middle of the jungle.”
So how did a figure like Woodard come to have such a vast presence in 335 different languages on Wikipedia? This has prompted curiosity and debate on platforms like Reddit, where users have speculated about the situation for over a year: “Is he super important and this is the first I’m hearing of him?” and “Did someone use AI to artificially boost this guy’s performance metrics?”
The Investigation
An inquisitive Wikipedia editor using the pseudonym “Grnrchst” set out to investigate the phenomenon surrounding Woodard. They meticulously analyzed the articles and edits related to him, culminating in findings shared in the August 9 edition of the Signpost, a volunteer-run online publication focused on Wikipedia.
Grnrchst concluded that their research unveiled what appears to be one of the largest self-promotion campaigns in Wikipedia’s history, extending over a decade and involving nearly 200 accounts and multiple proxy IP addresses. They tracked a network with a peculiar focus on Woodard that began around 2015, identifying that these accounts inserted Woodard’s name into at least 93 articles, including innocuous subjects like “Pliers,” “Brown pelican,” and “Bundesautobahn,” often citing Woodard’s self-published works.
From 2017 to 2019, the activity surged, with these accounts producing entries about David Woodard in at least 92 languages, averaging a new article every six days. The range of languages included a variety of scripts from across the globe as well as constructed languages, indicating a shift from comprehensive articles to lower-quality stub articles, which comprised the majority of the translations.
Grnrchst posited that the sheer volume of articles in various languages could imply either an extraordinary polyglot or a high likelihood of machine translation spamming, with the latter seeming more plausible.
Activity later waned but picked up again in 2021, as IP addresses from various countries began to surface, adding references to Woodard across numerous Wikipedia articles. During this phase, 183 new articles about Woodard were created between December 2021 and June 2025, each attributed to unique accounts which followed a specific pattern of behavior, including creating articles after making several minor edits to unrelated topics.
Grnrchst suspects that this orchestrated activity aimed to generate as many articles as possible about Woodard and disseminate information on him throughout Wikipedia while minimizing detection. They surmise that Woodard himself—or someone close to him—might be the mastermind behind this substantial self-promotion effort.
Following Grnrchst’s report, Wikipedia’s global stewards proceeded to remove 235 of Woodard’s articles from less active Wikipedia versions. Larger Wikipedia communities also conducted reviews, resulting in an additional 80 articles being deleted, alongside several accounts being banned.
“A full decade of dedicated self-promotion by an individual network has been undone in only a few weeks by our community,” Grnrchst observed.
Ultimately, only 20 articles about Woodard remain, including this one in English, which does not address the controversy that surrounded his rise on the platform.
Attempts to contact Woodard were unsuccessful, as his personal website is password-protected and accessible only by invitation.
This incident raises questions about whether Woodard’s initiatives were part of an “art project” aimed at garnering attention. Regardless of his intentions, the episode underscores the lengths individuals may go to manipulate open, publicly accessible projects for personal gain.
