Comment by NobodyNada

I see the defense on that context that admins aren't really mods when practically speaking they do act like mods by closing discussions - in theory this is when "Wikipedia has reached an opinion". In practice it is very easy for it to be when it has reached their opinion.

I could've sworn I remembered such a post, thank you so much for vindicating my hunch! At the time I figured there wasn't much harm in it, but in hindsight it's obvious that the absurd number of translations was the just smoke stemming from a self-promotion fire.

Props to whatever HackerNewsian (YCombinist?) took the time to chase all this down and do this fascinating writeup! You will be remembered in /r/TodayILearned posts every few months for many decades to come, no doubt.