Sayaras
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- Nov 13, 2023
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It's getting worse.
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How Wikipedia’s Pro-Hamas Editors Hijacked the Israel-Palestine Narrative.
A coordinated campaign led by around 40 Wikipedia editors has worked to delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream over past years, intensifying after the October 7 attack.
Six weeks after October 7, one of these editors successfully removed mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter, which calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the article on Hamas The group also appeared to attempt to promote the interests of the Iranian government across a number of articles, including deleting “huge amounts of documented human rights crimes by [Islamic Republic Party] officials”
A group called Tech For Palestine launched a separate but complementary campaign after October 7, which violated Wikipedia policies by coordinating to edit Israel-Palestine articles on the group 8,000 member Discord
Tech For Palestine abandoned its efforts and its members went into a panic after a blog discovered what they were doing; the group deleted all its Wiki Talk pages and Sandboxes they had been using to coordinate their editing efforts, and the main editor deleted all her chats from the group’s Discord channel
(This one actually made me laugh.
Like, these are levels of pettiness I didn't know existed outside of a Taylor Swift song... [pic.twitter.com/6f62LaGu4W
— Goatkitten (@Goatkitten1) October 24, 2024).
www.piratewires.com
____
A Group of Pro-Hamas Wikipedia Editors Have Rewritten the Israel-Palestine Narrative
John Sexton 5:20 PM | October 25, 2024
Led by around 40 mostly veteran editors, the campaign has worked to delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream...
One of the most prominent members of the pro-Palestine group is the user Iskandar323, a prolific editor whose nuanced approach to historical and even esoteric articles is representative of the larger effort. In the article on “Jews,” for example, he removed the “Land of Israel” from a key sentence on the origin of Jewish people. He changed the article’s short description (a condensed summary that appears on Wikipedia’s mobile version and on site search results) from “Ethnoreligious group and nation from the Levant” to “Ethnoreligious group and cultural community.” Though subtle, the implication is significant: unlike nations, “cultural communities” don’t require, or warrant, their own states.
Iskandar also worked to sanitize articles on Hamas, in one case removing mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter, which calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the article “Hamas.” (The edit remains intact today.) He removed mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter in at least three other articles...
In August, an analysis of the intensity of editing in PIA between January 2022 and September 2024 found that the top contributor to PIA by number of edits, a user called Selfstudier, made over 15,000 edits in the space in that period. Iskandar323 contributed over 12,000 edits to PIA articles in the same period...
All together, the top 20 editors of this group made over 850,000 edits to more than 10,500 articles, the majority of them in the Palestine-Israel topic area, or topically connected historical articles....
In one instance in April 2021, Zero0000 and Nishidani worked together to keep a photo of Al-Husseini touring a Nazi concentration camp out of the article. While a single editor, Shane (a newbie), advocated for its inclusion, a trio of veterans including Zero0000, Nishidani and Selfstudier fought back. After Selfstudier accused Shane of being a troll for arguing for the photo’s inclusion, Zero0000, days later, “objected” to its inclusion, citing issues of provenance. Nishidani stepped in to back up Zero0000, prompting a response by Shane. The following day, Zero0000 pushed back against Shane, who responded. The day after, Nishidani returned with his own pushback. The tag-team effort proved too much for Shane, who simply gave up, and the effort succeeded: the photo remains absent
____
Wikipedia Editors Place a Near Total Ban on Calling Gaza Health Ministry “Hamas-Run”.
By a 3:1 margin, editors decided “Gaza Health Ministry” should be used without any qualifier.
Aaron Bandler. October 25, 2024.
Wikipedia editors have decided to impose a near total ban on the use of the “Hamas-run” qualifier in articles citing the Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers.
A formal discussion known as a Request for Comment (RfC) was launched in July; in RfCs, editors put in their “!votes” supporting their stated position on a contested issue and a closer (an uninvolved Wikipedian in good standing) renders a verdict based on the numbers and strength of the arguments in regards to site policy. Because Wikipedia articles are supposed to reflect what reliable sources say, editors sparred over whether or not sources use such a qualifier when citing the ministry’s numbers and if sources view the ministry’s numbers as reliable.
Editors also argued over if it would be a violation of Wikipedia’s neutral point of view (NPOV) policy to include the qualifier, with those against the use of the qualifier contending that doing so would violate NPOV because it would suggest that Hamas directly influences the numbers and casts doubt over the numbers when the ministry is widely viewed as reliable. Editors in favor of the qualifier contended that it would be more neutral to include the qualifier on first mention because Hamas is a belligerent to the conflict and has been designated as a terror organization by several Western countries. There was also a question of redundancy, as editors against the qualifier opined that it’s implied that Hamas runs Gaza and noted that Wikipedia doesn’t refer to the Israel Defense Force (IDF) as the “Israel-run” or “Netanyahu-run” IDF or the State Department as the “Democrat-run State Department.” Those in favor of the qualifier contended that Wikipedians should not assume that the readers knows that Hamas, a terror organization, runs Gaza.
The bulk of the RfC occurred during a short timeframe in July; a closer did not render a verdict on the discussion until Sept. 24.
“This discussion resulted in a consensus that the name of the Gaza Health Ministry should not be qualified with ‘Hamas-run’ or similar, unless the connection is otherwise discussed and relevant,” the closer ruled. “The numbers are pretty clear on this (about 3:1). Evaluating the arguments provided, there is no policy basis to assess the consensus differently; those in favor of using the qualifier mainly rely on a numerical argument about sources, but this has been criticized on several points and is far from overriding enough to carry the RFC, considering the numerous well-reasoned [opposition].”
One editor told me that they believe that “the Hamas-run qualifier” should be used “anytime the Gaza Health Ministry numbers were used and I’m not even sure the Gaza Health Ministry numbers should ever really be considered reliable at all given the concerns that some third parties have had about their accuracy, and the multiple revisions they’ve gone through, and the way that combatants vs non-combatants are counted.” However, the editor acknowledged that given how lopsided the numbers were against the use of the qualifier, such a close is “hard to overturn.” The editor added that they believe sources “generally do refer to it as the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry” and that “the qualifier should be used for NPOV. A terrorist group shouldn’t be treated as equal to a real country.”
jewishjournal.com
Day
Bu
Day
How Wikipedia’s Pro-Hamas Editors Hijacked the Israel-Palestine Narrative.
A coordinated campaign led by around 40 Wikipedia editors has worked to delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream over past years, intensifying after the October 7 attack.
Six weeks after October 7, one of these editors successfully removed mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter, which calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the article on Hamas The group also appeared to attempt to promote the interests of the Iranian government across a number of articles, including deleting “huge amounts of documented human rights crimes by [Islamic Republic Party] officials”
A group called Tech For Palestine launched a separate but complementary campaign after October 7, which violated Wikipedia policies by coordinating to edit Israel-Palestine articles on the group 8,000 member Discord
Tech For Palestine abandoned its efforts and its members went into a panic after a blog discovered what they were doing; the group deleted all its Wiki Talk pages and Sandboxes they had been using to coordinate their editing efforts, and the main editor deleted all her chats from the group’s Discord channel
(This one actually made me laugh.
Like, these are levels of pettiness I didn't know existed outside of a Taylor Swift song... [pic.twitter.com/6f62LaGu4W
— Goatkitten (@Goatkitten1) October 24, 2024).
How Wikipedia’s Pro-Hamas Editors Hijacked the Israel-Palestine Narrative
a powerful group of editors is hijacking Wikipedia, pushing pro-Palestinian propaganda, erasing key facts about Hamas,
____
A Group of Pro-Hamas Wikipedia Editors Have Rewritten the Israel-Palestine Narrative
John Sexton 5:20 PM | October 25, 2024
Led by around 40 mostly veteran editors, the campaign has worked to delegitimize Israel, present radical Islamist groups in a favorable light, and position fringe academic views on the Israel-Palestine conflict as mainstream...
One of the most prominent members of the pro-Palestine group is the user Iskandar323, a prolific editor whose nuanced approach to historical and even esoteric articles is representative of the larger effort. In the article on “Jews,” for example, he removed the “Land of Israel” from a key sentence on the origin of Jewish people. He changed the article’s short description (a condensed summary that appears on Wikipedia’s mobile version and on site search results) from “Ethnoreligious group and nation from the Levant” to “Ethnoreligious group and cultural community.” Though subtle, the implication is significant: unlike nations, “cultural communities” don’t require, or warrant, their own states.
Iskandar also worked to sanitize articles on Hamas, in one case removing mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter, which calls for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel, from the article “Hamas.” (The edit remains intact today.) He removed mention of Hamas’ 1988 charter in at least three other articles...
In August, an analysis of the intensity of editing in PIA between January 2022 and September 2024 found that the top contributor to PIA by number of edits, a user called Selfstudier, made over 15,000 edits in the space in that period. Iskandar323 contributed over 12,000 edits to PIA articles in the same period...
All together, the top 20 editors of this group made over 850,000 edits to more than 10,500 articles, the majority of them in the Palestine-Israel topic area, or topically connected historical articles....
In one instance in April 2021, Zero0000 and Nishidani worked together to keep a photo of Al-Husseini touring a Nazi concentration camp out of the article. While a single editor, Shane (a newbie), advocated for its inclusion, a trio of veterans including Zero0000, Nishidani and Selfstudier fought back. After Selfstudier accused Shane of being a troll for arguing for the photo’s inclusion, Zero0000, days later, “objected” to its inclusion, citing issues of provenance. Nishidani stepped in to back up Zero0000, prompting a response by Shane. The following day, Zero0000 pushed back against Shane, who responded. The day after, Nishidani returned with his own pushback. The tag-team effort proved too much for Shane, who simply gave up, and the effort succeeded: the photo remains absent
____
Wikipedia Editors Place a Near Total Ban on Calling Gaza Health Ministry “Hamas-Run”.
By a 3:1 margin, editors decided “Gaza Health Ministry” should be used without any qualifier.
Aaron Bandler. October 25, 2024.
Wikipedia editors have decided to impose a near total ban on the use of the “Hamas-run” qualifier in articles citing the Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers.
A formal discussion known as a Request for Comment (RfC) was launched in July; in RfCs, editors put in their “!votes” supporting their stated position on a contested issue and a closer (an uninvolved Wikipedian in good standing) renders a verdict based on the numbers and strength of the arguments in regards to site policy. Because Wikipedia articles are supposed to reflect what reliable sources say, editors sparred over whether or not sources use such a qualifier when citing the ministry’s numbers and if sources view the ministry’s numbers as reliable.
Editors also argued over if it would be a violation of Wikipedia’s neutral point of view (NPOV) policy to include the qualifier, with those against the use of the qualifier contending that doing so would violate NPOV because it would suggest that Hamas directly influences the numbers and casts doubt over the numbers when the ministry is widely viewed as reliable. Editors in favor of the qualifier contended that it would be more neutral to include the qualifier on first mention because Hamas is a belligerent to the conflict and has been designated as a terror organization by several Western countries. There was also a question of redundancy, as editors against the qualifier opined that it’s implied that Hamas runs Gaza and noted that Wikipedia doesn’t refer to the Israel Defense Force (IDF) as the “Israel-run” or “Netanyahu-run” IDF or the State Department as the “Democrat-run State Department.” Those in favor of the qualifier contended that Wikipedians should not assume that the readers knows that Hamas, a terror organization, runs Gaza.
The bulk of the RfC occurred during a short timeframe in July; a closer did not render a verdict on the discussion until Sept. 24.
“This discussion resulted in a consensus that the name of the Gaza Health Ministry should not be qualified with ‘Hamas-run’ or similar, unless the connection is otherwise discussed and relevant,” the closer ruled. “The numbers are pretty clear on this (about 3:1). Evaluating the arguments provided, there is no policy basis to assess the consensus differently; those in favor of using the qualifier mainly rely on a numerical argument about sources, but this has been criticized on several points and is far from overriding enough to carry the RFC, considering the numerous well-reasoned [opposition].”
One editor told me that they believe that “the Hamas-run qualifier” should be used “anytime the Gaza Health Ministry numbers were used and I’m not even sure the Gaza Health Ministry numbers should ever really be considered reliable at all given the concerns that some third parties have had about their accuracy, and the multiple revisions they’ve gone through, and the way that combatants vs non-combatants are counted.” However, the editor acknowledged that given how lopsided the numbers were against the use of the qualifier, such a close is “hard to overturn.” The editor added that they believe sources “generally do refer to it as the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry” and that “the qualifier should be used for NPOV. A terrorist group shouldn’t be treated as equal to a real country.”
Wikipedia Editors Place a Near Total Ban on Calling Gaza Health Ministry “Hamas-Run”
By a 3:1 margin, editors decided “Gaza Health Ministry” should be used without any qualifier.
jewishjournal.com
