19-page PDF accuses Wikipedia of bias against Israel, suggests editors be forced to reveal their real names, and demands a new feature allowing people to view the history of Wikipedia articles
And does it have anything to do with the unusual decision to let a zero-edit user open an arbitration request?
The crying "History" button at the top right sends its regards. Yes, the World Jewish Congress has published a report that demands Wikipedia add a feature to view the history of articles, see what actions were performed by whom, and "host forums and discussions within the Wikipedia community to address concerns about neutrality and gather feedback for policy improvements". It also wants to force all admins and above to reveal their real names.
Have they never been on Wikipedia before. You can already see the edits and attribution. If their information is correct they should submit an edit and offer proof. Going to be hard for them to sweep the Palestinian genocide under the rug though.
The report actually suggests a new bias and neutrality editing framework with its own edit history, unrelated to existing content editing tools.
In other words, the argument is that the current editing framework does not do enough to specifically address bias and neutrality. That seems pretty clear to me regardless of current events.
I know edits to add and correct bias do happen. I agree it would be nice if power editors, at least, were not anonymous. I wish there was a Wikipedia that could only be edited be verified, trusted experts. The potential is there with the fediverse. And in fact I thought Wikipedia was working on this. I requested an invite but never got one.
Such edits for neutrality (as well as to insert bias) are made. There is a history. It is talked about and recorded. It is searchable. It is distributed. Man, you should hear these Wikipedia editors talk to each other if you haven't, it's like a different language.
Anyway: the source article suggests an extra layer to that system, with public standards and criteria supported by research, which it also proposed, and suggests that editors could be monitored for bias based on such standards.
I see the potential for draconian abuse but this is one website. As I said, I hoped there would be a fediverse instance to consolidate legitimate expert, factual information. Someone shared a website with me the other day that included such technical analysis for current events. I will link it when I get another minute.
Wikipedia do lock articles so that only editors with good standing can change them. But obviously that's not necessary for every article because 99% of articles are not political and are in fact about a type of moss that grows in the Canary Islands.
A wikipedia written by only verified trusted experts is called an encyclopedia, we have those online now.
I think there was once a wikipedia-like online encyclopedia way back when in the late 90s or early 2000s that would only allow verified experts in whichever subject to participate to edit and create articles. I can't find what I'm talking about atm but it basically died from lack of participation and only had a hundred or so entries.
The current platform does enough to address bias and neutrality. If you are doing so bad you want a lopsided view of what you did, you're supposed to fork it and let it die like other free speech oppressors do, not compile PDF with stupid suggestions to mainline.
I agree it would be nice if power editors, at least, were not anonymous.
Everything has to be sourced from a reputable source. So I don't see why this is a huge problem. As long as they're sourcing their edits, and using reputable, verifiable sources, why should it matter if they're anonymous or not?
Also, reading the 3 pages of recommendations again, I don't think that's what it said:
Transparent Editing History: Ensure that all changes to articles are transparent and traceable.
This helps in identifying editors who may consistently introduce bias into articles.
That sounds like normal editing history for everything to me.
A 'pedia written by invite only was Nupedia, which has been dead for a very long time. So basically you meant that the article suggests to add a forked history for a more neutral version? Not sure if that makes it dumber or smarter.
Rather than talk about what Wikipedia should or shouldn't do to improve, people should take the initiative of helping to improve it themselves. Wikipedia is ultimately a collective of its volunteer editors, so the best way of enacting change on the platform is getting more people to make informed, unbiased improvements to articles.
The present report does not seem intended to be an academic publication, although it has already been used as a citation in the article Wikipedia and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
right, i kind of used the word “referenced” there intentionally, since the actual article would likely cite an actual academic publication which speaks on the matter
I just love the absolutely hysterical desperation in the hasbara's every attempt to try and rescue the contrived (and thoroughly undeserved) PR image Israel once had thanks to Western media.
Please don't do this. There is absolutely nothing strange or startling about a people who have been subjected to genocide going on to commit it (see also: Serbia).
This sort of finger-wagging is crude and insulting, and the only outcome is far-right Zionists trying to pin the Holocaust on Palestinians and claiming that Palestinian animosity towards Israel is because of a European-style irrational hatred of Jews, not its colonial and genocidal actions.
It is a sad day in history when the leader of the Israeli government hates his neighbour so much that he is willing to absolve the most notorious war criminal in history, Adolf Hitler, of the murder of six million Jews.
Damn. Cut right to the core, without any bluster or hyperbole - because it wasn’t needed.
You know, not having read Wikipedia on Israel, and not taking a stand, those that think Wikipedia is biased could put up a simple wiki like page that lists the biases and rewrites the article in a way that they would consider unbiased. This would be in the spirit of Wikipedia. People could really decide for themselves.
I've just realized a mistake by the signpost headline: It only wants admins and above to do that (which is better I suppose?). I've amended the post body.
In 2020, the ADL trained staff to edit Wikipedia pages, but after the project caused Wikipedia editors to criticize this as a conflict of interest, the ADL said it suspended the project in April 2021. The ADL is considered a reliable source on Wikipedia, and the ADL said its staff complied with Wikipedia policies by disclosing their affiliations, but some Wikipedia editors objected that the project cited ADL sources disproportionately and did not reflect the volunteer spirit of the website, especially in heavily editing its own Wikipedia article.
Anyone that knows anything about ADL knows they are not reliable whatsoever. Wikipedia is a compromised Zionist dumpsterfire.
Anyone that knows anything about ADL knows they are not reliable whatsoever
Of course. Still, even if someone knows nothing about ADL, by making a simple search with the keywords "ADL zionism" they will have the relevant page that confirms they are zionists. I won't add this link, but I will add the link of:
While it had many strains historically, the Zionism that took hold and stands today is a settler-colonial movement, establishing an apartheid state where Jews have more rights than others. Our own history teaches us how dangerous this can be.
Palestinian dispossession and occupation are by design. (...)
Searching about it, the ADL seems to try and separate support of the Israeli government from Zionism, and defines Zionism as the belief that Jews should have a sovereign state to live together. If one thinks that Israel shouldn't be sovereign at all and being abolished tomorrow would be very good, I'd also agree that that is extremist.
Please elaborate why they are not reliable for things other than Israel/Palestine topics, for which WP:RSP already has a small warning about that area. Just having bias and doing advocacy doesn't necessarily mean that their reporting is unreliable, though as with other biased sources more objective sources are preferred.
Even if ADL were unreliable, that's just one source, and I don't see how that exemplifies that "Wikipedia is a compromised Zionist dumpsterfire". Organizations and individuals are allowed to submit requests to edit pages for which they have a conflict of interest, and I don't see why Wikipedia being open to review them means it's now Israeli-ran from the top-down.
For anything non-controlversial and science related Wikipedia is fine. But when it comes to geopolitics Wikipedia is extremely Western biased. And in the case of middle eastern topic severely compromised. It's an important place to play with words and selectively put disinformation so people who think they get educated leave brainwashed.
There's far far more, I wrote a lengthy comment once about Wikipedia claiming israel's 1967 invasion war a "pre-emptive attack" which is a very dubious claim at best and debunked by many israeli leaders already. Wikipedia might be open for review but with the amount of Zionists involved in editing Palestine related articles there's no way real change gets through. Ironically Wikipedia instead just has an entirely different page explaining why it's actually not a pre-emptive attack but nobody is going to look through that. They will see the summary of the first article and the damage will be done.
The ADL is one of the biggest Zionist slander lobbies that call any criticism of israel "anti-Semitic". Wikipedia still listing the ADL as a "reliable source" cannot mean anything else than israel having huge influence on Wikipedia's politcy.
Any organisation that endorses the ADL or uses them as a "news source" is severely compromised it's as simple as that. It's like people quoting Russian state propaganda as evidence. By now everyone knows the ADL is an israeli slander lobby