MESSAGE
| DATE | 2024-10-20 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Wikipedea Anti-Semetism part II
|
Seven Tactics Wikipedia Editors Used to Spread Anti-Israel Bias Since
Oct. 7 – CAMERA on Campus
29–36 minutes
Note from the editor of the CAMERA on Campus Blog: This article was
written and published by Aaron Bandler, a reporter for the Jewish
Journal (Los Angeles). CAMERA on Campus is proud to share their
incredible work with our readers.
“Numerous commentators have identified the broader context of Israeli
occupation as a cause of the [Israel-Hamas] war. The Associated Press
wrote that Palestinians are ‘in despair over a never-ending occupation
in the West Bank and suffocating blockade of Gaza.’ Several human rights
organizations, including Amnesty International, B’Tselem and Human
Rights Watch have likened the Israeli occupation to apartheid, although
supporters of Israel dispute this characterization.”
This quote, which seems to have an anti-Israel slant, is actually from
the “Israeli policy” part of the background section on the main
Wikipedia page documenting the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. One editor who
has run afoul of Wikipedia’s policies in the past and, like all of the
editors quoted here, requested anonymity to discuss the site’s
practices, told me that Wikipedia’s coverage related to Oct. 7 as being
rather anti-Israel “despite the best efforts of many pro-Israel and more
unbiased editors.”
Dr. Shlomit Aharoni Lir wrote in a research paper published by the World
Jewish Congress that the “Israel-Hamas war” Wikipedia article received
25,401 page views on Jan. 20 alone and that 70% of the time Wikipedia is
the first result to pop up when people search for current events on
Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo. More recent statistics show that the
Israel-Hamas war article received nearly a million views throughout the
month of April. Clearly, people are looking to Wikipedia for information
on the war.
Statistics show that the Israel-Hamas war article received nearly a
million views throughout the month of April. Clearly, people are looking
to Wikipedia for information on the war.
That’s why examining Wikipedia content and how the site operates matters
— it is the world’s go-to site for information. I have been
investigating Wikipedia for more than three years, having talked to many
Wikipedians about how the site’s mechanisms have created a
self-sustaining system of left-wing and anti-Israel bias.
How Wikipedia Works
Wikipedia operates through “consensus,” which is defined as “a process
of compromise” that “neither requires unanimity … nor is the result of a
vote.” However, editors I have talked to have consistently referred to
consensus as a numbers game.
“Officially we will all say that consensus isn’t a vote,” one editor
told me. “However, I think most editors will also concede that sometimes
it does come down to numbers and a lot of editors would tend to see
anything over two-thirds to be consensus if the strength of the
arguments was approximately equal.” But determining consensus “is harder
when both sides are making policy-based arguments and perhaps the policy
argument of one side seems a bit stronger but the numbers of the other
side are greater.”
These battles for consensus can often be seen on an article’s talk page
(every Wikipedia article has one) and various noticeboard discussion
threads on Wikipedia. Sometimes when editors can’t reach an agreement on
a disputed change they will hold a Request for Comment (RfC), which
opens up the debate to a broader community discussion. At the end of the
discussion, a “closer” (an uninvolved administrator or editor in good
standing) renders a verdict on if there’s consensus for the proposed
change. A bot will automatically remove the RfC tag after 30 days, but
the RfC can be closed sooner or later depending on whether or not
editors believe more input is needed.
As we will see in the following seven examples, consensus appears to
lean toward the Palestinian narrative.
1. Part of the “Background” section of the “Israel-Hamas war” Wikipedia
article states: “Numerous commentators have identified the broader
context of Israeli occupation as a cause of the war.” These
“commentators” are mostly anti-Israel figures, in my opinion.
An editor who voluntarily stopped editing Wikipedia years ago after
getting fed up with what they believed was bias from the site’s
administrators told me that “numerous commentators” is the kind of
“positively loaded language” that Wikipedia advises against using. “It
implies there are a lot of people saying it, when in fact all they have
is [five] sources they stringed together,” the editor told me in an
email. “What does ‘numerous commentators’ mean … What are their
credentials?”
Three of these commentators are:
Far-left Squad members Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Cory Bush
(D-Miss.) calling for ending aid to Israeli “apartheid” in an article in
The Hill.
University of Chicago Prof. John Mearsheimer, who in an Al Jazeera
interview accused Israel of “apartheid” and wanting to “ethnically
cleanse” the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg
criticized Mearsheimer for praising a book by Gilad Atzmon in 2011;
Goldberg accused Atzmon at the time of promulgating antisemitism.
(Mearsheimer subsequently defended Atzmon from those charges in a
rebuttal to Goldberg in Foreign Policy magazine.) Mearsheimer has also
co-authored a book alleging that the “Israel lobby” helps control
American foreign policy.
Palestinian writer Mariam Barghouti’s Al Jazeera op-ed, “On October
7 Gaza broke out of prison.”
The remaining two are from The Nation and +972 Magazine, the latter of
which NGO Monitor describes as being on “the fringes of Israeli
discourse,” although Wikipedia does not consider NGO Monitor a reliable
source. The citation from The Nation at least states that Hamas’
atrocities on Oct. 7 aren’t “meant to achieve the basic Palestinian
right to freedom … it’s an act that inevitably leads to an Israeli
response of death and destruction against the ordinary Gaza citizens,
the people they are supposed to represent and care for.”
Middle East historian Asaf Romirowsky, who heads Scholars for Peace in
the Middle East and the Association for the Study of the Middle East and
North Africa (ASMEA), told me that these sources “are recycling the same
echo chamber that is basically Palestinian propaganda … the bias is
clear.” But you wouldn’t know who exactly these sources are unless you
checked the citation references to the line.
“Opinion pieces need to be attributed … I would change it to ‘a few
commentators, including Rashida Tlaib and Mariam Barghouti,’” the editor
told me, adding that “it’s more precise and shows exactly who the people
making this comment are.”
A different editor disagreed with the “positively loaded language”
assessment, but agreed that the line was “POV.” Another editor told me,
“I don’t know that there is ever a ‘correct’ way to do this … This is a
case where an editing choice isn’t made by rational policy but instead
by weight of numbers.”
2. Adding “anti-imperialism” into Hamas’ list of ideologies and removing
“antisemitism” in the Hamas Wikipedia article’s infobox.
Google “Hamas ideology,” and you’ll find that the list of ideologies for
the terror group include “anti-Zionism” and “anti-imperialism” but not
“antisemitism” — all of which comes straight from the “infobox” of the
Hamas Wikipedia article.
Wikipedia describes infoboxes as summarizing “important points in an
easy-to-read format” in the upper-right hand corner of articles. Until
recently, the Hamas Wikipedia article listed “antisemitism” as one of
the ideologies for the terror group. It was removed in January 2024
after enough editors on the talk page argued that there aren’t enough
scholarly sources that list antisemitism as a “central ideological
tenet” of Hamas, especially after Hamas revised its charter in 2017 to
state they don’t take issue with Jews, their issue is with Zionists. Of
course, the revised document still clearly contains antisemitic tropes
(a viewpoint buried in the body of the Wikipedia article) and Hamas
didn’t really revise their charter in 2017; they simply added a new
document that does not supersede their original 1988 antisemitic
charter, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Until recently, the Hamas Wikipedia article listed “antisemitism” as
one of the ideologies for the terror group. It was removed after enough
editors on the talk page argued that there aren’t enough scholarly
sources that list antisemitism as a “central ideological tenet” of
Hamas.
“Anything can go in the infobox,” an editor told me. “Nobody has ever
claimed it has to be a ‘central tenet,’ all it needs to be is something
mentioned fairly often.”
And Hamas’ antisemitism does seem to be mentioned fairly often in
academic literature — before its removal from the infobox, the
“antisemitism” label was sourced to a piece by George Mason University
Professor Bruce Hoffman in The Atlantic and a 1998 academic journal
article by Tel Aviv University Professor Meir Litvak. At one point, even
more sources were cited, including a 2023 Portuguese Journal of Asian
Studies article and a 2020 book from an independent academic publisher.
“Antisemitism has been part and parcel of Hamas’ narrative,” Romirowsky
told me. “Their clear goals and objectives vis a vis the 1988 charter
have not changed. So the demand for the destruction for the killing of
Jews through jihad and the obliteration of the state of Israel, all of
that is current and clearly we’ve seen it Oct. 7. So there’s nothing new
to my mind, anything short of that is a blatant lie.”
Tel Aviv University Vice Rector Eyal Zisser told me in a Zoom interview
the notion that antisemitism is not a central tenet of Hamas was
“ridiculous,” noting that under the International Holocaust Remembrance
Alliance definition, it is antisemitic to oppose the right of the Jewish
people to have a state. “It’s clearly what Hamas is after,” he said.
Consider that in the RfC asking if “anti-imperialism” should be included
in the Hamas infobox, no one discussed if it’s a “central ideological
tenet” of Hamas. The argument here that rallied votes in favor was that
it was mentioned in several academic books, with one being a “radical”
leftist nonprofit publisher that provided a “Free Palestine! Starter
Kit” on their website in 2021. Op-eds (which are considered weaker
sources) from sources like historian
Simon Sebag Montefiore in The Atlantic and freelance journalist Joseph
Bouchard in The National Interest criticizing those who excused Hamas’
actions on Oct. 7 as being “anti-imperialist,” as well as a CNN Portugal
op-ed arguing that Hamas is spreading Islamic imperialism and an
interview in El Pais in which philosopher John Gray says Hamas “has more
in common with ISIS” were cited to argue that there should be a
“disputed” tag next to the “anti-imperialism” descriptor; these sources
were dismissed as being “biased and partisan.” The closer ruled that
while the couple of editors who argued for the “disputed” tag “made
cogent points, these did not attain sufficient support to sway the
consensus that way.”
Romirowsky called the use of “anti-imperialism” to describe Hamas as
“hogwash.” “That’s the Palestinian narrative that has been insidious
toward how they view the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict,”
Romirowsky said, adding that Hamas “would like to define themselves as a
resistance movement.”
“The Palestinian narrative has been insidious toward how they view
the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Hamas “would like to define
themselves as a resistance movement.” – Asaf Romirowsky
Zisser’s view? “Any Islamic terrorist organization is committed to fight
the West because it’s the West, it’s Christian … to say that it’s
‘anti-imperialist,’ well you know, Hitler fought against Britain and the
United States … can you say that he was anti-imperialist? It’s
ridiculous.”
An editor told me that they believe there should be a “disputed” tag
next to the anti-imperialism descriptor and that “it should be stated in
plain English” in the article. “Putting it in the infobox is a trick to
avoid expanding on the issue,” the editor said. Indeed, Hamas’ supposed
“anti-imperialism” stance is not mentioned anywhere in the body of the
article.
The editor contended that the removal of “antisemitism” from the infobox
and the adding of “anti-imperialism” is “an example of abusing the
system by virtue of having the numbers, which results in a biased
article.”
3. Treating the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers as being
reliable.
A look at the Israel-Hamas war Wikipedia article shows that it cites the
casualty numbers from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry (without the
“Hamas-run” qualifier) without any question, but does provide a citation
to the report that the United Nations halved the number of identified
women and children.
Of course, there have been criticisms of the Health Ministry’s numbers
circulating in some media: a March 6, 2024 piece in Tablet Magazine by
Abraham Wyner, a renowned statistician at The Wharton School of the
University of Pennsylvania, alleged that the Hamas-run Gaza Health
Ministry’s casualty numbers “are not real.” Wyner examined the numbers
released by the ministry from Oct. 26-Nov. 10 showing the “daily
casualty figures that include both a total number and a specific number
of women and children.” Using graphs, Wyner showed how the daily death
total during that time frame had “strikingly little variation” when he
believes “there should be days with twice the average or more and others
with half or less.” Additionally, the figures show no correlation
between women’s and children’s deaths when there should be a positive
correlation between the two. The data also shows a negative correlation
between female deaths and male deaths when there should be a high
correlation between the two, per Wyner, because “the ebbs and flows of
the bombings and attacks by Israel should cause the daily count to move
together.”
Further, the ministry’s data that stated that 70% of the death count in
Gaza are women and children (which the UN now says is 52% based on
confirmed identities) doesn’t add up since 25% of Gaza’s population are
adult males and that Hamas has acknowledged in February to losing 6,000
terrorists, “which represents more than 20% of the total number of
casualties reported,” wrote Wyner. “Taken together, Hamas is reporting
not only that 70% of casualties are women and children but also that 20%
are fighters. This is not possible unless Israel is somehow not killing
noncombatant men, or else Hamas is claiming that almost all the men in
Gaza are Hamas fighters.” These “anomalies” led Wyner to conclude that
the health ministry’s number reporting process is “unconnected or
loosely connected to reality.” It is worth noting that the 6,000 figure
came from a Hamas official’s statement to Reuters, but Hamas denied the
accuracy of the figure to the BBC.
But you can only find Wyner’s piece in the lesser-trafficked “Gaza
Health Ministry” article rather than the more heavily trafficked
“Israel-Hamas war” and “Casualties of the Israel-Hamas war” articles.
When Wyner’s piece was suggested on the Israel-Hamas war talk page,
Wikipedians insisted that including it would run afoul of various
Wikipedia policies; these policies included that Wikipedia should not
give credence to fringe theories (WP:FRINGE in wiki-shorthand) or give
undue weight (WP:UNDUE) to a minority viewpoint, as Wikipedia reflects
the preponderance of reliable sources.
Most editors pointed to the fact that many reliable sources like The
Lancet (an academic journal) have concluded that the ministry’s data is
reliable, thus Wikipedia should also and contended that Tablet is not a
great source. Other Wikipedians argued in a separate thread that Wyner’s
data was cherrypicked because the total death count on other days
outside of Wyner’s timeframe showed greater variance and that Wyner’s
own timeframe had a higher variance than he let on. Editors also argued
the World Health Organization and organizations like Human Rights Watch
also believe the ministry’s numbers are reliable. In the Gaza Health
Ministry Wikipedia article, Wyner’s piece is mentioned but hit with
criticism; preceding it are the two Lancet studies calling the
ministry’s numbers reliable and following it is a paraphrase of
Professor Michael Spagat saying that the ministry’s numbers “have
declined over time, due to Israeli attacks on hospitals, and thus the
MoH is relying on first responders and media sources.”
For his part, Wyner denies cherry-picking data, telling me that those
were the only dates he could find “contiguous data available that had
breakdowns into categories” of the deaths of men, women and children.
“The categories are important since Hamas, I allege, is hiding the male
deaths or miscataloging them as children or women and that would only be
noticeable when the counts by category are released,” Wyner said.
One editor I spoke to argued that “Tablet is a reliable source, and a
professor of statistics is an expert in the field, so it doesn’t matter
what editors think about the numbers or if he’s cherry-picking or
whatever” (though another source said “it’s absolutely allowed to
question something on the talk page”)and that Wyner’s view is not in the
extreme minority because “a lot of people say Hamas lies about the
numbers” and that it “should be in any article that mentions the
numbers.”
And more sources do appear to be questioning the reliability of the
health ministry: The Telegraph questioned the conclusion of one of The
Lancet’s studies that the health ministry’s numbers are accurate, as the
study cross-referenced the ministry’s numbers with the number of United
Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) workers
killed in a separate database. However, The Telegraph noted that the
study “was not peer reviewed and the authors themselves acknowledge that
the UNRWA database is not likely to be exactly representative of the
wider Gazan population.” The Telegraph reviewed UNRWA’s data and also
determined that “there are significant discrepancies between” the
reported UNRWA staff deaths and the total deaths reported by the
ministry and that “men appear to account for a considerably higher
percentage of fatalities than that claimed by the Gazan authorities.”
Three academics in the British Israel Communications and Research
Centre’s Fathom Journal, which cited Wyner, also questioned the
reliability of the Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll, though this source
was also dismissed on the Israel-Hamas war talk page. Even the Health
Ministry itself recently admitted that about a third of its statistics
are “incomplete,” though this is acknowledged in the Gaza Health
Ministry and “Casualties of the Israel-Hamas War” articles.
Romirowsky, who knows Wyner, called the Wharton professor “a phenomenal
statistician” who “did a great job in that piece.” Hamas’s goal “is to
inflate the numbers… the narrative is clear and designed from the
get-go.” However, Romirowsky acknowledged that a lot of academic sources
(including The Lancet) and media sources do treat the Gaza Health
Ministry’s numbers as reliable, so this very well could be an example of
Wikipedia reflecting the bias of the media and academia.
4. Considering Mondoweiss, an anti-Zionist site, a “marginally reliable”
source.
Under Wikipedia policy, editors can only summarize what reliable sources
say when writing an article, meaning that what is or isn’t considered to
be reliable is crucially important on Wikipedia. Wikipedia defines
reliable sources as being “independent, published sources with a
reputation for fact-checking and accuracy,” with how it’s used by other
reliable sources being an indicator of reliability. The Reliable Sources
Noticeboard (RSN) forum is where Wikipedians can determine a source’s
reliability and if it falls under the categories of “generally
reliable,” “marginally reliable” (meaning it can be used only in
“certain circumstances”), “generally unreliable,” (meaning it “should
normally not be used”) and “deprecated,” meaning that it’s “generally
prohibited.”
Mondoweiss, which was founded in 2006 by anti-Zionist Jewish journalist
Phillip Weiss, has been in the “marginally reliable” category for
years, despite being accused of being a “hate site” by George Mason
University Professor David Bernstein in a 2015 blog for The Washington
Post; Yair Rosenberg has also argued in Tablet that Mondoweiss
promulgated an “antisemitic attack” against The Atlantic’s Jeffrey
Goldberg in 2016. When an RfC was launched at RSN in January to
downgrade Mondoweiss, those in favor of downgrading it argued that
Mondoweiss published pieces glorifying the October 7 massacre and
downplaying evidence that Hamas committed rapes on that day as examples
showing that Mondoweiss is a “fringe” source. They also pointed out that
one of Mondoweiss’ “news” articles stated in an editor’s note that there
are intensifying “fascist persecutions against critical voices in
Israel” as reason for keeping an author anonymous; another “news
article” declared that “Israel is now a full-scale dictatorship.”
However, many editors contended that Wikipedia policy allows for biased
sources like Mondoweiss that mainly publish op-eds and that such op-eds
would only be cited on Wikipedia if they’re written by subject-matter
experts or notable commentators. Additionally, those in favor of keeping
Mondoweiss as “marginally reliable” argued that there’s no evidence that
Mondoweiss’ “news” is unreliable and that news outlets frequently blend
news with opinion. Some also questioned whether it was accurate to say
that Mondoweiss was denying evidence of broader Hamas rape claims on
Oct. 7 and that instead they were raising questions on specific reported
testimonies in The New York Times and CNN. Ultimately, the RfC was
closed with keeping Mondoweiss as marginally reliable.
One editor told me that they are “disturbed that it’s not considered
‘generally unreliable.’ It’s an avowedly partisan source.” The editor
also noted that “Fox News, New York Post, Breitbart, Daily Mail, etc.
are considered unreliable [on Wikipedia]. This is obscene.”
“Calling Israel a ‘dictatorship’ is just stupid,” another editor told
me. “It’s not even a matter of opinion.” Mondoweiss is only “kept in
because enough people want it there for the propaganda value.”
5. The Wikipedia article on the UCLA pro-Hamas encampment states that
Jessica Seinfeld and Bill Ackman donated to pro-Israel counterprotesters
involved in the violence on the night of April 30-May 1. Their denials
are not included in the article.
The section about the attack on the encampment features a line under the
“Counterprotester attack” section that says, “A report found one
counterprotest group raised funds through GoFundMe, with Jessica
Seinfeld and Bill Ackman donating $5,000 and $10,000, respectively,”
with citations to The Daily Beast and The Times, with the latter behind
a paywall.
Both Seinfeld and Ackman have issued denials on this. A subsequent Daily
Beast report highlighted an Instagram post from Seinfeld stating that
she had donated to an April 28 counterprotest at UCLA that was
“peaceful” and that “the two demonstrations … had nothing to do with
each other.” The Daily Beast report goes on to state that Seinfeld had
donated to a GoFundMe launched by “Bear Jews of Truth,” a group that
claimed that they were involved in displaying Oct. 7 footage in front of
the encampment but weren’t involved in the violence the night the
encampment was attacked. The Daily Beast claimed that Instagram stories
show that the group was present that night. Ackman has stated on X that
he has only provided money for the fraternity brothers at the University
of North Carolina who tried to protect an American flag from pro-Hamas
protesters and toward showing Oct. 7 footage on various campuses across
the country. Otherwise, he claims he doesn’t fund protests.
As of publication time, no one has attempted to include their denials
into the Wikipedia article. Two of my editor sources took issue with
this.
“My understanding is that anything that could cause Wikipedia to be sued
falls under BLP so this would as well,” one editor told me, referencing
Wikipedia’s Biographies of living persons policy. “They should add the
denials from the people they’re talking about.”
Another editor told me they thought the line about Ackman and Seinfeld
was UNDUE altogether, in addition to there being BLP concerns without
the denials. “That’s the sort of smear that has been pushed into
conservative articles for a long time,” the editor contended. “Some
editors will claim it’s DUE because they want to smear the article
subject (or Seinfeld and Ackman in this case).” And in this case,
Seinfeld and Ackman appear to be smeared for having a pro-Israel point
of view. “Shame on The Daily Beast,” the editor added. “Then again, this
is Wikipedia where [The Daily Beast] is viewed as reliable while
anything on the right is automatically labeled as suspect at best.”
6. Excluding the Oct. 7 massacre from the “List of Islamist terrorist
attacks” Wikipedia article because it’s “original research.”
To be fair, there was consensus among Wikipedia editors to include the
massacre in the “List of major terrorist incidents” Wikipedia page. But
there wasn’t consensus for including it in the “List of Islamist
terrorist attacks” Wikipedia page, as enough editors argued in an RfC
that doing so would violate Wikipedia policy banning “original
research,” (WP:OR), which states that “all material added to articles
must be verifiable in a reliable, published source.” Editors also cannot
insert “any analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to
reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources… If one reliable
source says A and another reliable source says B, do not join A and B
together to imply a conclusion C not mentioned by either of the
sources.” (WP:SYNTH)
The editors opposed to including the Oct. 7 massacre in the list argued
that doing so would violate this policy because there aren’t enough
sources that label it specifically as an Islamist terrorist attack — as
they argued that Palestinian militant groups involved were nationalistic
rather than Islamist — and that Hamas attacked military sites, which
wouldn’t count as terror, and only the civilian sites attacked would
count as terror. Some even contended that the massacre was a “military
operation.” Those in favor of inclusion argued that because sources
widely describe Hamas as an Islamist terror organization, that in turn
makes the Oct. 7 massacre an Islamist terror attack, with some even
providing sources stating that Oct. 7 was a terror attack perpetuated by
an Islamic terror organization. The “no consensus” verdict kept it off
the list.
“Hamas is an acronym for ‘Islamic Resistance Movement,’” an editor
told me. “The ‘Islamism in the Gaza Strip’ article talks mostly about
Hamas. It’s complete bad faith to argue their attacks shouldn’t be in a
list of Islamist attacks.”
“Hamas is an acronym for ‘Islamic Resistance Movement,’” an editor told
me. “The ‘Islamism in the Gaza Strip’ article talks mostly about Hamas.
It’s complete bad faith to argue their attacks shouldn’t be in a list of
Islamist attacks.” Another editor source agreed that keeping out the
Oct. 7 massacre from this list was a misuse of Wikipedia policy.
7. On Wikipedia’s main page on May 7, the “Did you know” section stated
that “Walid Daqqa wrote several works of prison literature, including a
children’s novel about a boy who uses magical olive oil to visit his
imprisoned father.” Daqqa’s conviction for commanding a terror cell that
brutally murdered an Israeli soldier is not mentioned.
Wikipedia’s Main Page , which is viewed by millions of people,
highlighted Daqqa’s work as an author and omitting the fact that he was
convicted for commanding a Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine-linked terror cell that abducted and murdered Israeli soldier
Moshe Tamam in 1984. Daqqa’s Wikipedia article acknowledges this, though
it says he denied it and that he wasn’t present at the kidnapping. It
does acknowledge that Tamam was found with “‘massive’ head wounds. ”The
significance of this is that on the day that Daqqa was featured on the
main page, the main page received nearly five million views. The Daqqa
article itself only received 5,457 views that day — meaning that the
hook that only IDs Daqqa as a writer had a far greater reach than his
Wikipedia page that included that he was a convicted terrorist.
So, what is the process for getting articles featured on the “Did you
know …” (DYK in wiki-slang) section of the main page? One requirement
for an article to be nominated by an editor for a DYK is if it was newly
created in the past seven days leading up to the nomination and contains
at least 1,500 words; Daqqa’s article was nominated on April 10, two
days after it was first created. The nominating editor will also propose
a hook to be used on the main page, which Wikipedia states should “be
perceived as unusual or intriguing by readers with no special knowledge
or interest” in the subject, be compliant with Wikipedia’s NPOV policy
and will link to the Wikipedia article. The initial proposed hook was “…
that prisoner Walid Daqqa … wrote several works of prison literature,
including a children’s novel on a boy who uses magical olive oil to
visit his imprisoned father?” When a Wikipedia article is nominated, a
third-party editor peer-reviews the article to make sure it adheres to
Wikipedia policy; the Daqqa article, outside a couple of minor changes,
breezed through the peer review process. Once that happens, it gets put
in a queue.
An editor told me that the Daqqa DYK is “a gross NPOV violation trying
to make a grotesque torturer and murderer look like someone imprisoned
for being a writer.” The anti-Israel editors “do this all the time” with
DYKs, the editor contended. Another editor source agreed that the Daqqa
DYK was “POV pushing.”
The hope is that consensus can change, and if Wikipedia is held
accountable then the site’s content may start to live up to its policy
of neutrality and co-founder Jimmy Wales’s vision for the site to be
“the sum of all human knowledge.”
These examples of bias may tempt you to try and fix Wikipedia’s bias
yourself since anybody can theoretically edit Wikipedia. But being an
effective editor in Wikipedia’s contentious topic areas is an arduous
task. To even begin editing articles related to the Arab-Israeli
conflict, for instance, you need to have been an editor for at least 30
days and have made at least 500 edits elsewhere; otherwise, all you can
do is make edit requests on the talk page. Wikipedia has a whole
labyrinth of arcane policies and guidelines, and any missteps — even if
inadvertent — will be used against you and could get you sanctioned.
What I have covered in this piece is only the tip of the Wikepedia
iceberg to give a sense of its complicated process and how it can lead
to potential bias. The hope is that consensus can change, and if
Wikipedia is held accountable then the site’s content may start to live
up to its policy of neutrality and co-founder Jimmy Wales’s vision for
the site to be “the sum of all human knowledge.”
--
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