Wikipedia Is Covering the War in Israel and Gaza Better Than X
slate.com
slate.com
There are two Large articles covering:
2014-present issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War
2022-present invasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
An outline with all major events that have occured since 2014:
outline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_the_Russo-Ukrainian...
AND an animated map that shows every major force movement from 2022 to present:
animated gif map: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/2022_Rus...
Same with Sudan, had no idea until looking at the Wikipedia page the fight had now fractured into four combatant groups.
...looks like that animation goes from February 24th, 2022 through December 3rd, 2022 (unless I'm missing something).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Ukrainian_counteroffensiv...
It is the same as in major world news sources: partizan, without objective reporting and using "special" words.
Wikipedia is becoming a shadow of itself.
Twitter, by contrast, presents multiple points of view. This is a feature, not a bug. If you want to follow accounts cheering on Hamas, well, you're an animal, but go for it. If you want to follow IDF or particular sources you trust, you're probably much better informed than anyone reading, e.g., the New York Times.
Blue check marks have nothing to do with it. This reads like the last gasp of a gatekeeper trying to remain relevant in an increasingly distributed world.
Regardless, people tend not to utilize resources such as X as they do traditional format media websites such as Wikipedia. Wherein the "editorial board's" presentation of the facts are one's only option for consumption. To suggest that consumers utilize these differing formats similarly is the introduction of a false premise into an argument that, ironically, proports to wish to prosecute a source of false premises.
When looking at sources such as X, early on people tend to have multiple accounts that they look to for information. The point being to survey multiple sources of information toward ferreting out what is probably most true. Sources that are more consistent, in that, later tend to be seen as reliable. They then get more attention per their track record as experienced by readers. The viewer market of X punishes accounts that are percieved to routinely engage in lies. Even if lying accounts remain stuck in the "filter" of X.
While some lies have had the chance to rise to the top, though arguably at a lesser rate than when being laundered through MSM editorial baords, the dominant effect has obviously been to punish propaganda.
Compare this process to Wikipedia's type of engagement. Which is a site that has a bottom-barrel reputation for stubborn bias specifically in the realm of any page that deals in political topics. And within which there is no opportunity to seek out alternate takes or information sources.
That's not to say that Wikipedia doesn't get it right. But that X and wikipedia are not comparable media sources.
And that the individualized trust process for readers is more important in 2023. Than it is to validate with engagement more traditional formats that have to thread the needle of their no-option propaganda, in order to point to whatever it is that you are supposed to be happy about them being truthful over for a single cherry picked topic or even one peice of information.
It just distracts attention from the facts.
The word terrorism isn't loaded, it isn't political, and it isn't undefineable. It's a term with a concrete definition.
Those are the facts.
Start there.
The message to which I responded attempts to disqualify October 7th as terrorism by rhetorically suggesting that other events may or may not be terrorism.
Which is a particulalry dumb fallacy to attempt to advance. Whether or not anything else is terrorism has no bearing on whether or not October 7th was. Even if it is all terrorism.
If they want to justify october 7th, they should drop the particularly unskilled act of cowardice via wordsmithing.
Their immoral disposition is revealed when they attempt to equate "Israeli Settlers" (civilians living their lives, and who didn't own guns let alone specifically focus them on civilians) to those who specifically targeted civilians for mass murder as a means of intimidation and sparking a War.
Which is precisely the logic of Hamas. So again, they should drop the act and be more direct about 10/7.
Instead of lashing out and accusing fairly innocuous people of being terrorist sympathizers and anti-semites across several different threads, maybe step away from the computer for a bit?
Perhaps it is you who needs to step away, due to not being able to handle disagreement with your tack. Or are you so irrationally insistent on it that you cannot?
For what other terrorism events did you suggest not using the terrorist label for the purpose of decorum?
In what Universe is such a suggestion avoidant of flame wars? Please.
In this case there is tension and bad things happening at the border with sporadic fighting.
Then on October 7 Hamas on its own volition crossed the border and did attacks on regular people.
Just imagine a different situation. Imagine Russian army started shooting Ukranian kids at a dance party, paraded the naked body of one of the kids in camera after they raped tortured and killed her
Would we still be having this intellectual debate about whether the word terrorism is overused and wether it can apply here.
You know what I think, I think this is the bigotry of low expectations. Some western intellectuals instinctively apply different and lower standards to people of other races.
The sadism of those who delight in rape and murder is deeply disturbing. But, in some ways, the depersonalized automation of murder, where you roughly target something on a screen and go get lunch while dozens of distant lives are torn apart, is even more perverse.
At least the former doesn't scale. There's only so many fucked up people you can recruit. But almost anyone can push a button.
In this case there was no parading over the body of an enemy. This wasn't an enemy this was a girl in her early 20s. How is she an enemy, she didn't do anything. We don't even know maybe she opposed Israel settlements and wanted a different approach to Gaza.
The difference with groups like Hamas is they don't care, everyone is an enemy deserving of rape and torture, even random girls in their 20s. It's not the same thing, comparing this intentional attack to unintentional breaks of discipline or accidents in military contexts seems insane in my mind. The difference is Hamas intentionally targets civilians as their official policy, that's their organizational approach.
> It's not the same thing, comparing this intentional attack to unintentional breaks of discipline or accidents in military contexts seems insane in my mind.
When the military orders civilian infrastructure to be bombed, they know that innocents will die. It is a certainty. And yet they get to write it off as "collateral damage." I could argue it's a distinction with very little difference. It just so happens that one form of violence is societally acceptable while the other is not. "Law of war" is a comfortable lie we tell ourselves to avoid facing war's true human toll, but in the end, it's all still bodies in the rubble.
Listen to yourself dude. A thing that happened. As if Hamas murdering people is a 'thing that happened' like a rock fell down the cliff and went through someones windshield. Just a thing that happened.
A thing I noticed is how people like yourself use agency rhetorically to excuse things that are simply unacceptable. So here Hamas has no agency. The people in Israel that died was a 'thing that happened' because Hamas has no agency. But of course the Israeli military they have agency because it's necessary for your argument.
This is just hoary old school tribalism. What we do to others is excusable. What's done to us is an outrage.
I don't think that's as innocuous as you present it. I get it some people sympathize with Palestinians that's fine, Im not trying to dissuade that and I'm not claiming it's terrorist support to sympathize with the ordinary Palestinian civilians.
But questioning whether Hamas chasing and gunning down people dancing at an edm party with - what's your definition of terrorism. That's not innocuous that's a pretty blatant attempt to excuse an attack in peaceful harmless civilians who were literally just dancing and posed no threat to anyone
I mean - claiming it was just asking a question about what you mean by terrorism is a pretty lame response in that scenario
That's pretty unambiguously an act of terror rather than a legitimate military act.
I'm not saying Israel has never done anything wrong. But when Hamas calls for a day of terror - it's not reasonable to interpret them as anything other than a terrorist group. They're not exactly hiding the fact that they're terrorists.
> Definitions from Oxford Languages
the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
"the fight against terrorism"
What you are implying is that Hamas was operating as a Warring Party, and treating civilians as combatants. Ergo they aren't terrorists by their own definition. Laws being subjective, selectively applied, and therefore meaningless in these situations.
Have it your way. Now Hamas has War. Moreover, it has insisted that civilains are combatants.
Lucky for the Palestinians, Israel is more moral than Hamas and will not operate in the same manner.
Frankly, counter to the apparent interests here of those here who are so offended by the terrorist label, Israel operating solely under terrorism law to bring Hamas to justice probably would have been better for the Palestinians. Though impossible.
But it's obvious that the actual motive here is to try to thread the impossible logic needle that says that Hamas should be left alone after 10/7 because of reasons. Which is a crazy fantasy.
Why is this true? Because you say so?
Hamas deliberately went out of their way to murder, mutilate and rape innocent civilians, while also hiding amongst their own civilians.
Meanwhile, IDF are targeting Hamas and civilians are stuck in the crossfire.
They have also developed advanced countermeasures to negate the effects of Hamas rocket artillery (the iron dome).
Also what mutilation are you talking about? Lots of scare words there when Israel is mutilating children with high explosives right now, on purpose.
Not to mention Israel is also bombing its own hostages, and they consider that acceptable too.
They are not moral in any sense of the word.
My way was to have an objective definition of a term that we're using for rational discussions. I'm in favor of peace far more than any side.
You don't have to be sympathetic to a terror event to ask questions, you present a false dichotomy
The facts are that a number of Hamas members have entered Israel territory and done a number of horrible things that some of us may have heard on tv. That's what Wikipedia should get right, and not whether such or such action is an act of "terror". Of course such a debate also belongs on Wikipedia but must be separated.
Same with the current IDF operations in Gaza, Wikipedia should document their actions, and the discussions on whether they are committing war crimes or a genocide should be separated.
First problem, it's written by some pastiche of a blue-check obsessed journalist. The article goes on and on about how some accounts are posting misinformation despite having blue checks. Blue check was never a badge of accuracy, so why are Slate pretending it was? It was at best just a form of ID verification. Then they name one account that supposedly was blue check whilst claiming affiliation with Al Jazeera, but don't link directly to it (of course). Instead the link goes to Reuters which just repeats the claim and also doesn't link to it. Yet after digging and looking at screenshots of this account posted at the time Al Jazeera complained, no blue check is to be seen anywhere. Is Slate itself now spreading misinformation?
Second problem, no evidence is provided for the claim in the headline. After some undisguised Musk hatred that doesn't even pretend to be neutral journalism, Harrison spends numerous paragraphs explaining how Wikipedia works, presumably for people who spent the last 20 years in a coma. We are told that Wikipedia is clearly superior because anyone can edit it, except at the moment when they can't but only "the self-proclaimed free speech absolutists on X" care about that, and because you have to cite reliable sources like newspapers. That "age old rule" has protected Wikipedia from citing cell-phone sourced misinformation. But this makes no sense because it was only days ago that major newspapers were having to apologize for having blindly repeated misinformation about the Gaza conflict.
The rest of the article is about wiki-fights over choices of words: is it a war between Israel and Hamas or Israel and Gaza. Were the men who attacked the music festival terrorists or militants, and was that a massacre or something else? We are told "the impact of Wikipedia’s description ... cannot be overstated" because "journalists often turn to its pages for guidance".
This article offers no specific evidence that Wikipedia is doing a better job of covering the war. It's not even made clear what it means for such services to "cover" something. This is really just another complaint by a journalist that Twitter doesn't give them special blue check privileges anymore, whereas Wikipedia still does.
The signal from faceless college grads would have been infintely less reflexively repellant than anything that has come out of the mouths of the forever-recycled Iraq War Era propagandists. Who were fresh from a deeply partisan propaganda campaign that doesn't have an equivalent in remembered US history.
But apparently keeping the careers of these social rejects alive is more important that Ukraine opinion. Choices have consequences, for better and worse.
But given this one, its diffuclt to take seriously complaints about signal failure.