Wikipedia row erupts as Jimmy Wales intervenes on 'Gaza genocide' page
thenational.scot
thenational.scot
He also said it in a '"high profile media interview about the article'.
Statement from Jimbo Wales: This message is from me, Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia
That's not just another comment; it's an official statement from the most powerful person on Wikipedia.
Wales goes on to say, "As many of you will know, I have been leading an NPOV working group and studying the issue of neutrality in Wikipedia across many articles and topic areas including “Zionism”. While this article is a particularly egregious example, there is much more work to do."
In other words, an official body is watching and studying what you are doing, and policy actions may follow.
Finally, Wales does not accept any possibility that other points of view besides his own may be valid - not addressing many prior discussions. His belief is an assumed premise, and he demands ('asks') people to take actions on the basis of his beliefs. If you read the discussion, he continues that position.
That doesn't make Wales wrong or right, but he didn't 'just comment ... that it should have a more neutral tone.'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
This page represents ONE viewpoint and, read the "Talk" page, strongly fights against that any other viewpoint is represented at all. That, by itself, is directly against the stated goals and policy of wikipedia. A page is to have a short description of the subject, and then immediately delve into the different viewpoints on the subject. This page, and this is putting it mildly, does not acknowledge any viewpoint other than it's own even exists (and then gives endless reasons, pages of justification, for why it's viewpoint is supposedly reasonable, but without any mention of any other viewpoint. This page is a mad rant, not a serious wikipedia entry)
Wikipedia's EXPLICIT goal is to show the different viewpoints on any issue, to the point that there's many long articles on "exceptions" (like why the Flat-Earth theory is not mentioned on the earth entry)
And this page has A LOT of very worrying statements that can also be characterized as extremist. For example, the article ends with a statement that this gaza genocide pre-emptively justifies massacres against US civilians (yes, really, US civilians) "in a hypothetical future war between the US and a peer power such as China". Seriously? Who has this viewpoint?
And then there is just WHAT viewpoint this page puts forth ... This can only be described as an extremist viewpoint, even for the gaza = genocide camp. Do any reasonable people actually have this viewpoint? Every part of it is presented with zero mention of any disagreement at all, which in my experience is absolutely not true.
1) there was a genocide against innocents in Gaza (not a war against hamas, that is not mentioned at all), that what happens in Gaza, which in reality is of course firefights between 2 military groupings, is comparable to what happened in nazi death camps ...
(in fact I would argue that this page, for this comparison and other reasons, is extremely racist)
2) (directly copies hamas' viewpoint) that there are no combatants in gaza at all. In fact there is NO offensive or defensive action by any palestinian mentioned as far as I can tell.
3) (directly copies hamas' viewpoint) that to there is no hamas use of hospitals as weapons (even against their own people), their use for imprisoning hostages and as rocket launch sites, and so on
4) (directly copies hamas' viewpoint) in reporting casualty figures
5) there is ONE side mention of the other side of the conflict, and how it started: with a genocide ... by Palestinians. Despite several of the references being titled "October 7 ..." there is no mention of what happened on October 7 other than a single word: "attacks". And even that did not happen without a fight (see the talk page)
(despite the obvious remark one can make: what hamas and random Palestinians did on Oct 7 2023 satisfies the definition of genocide. They emptied 2 fully automatic rifles in a kindergarten classroom because the kids were Jews. And like with all such racist acts, of course, turns out 2 of the kids (the black ones) weren't even Jews. You would think that an article that devotes ~1 page to the "extensive targeting of children" would find a sentence to mention this)
6) That EVERYONE (not just Israel) is responsible for this, US, the Netherlands, ... not just countries either. Facebook is responsible for this. Bank of America. Exxon Mobil. BNP Paribas (a Belgian bank) ...
(Except, of course, Palestinians. The attack on October 7 has nothing to do with this conflict. Nothing whatsoever ...)
I must say, I don't understand how this viewpoint can make it to that page. This is, even for the "Gaza genocide" camp, an absurd and extremist viewpoint. Additionally, it is extremely racist.
And after all that this long and absurd rant of a wikipedia page, ends by "justifying" that China should go on a massacre against civilians in the US.
Can we please agree there are serious problems here?
Wikipedia has policies around what constitutes a reliable source, and academics who study a particular subject and publish in peer-reviewed journals are generally considered among the highest-quality sources. In this case, they nearly unanimously agree that what Israel has been doing in Gaza is a genocide.
It took Wikipedia a long time to come to this determination. At first, academics were divided, but as time went on and Israel's actions became ever more extreme, opinions shifted and nearly all academics in the field started calling it a genocide. That caused Wikipedia to start calling it a genocide. There was a very long process of discussion and debate on the talk page of the article leading up to this change, centered on an evaluation of the sources.
Jimmy Wales has now come along and essentially ordered the Wikipedia community to change the article. He's effectively ordering them to disregard the usual "reliable source" guidelines and instead represent a view that he personally feels is neutral.
The thing is that Wikipedia editors don't necessarily respect Jimmy Wales that much, and they generally don't think he has the right to dictate what any particular article should or should not say. Wikipedia has been around for more than 20 years. It has well established rules and a community of editors. Jimmy Wales is just the guy who originally set it up, but he's not necessarily an expert on anything.
Could you link to it? It's seems key to the issue. Many refer to it - including in the discussion with Wales - but nobody seems to link to, refer to, or analyse it.
As you can see, it wasn't just a few editors saying, "lol, let's just say it's a genocide." Hundreds of people weighed in on the proposal. They looked at lists of recent sources.
There were previous discussions like this that came to a different conclusion. But as more and more sources started calling it a genocide, Wikipedia editors eventually decided the opening sentence had to be changed.
Because once again, your comparisons just doesn't work.
Wikipedia title for an article that 90% of scholars (WITH academic credentials) agree hamas and palestinians committed genocide on Jews:
"Allegations of genocide in the October 7 attacks"
Wikipedia title for an article that 90% of scholars (who paid 20 euros to be considered scholars, the IAGS) agree Israel committed genocide against Gazans:
"Gaza genocide"
(IAGS does not require academic credentials to be a member, and many members have none)
Here is the link to the page about Hamas' (and random Palestinians) committing genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the...
Note that the scholars alleging Hamas' committed genocide in the October 7 attacks are largely the same as the in the "Gaza genocide" article. In ONE of those articles both genocides are represented ... in the other they aren't (except in the non-user-editable part).
Of course, on the page describing the hamas' genocide, none of the your arguments apply. The various viewpoints are represented (frankly ad nauseam), including arguments by individual scholars denying the genocide. On that page Wikipedia seriously makes the argument that "a massacre with genocidal intent" does not constitute a genocide. On that page scholarly consensus that a genocide occurred is described as "allegations of genocide". It continues like that, with for every scholar mentioned every tiny caveat they put anywhere in their paper repeated. For example that information sources may not be reliable as to intent.
On that page it is extensively mentioned that there are accusations against Israel committing genocide in Gaza, whereas on the "Gaza genocide" page it is not mentioned at all that hamas' committed genocide (except in that consensus is that hamas' definitely committed genocide against Israeli too ... oh and of course, there's the title.
I could keep going, pointing out that even in this article it is not mentioned that hamas' has in fact committed multiple genocides, including against Palestinians (in Al-Shifa hospital, among other places), and that the Palestinian Authority has done so as well, including against Palestinians, Jordans, Lebanese, ...
And no, the UN has called hamas' actions genocide, as I pointed out, are mostly the same people as for the "Gaza genocide".
Israel can kill Palestinians at will with almost no resistance. It can cut off food, water and electricity. It can bomb every hospital in Gaza. It can bomb almost every apartment building. It can destroy every water treatment plant. Etc. Etc. The most Hamas can do is launch a raid a few kilometers into Israel for a few hours, and that's only if the Israeli military isn't paying attention.
There is only one thing holding Israel back: fear of international pressure, in the form of sanctions, boycotts, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_in_the...
Oh, one might even add: there was no need whatsoever to change the definition of genocide to come to that conclusion. There was no need to declare a paid mailing list "academic experts on genocide", just to get "academic experts on genocide" to say something is a genocide. No need for years of propaganda, change laws and definitions after the fact.
Who knew? Just emptying two automatic weapons in a kindergarten classroom, leaving no survivors, because hamas fighters thought they were Jews, that event, just that one incident, is genocide. Along with hundreds of other war crimes that also count. Even if two of those children (the black ones) weren't even Jewish. Raping, killing and torturing women because they're Jewish is genocide.
Is your claim seriously that cutting off electricity is worse, or justifies something like this? Because we all know why people think those victims aren't worth caring about ...
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has nothing to do with Judaism itself, and the Palestinians don't care that the Israelis are Jewish, so I don't know why you keep bringing Jews into this (except to somehow relate it to the Holocaust).
Do you believe Wikipedia should "both sides" the holocaust? Or do you not hold the genocide of Palestinians to the same standard?
Any ongoing genocide will have its deniers, its minimizers, and its apologists. Those people will even persist after the "dust is settled". That doesn't mean an article needs to give the same attention to the beliefs of people who are not experts, who are misled, or who are intentionally dishonest.
I think Wales is full of it - he's giving orders in an official capacity and threatening them with action if they don't comply, and he's brazenly lying about it - a demonstration of power and a threat. Still, I think your comment is more inflammatory than helpful because it doesn't address the core issues, it just throws a rock.
If Jimmy Wales believes there are compelling claims that Israel is not committing genocide, then rather than expressing this as necessary for a NPOV (neutral point of view) he should just admit that this is bias on his part. This doesn't address the consensus among people who actually study genocide that Israel is committing genocide. The UN has announced that Israel has committed genocide. Doctors without Borders, Oxfam, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and the International Association of Genocide scholars have called it genocide.
Siding with the experts is standard for Wikipedia's editorial standards; if it wasn't, the Holocaust article would also seek "neutrality" by using much less decisive language about the validity of that genocide.
This is what makes Wikipedia good.
Don't take my word for it, look up the sources yourself. The formality at least is decent, so you can look up the sources most statements in the article itself are based on.
In that context, I think "neutral tone" can quite safely be read as an euphemism.
There is no good solution to solve this dilemma specifically, good to see that Wales still cares.
The "problem" is that almost all of the sources that Wikipedia typically considers reliable now say that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza. Wikipedia editors discussed the sources ad nauseam and came to this conclusion.
Jimmy Wales wants them to just reverse that decision, regardless of what high-quality sources say. He's saying that Wikipedia should treat denials by various governments as being of equal reliability as academic journal articles studying the issue. So if Marco Rubio goes in front of a microphone and says, "There's no genocide in Gaza," that should be treated as an equally valid source as a dozen academics who study genocide publishing peer-reviewed articles.
Needless to say, what Jimmy Wales is demanding goes against Wikipedia's policies on sourcing and neutrality. "Both sides" is not always neutral.
Wikipedia has been targeted lately as part of a marketing effort for grokipedia.
I recommend taking this as a grain of salt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gaza_genocide#Statement_f...
I continued reading through the talk page and eventually come across this:
> the United States government is exerting serious political pressure on Wikipedia as a whole to reveal the real life identities of many editors here who disagree with the current military actions of the government of Israel.
I have not heard about this before, what specifically is this about, if it's true?
But so what? Is that unlawful in the US somehow today? That sounds absolutely bananas to be honest, aren't people supposed to have "true" freedom of speech, including being allowed to be biased against or for Israel?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-ind...
Of course, you could be pedantic and say 'but freedom of expression isn't freedom of speech' but that would be precisely the kind of thing that continues to perpetrate the myth. A theoretical freedom on some narrow issue does not do much in competition with a much broader actual freedom. And that's the 2024 version, your guess about what the 2025 edition of that index looks like, I'm thinking not nearly as good for the USA. Blackmailing universities for starters.
Is a metalaw restricting the laws Congress can set.
Freedom of speech seems to be commonly regarded as having a far wider scope than it actually does. IANAL.
In war the first casualty is truth.
I always think of what was claimed to happened in video "collateral murder"
Where US killed several people , because a reporters telephoto lens was mistaked of a rocket launcher, when viewed from a few KM away - OR so we are told.
Here is the letter from two US congressmen, requesting information from Wikipedia, including "Records showing identifying and unique characteristics of accounts (such as names, IP addresses, registration dates, user activity logs) for editors subject to actions by [Wikipedia's arbitration committee]": https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/08272...
I've definitely noticed this a lot more lately on Wikipedia where an article will be really quick to label something as "pseudohistory" or "pseudoscience" or likewise in the summary. Sometimes it makes sense, but there are quite a few articles where the difference between "crackpot" theories and acceptable "fringe" areas of study are fairly subjective. Or that someone feels the need to stand up a separate page about "denialism" of a topic where it was largely unnecessary.
And even for actual pseudoscience topics like Flat Earth Theory - the page has so much good information on it. But the summary on the page is terrible and does not even reflect a good summary of the page's own content! Mostly because people feel an unnecessary need to shoehorn in assessments of the myth status of the theory.
> It is a bad faith read of the community when suggesting that among the most read and debated articles on the community is poorly done. there has been dozens of hours of discussion and rfcs galore to reach this version of the article and im certain there will be more. Consensus is always evolving but this article represents the latest consensus.
Seems very reasonable to me.
From the very article itself:
> Others said that Wales did not have control over Wikipedia, and was only an editor like anyone else, but had been “trying to pull an authority-based argument while promoting a book”.
>“I'm not sure Jimbo's plea needs to be entertained much beyond demonstrating that current consensus is something different than what he thinks it should be,” one user said.
Wikipedia editors do not actually consider Jim to be an authority on the matter. They ask him to substantiate his claim that the "Gaza genocide" article is not "neutral" in voice. They don't really seem to care about what he thinks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy
The page is currently only protected until November 4th.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_administrato...
Wikipedia has over 400 active accounts who can turn on article protection. They include such diverse people as current CS professors and someone who wants you to know on their page that soccer is more important than life and death, and a person who's personal page opens with a picture of their feet. In fact, the Jimbo Wales account is not currently an administrator. Jimmy could not have locked the article.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of those accounts spend more time and effort espousing wiki editing philosophy than any other topic.
It seems this happens in many places where the opportunity presents itself. StackOverflow seems to suffer from a similar (not identical) issue.
In Gaza maybe 3% of the population has been killed, partly as a side effect to fighting back against Hamas after they attacked and took hostages.
I guess it depends how you define the terms. Maybe we need some new term for trying to wipe out a people as opposed to causing casualties in war against people who attacked you?
If we look at the following article "Casualties of the Gaza war" [2]. If you read link (108) you see a Guardian article "Revealed: Israeli military’s own data indicates civilian death rate of 83% in Gaza war" [3], which says:
> Fighters named in the Israeli military intelligence database accounted for just 17% of the total, which indicates that 83% of the dead were civilians.
See how the language in the article itself walks back the strong claim. The argument made is that all persons not in the Israeli military intelligence database are automatically civilians. If there was a similar Israeli database of confirmed non-combatants, and this only contained 17% of the people who have died, would this mean that the remaining 83% were military? Of course not. And this all assumes that these databases are actually accurate.
Then we must ask ourselves, how are the number of deaths in total calculated? How do we know that each death is attributed to Israeli actions? How many deaths are due to direct action and secondary action (i.e. illness, dehydration, starvation)?
When we look back at any conflict in history, we see the inflated deaths of civilians, the deflated number of military persons killed - it's propaganda. How much of what we currently see is propaganda?
I think we need to think extremely carefully and consider all possibilities.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gaza_genocide#Statement_f...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20250821135825/https://www.thegu...
> When we look back at any conflict in history, we see the inflated deaths of civilians, the deflated number of military persons killed - it's propaganda.
That's false. In each event, one side tends to inflate claims like civilian deaths and the other tends to minimize them.
I think that my comment left room for this. But I felt it important to offer an opposition to what is the "leading narrative" in the West.
> That's false. In each event, one side tends to inflate claims like civilian deaths and the other tends to minimize them.
I should have been clearer that one side would make such claims, and the opposing side would also make such claims to their benefit. Propaganda has, and always will be, a significant part of war. It reminds me of the 2020-2021 China-India mountain battles [1] where both sides minimised their losses and claimed victory with large losses on the other side.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%...
LOL
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_and_legal_responses_t...
This is literally every LLM that quotes Wikipedia.
The value in Wikipedia is it’s curated. A model is the opposite of that.
As for the topic at hand, it seems nobody agrees on what genocide means anymore, few are willing to accept there is legitimate disagreement, everyone has a unique definition they’re loudly committed to, all of which makes the entire debate self obsessed.
These structured sources of truth have been tried. They don’t work. Natural language allows for ambiguity where necessary in a way code does not.
> If a Wikipedia model first defined rules for a genocide article
It would be worthless. Also, futile. You think when the world’s governments can’t agree on what genocide is, a random editorial decision at Wikipedia will control?
> the goal for Wikipedia is to avoid inconsistency
It’s a goal, but certainly not the goal. Truth isn’t a mathematical schema, particularly when it comes to social constructs like genocide.
It’s useless and futile to this problem.
It could be useful. But as a compliment to Wikipedia. And not in adjudicating something like the definition of genocide.
> should be logically derived
Not really an option for social constructs, which rely on consensus more than logical consistency. You could create LLMs that logically derive an answer from a definition. But that is a semantic punt with extra steps (unless the LLM controls martial forces).