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754 points coloneltcb | 5 comments | | HN request time: 0.716s | source
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jjmarr ◴[] No.43799721[source]
The English Wikipedia is a massive target for influence campaigns. I don't think there are any other communities as resilient as it. Just an example:

There's certain individual or group that edited under the name "Icewhiz", was banned, and now operates endless sockpuppet accounts in the topic area to influence Wikipedia's coverage on the Middle East. One of them was an account named "Eostrix", that spent years making clean uncontroversial edits until one day going for adminship.

Eostrix got 99% approval in their request for adminship. But it didn't matter, because an anonymous individual also spent years pursuing Eostrix, assembling evidence, and this resulted in Eostrix's block just days before they became a Wikipedia administrator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investiga...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Com...

It's a useful contrast to a place like Reddit, where volunteer moderators openly admit to spreading terrorist propaganda or operating fake accounts when their original one gets banned. You don't get to do that on Wikipedia. If you try, someone with far too much time on their hands will catch you because Wikipedia doesn't need to care about Daily Active Users and the community cares about protecting a neutral point of view.

Not denying the existence of influence campaigns. There have been several major pro-Palestinian ones recently, which is probably why this letter has been sent. But the only reason you know about them is because Wikipedia openly fights them instead of covering them up. Most social media websites don't care and would rather you don't bring it to their attention. That is why Reddit banned /r/bannedforbeingjewish.

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1. BrtByte ◴[] No.43802218[source]
Wikipedia isn't immune to influence campaigns - honestly, no open platform is - but the key difference is how seriously the community takes it. The amount of volunteer effort that goes into investigating sockpuppets, enforcing sourcing standards, and maintaining some kind of neutrality is incredible when you step back and think about it.
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2. user3939382 ◴[] No.43802940[source]
Neutrality? I’ve never seen an English language wikipedia article on a politically controversial topic that wasn’t the DC establishment/State Dept official take.

They listed Greyzone as an unreputable new source because it’s pro-Palestinian. When you Google the usernames of those who voted to ban them pro Israeli think tanks from DC come up. Wikipedia is a joke when it comes to politics. If you’re lucky you can find the real contours of an issue by seeing who’s been censored and silenced out of the article on the Talk page.

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3. immibis ◴[] No.43803096[source]
They spent basically two years rejecting the renaming of "Israel-Hamas war" into "Gaza war" (it has now been renamed) even though the full scope of the war was apparent after just a few months. It was very important to maintain the narrative that the only victims were Hamas. They protected the page so you couldn't request a rename without being a verified user.
4. ordu ◴[] No.43804175[source]
> Wikipedia is a joke when it comes to politics.

What isn't a joke when it comes to politics? The only way to be informed about politics I have found is to regularly read news from several different media sites paying careful attention when they talk about the same issue. This way you learn their biases and how to interpret their news articles, you get the ability to guess what really happens, not just their takes on it.

5. dlubarov ◴[] No.43804888[source]
As a long-term editor, this is pretty off base. The discussion [1] that led to Grayzone being deprecated had almost nothing to do with Israel/Palestine. Meanwhile most Israel/Palestine articles are driven by Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, and similar sources, while many Jewish sources (ADL, Jewish Chronicle, NGO Monitor, etc) are banned or restricted.

One example of a heavily debated neutrality issue was the opening paragraph of the Zionism article, which ended up like this. Surely noone would call this remotely pro-Israel? "Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not...