Wikipedia row erupts as Jimmy Wales intervenes on 'Gaza genocide' page

>Also not true and something you just made up.

Oct 7.

The rest of your post is similarly utterly wrong.

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?

To quote wikipedia (feels appropriate in regards to this comment).

"The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas[a] (an acronym from the Arabic: حركة المقاومة الإسلامية, romanized: Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah),[29][b]"

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.