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

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

#51

Post by jacquesm »

embedding-shape wrote: post #26
nsp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a congressional inquiry, the claim is that the editors are biased against Israel. https://www.commondreams.org/news/house-gop-investigates-wik...

> the editors are biased against Israel 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?

What is really absolutely bananas is to continue to believe that United States has true freedom of speech. There are so many limitations and exceptions that the USA scores worse than Europe where they don't have such a thing enshrined in their constitution (in so far as they have a constitution to begin with):

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.

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

#53

Post by lgvln »

It should be said that he is not advocating for a “we need to hear both sides” sort of disingenuous argument common among right wing rhetoric but a sense of balanced intellectual humility (even if I believe the behavior and evidence strongly supports the view that Israel is aiming for something akin to genocide) - whether this is a hill he (Wales) should dying on is also another matter.

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

#54

Post by [deleted] »

angelgonzales wrote: post #15
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if Wikipedia was based off rules and if fundamental articles were dependencies to more complex downstream articles I think people would have more respect the site 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 th…

I don’t think you’re entertaining the idea sufficiently considering you’ve stated that it’s a worthless and futile idea. I think it’s a worthwhile and valuable idea. Rules-derived articles with logical dependencies could hold a mirror to our own biases. I think truth should be logically derived and I don’t want people to be hostile to the outcomes since we’re approaching a future where technology will be able to do t…

[deleted]

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

#55

Post by jacquesm »

mrguyorama wrote: post #34

Jimmy Wales does what? 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. Wikipedi…

When I look through those Wikipedia talk pages what always strikes me is that it is as if a whole raft of not-so-smart people have finally found something they can be experts on. These then use their own developed lingo and the fact that they have more time and expertise about WP than their usually smarter and better informed subject expert counter party to bludgeon them with all kinds of mumbo-jimbo to the point of abandoning the issue altogether. The really sad thing is that this still produces an encylopedia that is better than anything that you could have paid money for.

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

#57

Post by viccis »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #36
viccis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was referring to the Armenian genocide, whose primary perpetrator refuses to acknowledge it, with the support of Western governments.

But the Holocaust is more ironic in this case. Here's another one: Holodomor is also contested in many places - only 34 countries recognize it. Crazy world.

Holodomor's an interesting example because unlike the Armenian genocide, Holocaust, or genocide in Gaza, there's no explicit evidence of it being intentional, despite mounds and mounds of evidence of Soviet atrocities that were released over the past century. In the cause of the genocide in Gaza, when you take the statements of those in leadership such as Ben-Gvir, you have clearly articulate plans to eradicate an entire people followed by indiscriminate killing and engineered starvation. In the case of the Holodomor, there's no such articulated plans to eradicate a people, which is why its Wikipedia article has an entire top level heading called "Holodomor genocide question." In the case of Gaza, there are enough explicit quotes of intent that it seems far closer to Armenian genocide denial, which is to say that it's only "questioned" by its perpetrator and allies with a vested interest in placating the perpetrator.

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

#58

Post by JumpCrisscross »

angelgonzales wrote: post #15
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if Wikipedia was based off rules and if fundamental articles were dependencies to more complex downstream articles I think people would have more respect the site 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 th…

I don’t think you’re entertaining the idea sufficiently considering you’ve stated that it’s a worthless and futile idea. I think it’s a worthwhile and valuable idea. Rules-derived articles with logical dependencies could hold a mirror to our own biases. I think truth should be logically derived and I don’t want people to be hostile to the outcomes since we’re approaching a future where technology will be able to do t…

> don’t think you’re entertaining the idea sufficiently considering you’ve stated that it’s a worthless and futile idea

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).

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

#59

Post by pcthrowaway »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #8

[flagged]

"Highly contested" but not by genocide scholars or international law bodies.

Every genocide is contested by the people doing it and its apologists. Let's imagine someone commented on the holocaust wikipedia page:

> I assume good faith of everyone who has worked on this Holocaust "genocide" article. At present, the lede and the overall presentation state, in Wikipedia’s voice, that Nazi Germany committed genocide, although that claim is highly contested.

This would rightly trigger a lot of outrage. Yes, it's also accurate to say that it's "highly contested". Honestly this really highlights issues with striving for "neutrality", when there is bias in the people defining what neutrality is.

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

#60

Post by bArray »

I mostly agree with Jimmy's statement [1] which is far more neutral than this article. I have concerns, though. It is difficult to find good sources without a large political bent.

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...

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