This past March, researchers from the Anti-Defamation League accused Wikipedia of biased coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They found that a group of editors had coordinated to produce thousands of anti-Israel entries, and that the platform’s administration had failed to respond. This is not the first example of biased parties abusing Wikipedia’s editorial policies. A variety of Wiki sections in multiple languages have been subjected to organized “raids” carried out by state propagandists, far-right activists, and even terrorist supporters. Some critics believe that the Web's main encyclopedia needs reforms, such as the introduction of user verification. Others doubt such measures will help, questioning the viability of collective content moderation in the digital age. Meanwhile, Wikipedia is gaining unprecedented influence as a training dataset for major AI language models, and distortions in its content have already affected the responses that the resulting chat tools give.
  • CaptObviousEnglish
    13·
    19 hours ago

    I LOL’d at taking the ADL as a credible source. Any group who tried to spin Musk’s Nazi salute has no business speaking publicly ever again. I hope Wikipedia continues to give them the respect they deserve — none at all.

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    18 hours ago

    This user’s entire history (username included) is spent signal-boosting demonstrably false, bad-faith attacks against Wikipedia. The article’s premise is that the ADL of all organizations is a good arbiter of what is antisemitic when it comes to coverage of Israel’s genocide in Palestine. The article starts with “This past March, researchers from the Anti-Defamation League accused Wikipedia of biased coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

    Newsflash: it isn’t. The ADL consistently treats anyone who dares to challenge Israel’s genocide as antisemitic. This user is a ridiculous troll and should be banned from communities for their transparent, bad-faith agenda. I’m sure if there’s a story worth posting, somebody other than “wikipediasuckscoop” can post it. It’s so transparent that in an age where the Internet is blanketed with far-right disinformation, one of the last remaining bastions of truth that refuses to compromise and bend to said disinformation will come under attack by bad-faith, far-right actors desperately flailing to discredit it.

    I’d like to point out that when the article says “propagandists” (i.e. people opposed to Israel’s genocide) and arbitrarily delineates them from “editors”, what it’s failing to point out (likely because a) its author doesn’t understand shit about fuck or b) its author doesn’t care) is that any article related to a conflict between Israel and Arab countries is extended protected by default (on top of other heavy editing restrictions). This means that it can only be edited 1) on a registered account 2) which is at least 30 days old and 3) which has made at least 500 edits. This isn’t 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 typing “Izreel sux lololol” or even just some random sockpuppet account trying to insert anti-Israel bias. You have to be an experienced editor to make changes to these articles. Every single one of these even remotely controversial public changes is put under a microscope and discussed ad nauseum by other experienced editors on the corresponding talk page – not just to make sure that it’s covered without bias per NPOV but that its claims are suitably backed by reliable, independent sources.