Jump to content

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-03-29/Special report

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost‎ | 2024-03-29

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by HaeB (talk | contribs) at 08:24, 29 March 2024 (note on author's academic affiliations etc). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Signpost
← Back to Contents
View Latest Issue


Special report

A 19-page report accuses Wikipedia of bias against Israel. Is this true?

Contribute  —  
Share this
By sawyer-mcdonell, HaeB and JpxG
Logo of Arabic Wikipedia, showing the Wikipedia "globe" colored to look like the Palestinian flag.
Arabic Wikipedia's logo in solidarity with Palestine has caused controversy

The World Jewish Congress has published a report titled "The Bias Against Israel on Wikipedia", which has been covered by The Jerusalem Post, Jewish News Syndicate, and Spectator Australia (paywalled). The author, Dr. Shlomit Aharoni Lir, is an academic, described in a related recent publication as "a poet, essayist, lecturer, and gender studies scholar [who] holds a research fellowship at Bar-Ilan University and is a lecturer at Achva College." She had previously published a peer-reviewed paper about gender bias on Wikipedia (Signpost coverage). The present report does not seem intended to be an academic publication, although it has already been used as a citation in the article Wikipedia and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

The 19-page report, which focuses on English Wikipedia, "is based on research, content analysis, and interviews with Israeli Wikipedians"; its overview of challenges to Wikipedia's ideals include "The Power of the Admins and Beurocrats" [sic], as well as the gender gap (see Signpost coverage). Their citations on the gender gap include a survey from fourteen years ago saying that Wikipedia editors were mostly male,[1] and a paper from thirteen years ago which compared Wikipedia to Encyclopedia Britannica on coverage of women in historical biography lists and concluded that Wikipedia had "significantly greater coverage" and its articles were "significantly longer than Britannica articles [...] for every source list"[2]. It is somewhat unclear what, if any, relation the gender ratio of biography articles (or indeed of the editoriat) has to Israel and Palestine; while there is indeed a paper from ten years ago [3] that talks in greater depth about lower participation rates for female editors, it's hard to see what the connection is. Indeed, the closest the report comes to making a connection between them is to say:

While this is a brilliant turn of phrase, it is also a fairly broad one, with some fairly broad implications; is the Japanese Wikipedia prima facie untrustworthy because it is edited mostly by Japanese people, or articles on the English Wikipedia written by all-female WikiProjects? It is true that we live in a society, and that the biases of that society pose issues for our attempts to write a encyclopedia that is both neutral and based on direct citations to sources written in that society (a problem apparently endemic to all encyclopedia writers, even our Britannic forebears). This is the subject of much ongoing reflection and work; but it's not clear how it relates to the conflict in Gaza.

The report criticizes Arabic Wikipedia's "blackout" in solidarity with Palestinians (see Signpost coverage), the English Wikipedia's coverage of the Holocaust, and its general "bias against Israel", which they argue is exemplified through content and sourcing bias, "deletion attacks", editing restrictions, "selective enforcement" by administrators, and "anti-Israeli editors".

One of the report's proposals for new features that should be implemented is to "host forums and discussions within the Wikipedia community to address concerns about neutrality and gather feedback for policy improvements"; it is not specified how this would fit into the existing directory of centralized discussions, dashboard, twenty-year-old, project-wide Request for Comment process with fifteen categories, six Village Pumps, and dozen or so noticeboards, including a neutral-point-of-view noticeboard and dispute resolution noticeboard.

Lauren Dickinson of the Wikimedia Foundation's Communications Department told The Signpost that "The Foundation takes allegations of bias on Wikimedia projects seriously, so several staff have reviewed the report. They found that the WJC report makes a number of unsubstantiated claims of bias on Wikipedia. It lacks adequate references, quotes, links, or other sources to support its purported findings. Further, the report misunderstands Wikipedia's NPOV policy, as well as the importance of anonymity for user privacy on Wikimedia projects."

Arbitration Committee grants new editor extended-confirmed status to open case request

Subsequent to the publication of this report, on March 20, the Arbitration Committee announced that a user account created that day with zero edits (Mschwartz1) would be granted extended-confirmed status "for the exclusive purpose of participating in a case request about Israel-Palestine". Extended-confirmed status, generally, is given to accounts with over 500 edits that are at least 30 days old (and is currently a prerequisite for any editing activity in the Israel–Palestine area, formally designated a Contentious Topic).

A long discussion ensued, both at the ArbCom noticeboard and the unmentionable BADSITE, in which it was speculated that this may have been an employee of the organization publishing the report (due to timing that closely aligned with the publishing of the report). Arbitrator Barkeep49 said that it "may or may not be a coincidence", explaining that "I can say the conversation with us that led to this grant has been going on since early February." Limited information has been made available about the nature of the editor, although the rare decision to grant EC status to a zero-edit account on the day of its creation based on private correspondence with the Committee beforehand indicates that there is something unusual about the situation.

It remains uncertain whether this account has any relation to the WJC (or to any lobbying organization); commenters at the talk page for the ArbCom noticeboard have questioned whether this unknown party has standing to request a case be opened, whether a disclosure is required per WP:COI, and other issues. A more comprehensive explanation came from arbitrator Primefac:

Mschwartz1's sole edit (on the 26th) was to add this case request against Nishidani (mistakenly putting it at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee instead of Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case, after which it was closed with instructions on how to post it to the correct board).

As of press time, there seems to be no conclusive evidence either way of who or what this account belongs to, despite many fairly strong opinions being expressed on the talk page;

See also related earlier coverage: "Does Wikipedia's Gaza coverage show an anti-Israel bias?" ("In the media", November 6, 2023) and "WikiProjects Israel and Palestine ("WikiProject Report", January 10, 2024)

– s-m, H and J

+ Add a comment

Discuss this story

These comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try purging the cache.

Individuals be complaining about Wikipedia when Israel is criticized in any way, bruh. The WJC's piece is also poorly researched; they couldn't even look for the history tab? --Firestar464 (talk) 22:52, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can't believe they cited both Tripodi (2021) AND Klein (2023). Now with Lir (2024), we have completed the holy trinity of bad research that fundamentally misunderstands what this website is. Curbon7 (talk) 22:55, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Weirdly, Klein interviewed me for that paper, and the one thing not included was the actual limitations of Wikipedia's structure allowing biased content *without* "moderators" being biased about a topic... (t · c) buidhe 23:01, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Without getting into the weeds, when it comes to 'bias', I sense a pot-kettle scenario with this set of accusations. But keeping this to a dry, technical consideration, we cannot expect to have only editors sans bias, as every editor has bias. Bias can even be thought of as one of many natural motivations for doing the work of editing here. But it's how our policies/guidelines rein these biases in that's key here. We are constantly reminded to find the most balanced way to present a topic, and I posit that the more experience an editor accumulates, the more they are attuned to try to set their biases aside as they write. I surmise that the true underlying complaint, as it were, is that what we call reliable sources are actually becoming less biased in their coverage of Israel (the government, not its people), and that feels like increased bias from the Israeli POV. To wit, the US media used to be hard-biased in Israel's favor, and recently, that has softened (as far as I can tell). And since that's where we source much of our material from, the rest follows. Wikipedia is not exactly detached from the media universe or the global (political) culture, and when those things change, our content is naturally affected to a degree. Any expectation that the Wikipedia find some kind of special detachment seems specious without specific serious proposals that don't violate our editor's privacy rights or make this site too difficult to work on while somehow achieving a less biased result. But what's funny here is a "Wikipedia without any bias" would likely end up being an object lesson of "be careful what you wish for" for those lodging the complaints. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 00:08, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikipedia has some degree of Western, anglophone bias regarding pretty much any topic where that is relevant. (t · c) buidhe 00:25, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Indeed, as it's the English Wikipedia, as much as we try to avoid it via policy/guidelines, our work here is going to reflect some degree of the bias of the vast majority of English speakers. But I posit the complaint is that in this area of concern, the Western bias is perceived as mildly easing toward a more global view. The prior staunch defense of the Israeli government in the media is now less staunch. And we reflect that media. Stefen Towers among the rest! Gab • Gruntwerk 00:34, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    There are three aspects of this: the bias of our sources, of ourselves and of our readers. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:54, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you can't be bothered to run your article through a basic spell checker, why should anyone take you seriously? "Beurocrats", lmao. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:34, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    you scared me with this, as i thought there was another egregious typo i'd have to fix after publication lmao ... sawyer * he/they * talk 00:40, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • The report misunderstands policies and makes vague assertions instead of providing conrete examples of bias. And it's very poorly written, I don't believe this took more than an afternoon or two. --Xacaranda (talk) 00:39, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Another example of being poorly written is the misuse of title case. Alfa-ketosav (talk) 19:00, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Excellent report, on the whole. One little thing, this clause about "... a link to the complete history of every article has been a central element of the top of every Wikipedia page since the year 2002" is not quite right. Last week a troll made a threat of sexual violence in Wikimedia Commons against a respected Admin. I undid the edit, and soon another Admin wiped out all record that I could see of the event. This was entirely the right thing to do in this case, and has been occasionally done, not just in Commons personal Talk Pages but in WP articles. So, we ought not imply that it never happens. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:40, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    good point! i've added that detail :) ... sawyer * he/they * talk 00:46, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    And I've tweaked it further. Graham87 (talk) 10:38, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "strong opinions being expressed on the talk page" Which talk page? Please include a link. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:09, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    the talk page discussion was linked earlier in the report at A long discussion ensued, but i've reworded it a bit for clarity ... sawyer * he/they * talk 19:50, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • WJC perceives an anti-Israeli bias seems like a bit of a duh conclusion, although the report itself is impressively poorly researched. AryKun (talk) 15:21, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not buying it. I've been accused on-wiki of being biased against Israel for creating Palestinian law, and off-wiki and publicly doxxed (actually getting into a shouting match on the NYC Transit Subway and being trolled on "X", formerly known as Twitter) for being biased against Palestine. Our coverage is fair. Bearian (talk) 15:52, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    And they wonder why we don't want to force editors working on our most controversial articles to doxx themselves. AryKun (talk) 16:06, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If your goal is neutrality, and partisans on both sides scream that you're biased, that's a strong indicator that you're doing a fine job. Seraphimblade Talk to me 00:13, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just stopping by to say I really appreciated this Signpost report, and in particular the writeup from JPxG. It made for interesting reading, noting both the things Wikipedia does well and the areas where we don't, and was impressively detailed. Nice job. --Yamla (talk) 11:32, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I liked the part about how they based their conclusions in part on, "interviews with Israeli Wikipedians". Someone needs to introduce this 'researcher' to the concept of Selection bias. --21:09, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
  • WJC will just not stop falling off, will they. Orchastrattor (talk) 05:52, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Anti-Israel & anti-Jew bias is far from the biggest problem on Wikipedia. There is far more pro western chauvinist, pro US-government bias than there is anti-Jewish bias. But hey, if this is the story that brings Wikipedia criticism into the mainstream, so be it. Philomathes2357 (talk) 19:39, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    WP-critisism isn't mainstream? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:27, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I very rarely hear serious, sustained criticism of Wikipedia in the mainstream. All books on the topic that I am aware of are self-published, and Wikipedia is almost never mentioned when people discuss bias and propaganda in English-language media. Philomathes2357 (talk) 15:47, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You can start at Wikipedia:Press coverage 2001 and advance from there. All of it is not mainstream or critisism, but you should be able to find some. "Serious" is eye of the beholder of course. That WP is user generated and has errors should be fairly sustained in critisism. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:36, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You may or may not find the work of these people interesting: Category:Wikipedia beat reporters. This book [1] isn't self-published, but if it is serious is another matter. Some article talkpages has a template that lists media coverage, like Talk:Warsaw concentration camp and Talk:Recession, perhaps you can find something serious and mainstream in those. The Signpost has been known to include a "Recent research" page. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:44, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wait until the ADL follows suit and calls Wikipedians antisemitic for calling the Nakba ethnic cleansing by citing more than a dozen scholars. Literally, at this point I don't trust people who claim there's an "anti-Israel bias" in virtually anything. You do war crimes, you get talked about. GeraldWL 04:07, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]


Explore Wikipedia history by browsing The Signpost archives.
  1. ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20100414165445/http://wikipediasurvey.org/docs/Wikipedia_Overview_15March2010-FINAL.pdf
  2. ^ https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/777
  3. ^ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2014.957711?needAccess=true
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2024-03-29/Special_report&oldid=1216136240"