Excellent reporting. We need more insights like this into Wikimedia's/Wikipedia's political decisions. They have power and power needs to be scrutinized.
Isn’t that obvious ? “The hamas-run health ministry is reporting 40,000 deaths” is a not-so-subtle way make the number questionable…
But some will say mentioning hamas is fair, because it is factually true that it runs the government.
No wording is neutral… all newspapers have style guides and guidelines and “elements of language”, the NYT ones for the US-funded destruction of Palestine leaked not so long ago, the ones for Israel counter-terrorism operations by Wikipedia is in the article… (see, no wording is neutral, I guess everyone hates me now )
Bad, hamas is the official governing entity of Gaza, and not allowing to specify that is deliberate obfuscation to paint a legitimate picture of what is basically globally recognized terrorist organization claims.
Globally ? Nope … “by western governments and a few others” is more accurate ( most liberation movements are called terrorist at some point, most French called their internal resistance in WWII terrorists, only to use the same word for groups who fought France in their decolonization (Viet-Minh, FLN)
Terrorism is not even defined in international laws ; the more generic notion is war crime is used.
( not that lexical discussions change much for the civilians of any side who lose their lifes … )
Should all articles about Israel's government call it "Netanyahu-led government"? Should every mention of Israeli settlements be qualified as "supported by Ben-Gvir"?
These are factually correct, but using these as qualifiers is clearly trying to make a point that belongs with journalism or politics, not something that's supposed to be factual and bland, like Wikipedia.
It doesn't sound like there is any ban at all in describing the "government" in Gaza and Hamas' involvement in it.
Well yeah, context matters. When Ben gvir or smotritch say one of their extremely stupid things, if you label it as “Israel says” it will be very disingenuous addressing their opinion as the official opinion of the state.
And in the case of Gaza health administration, calling it without mentioning Hamas does the exact opposite, removing important context. And is especially egregious since they never mention how many combatants killed, which makes readers assume that all deaths are civilians (as Gaza health administration is a civilian body).
Think of it like these 2 sentences-
Hospital says 10 people killed.
Military hospital says 10 people killed.
Both will be correct, but omission of context makes you assume different outcomes
I think in an encyclopedia, the distinction you make should in fact be blurred. If there is an article about West Bank settlers' poor health, say, I don't want to mix in politics and Palestine-Israel conflict. It is irrelevant who in the government champions settlements, or that they are widely considered illegal. If numbers come from biased sources, you mention that directly.
Referring to Gaza institutions in general as Hamas-lead is adding implicit context - it says "according to Hamas and it's questionable". An encyclopedia should use the latter language. Also it's not like every single thing coming out of Gaza is untrue, just because Hamas is there.
Just like it shouldn't say flat earthers are crazy, people who speed are assholes, or which color is the best.
Gaza Health is a Government body, the Government is Hamas, and no independant figures are available due to Netanyahu-led government locking out observers and delibrately targeting journalists within.
I dunno, the problem with processes is that they still get it wrong sometimes. But absent any sort of process all you get is trash. Wikipedia has managed to maintain a certain credibility in the world largely due to these democratic processes. Do the processes fail sometimes, sure. But I'll take this over 4chan any day.
In the meantime, the only government-like structure left in Gaza is Hamas, and so if you say the Gaza Health Ministry, anyone who knows what's going on, understands that Gaza is run by Hamas, which makes the reporting super dubious, AND clearly Hamas-run. So I think for most people, it is super redundant to use it every time it's referenced. Once at the top of an article as a quick reminder, sure. But to insist that the name of the organization is the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which is a ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza government, that's foolish and only useful for folks with a specific agenda.
> In the meantime, the only government-like structure left in Gaza is Hamas, and so if you say the Gaza Health Ministry, anyone who knows what's going on, understands that Gaza is run by Hamas, which makes the reporting super dubious, AND clearly Hamas-run.
And that's exactly the reason why you need to label it: most people reading English language media like Wikipedia aren't going to make that kind of mental correction. That's only the kind of thing someone who is both already knowledgeable and reading in a guarded way would do.
Is this just for article where Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) is mentioned, e.g., an article about a particular fight that says something like "The Gaza Health Ministry reports 241 casualties", or does this also apply to articles about GHM?
If it is just for articles that mention GHM but are not about GHM then it seems reasonable. The text "Gaza Health Ministry" in those articles should link to the GHM article and people can click that if they want to find out more about GHM including who controls it.
In general this seems like it would be a reasonable policy for pretty much any organization or person that has a Wikipedia page. When an organization or person is mentioned on another page it should only need qualification if the qualifier is the reason it is being mentioned.
And this over an article that gets on average 200 pageviews a day... I run my own wiki project and this sorta political bike-shedding would get you labeled as a troublemaker and then thrown out, though I envy how wikipedia can survive with this kinda democratization where the inmates are running the asylum and it mostly performs flawlessly. I step away for a day and my inmates have regressed to speaking in wingdings and trying to eat the moderators.
Aaron Bandler of Jewish Journal also wrote many articles criticizing Wikipedia's antisemitic problems in the wake of October 7 attacks too. Not to mention "The Wikipedia Flood" blog which is posting more reports on Wikipedia.
> A lot of critical coverages against Wikipedia have indeed appeared lately.
Which is good, because irrespective of any particular political controversy, Wikipedia has way more goodwill than it deserves. People should look at it way, way more critically, and stop with the hagiographic praise.
Completely agree. In the long term though it's not surprising if the US Congress eventually set up a special committee to open investigations against Wikipedia and possibly other websites, because as can be seen below, some Wikipedia admins have been implicated in serial harassments against women and even actual employees of the USG.
23 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 69.0 ms ] threadTerrorism is not even defined in international laws ; the more generic notion is war crime is used. ( not that lexical discussions change much for the civilians of any side who lose their lifes … )
These are factually correct, but using these as qualifiers is clearly trying to make a point that belongs with journalism or politics, not something that's supposed to be factual and bland, like Wikipedia.
It doesn't sound like there is any ban at all in describing the "government" in Gaza and Hamas' involvement in it.
And in the case of Gaza health administration, calling it without mentioning Hamas does the exact opposite, removing important context. And is especially egregious since they never mention how many combatants killed, which makes readers assume that all deaths are civilians (as Gaza health administration is a civilian body).
Think of it like these 2 sentences- Hospital says 10 people killed.
Military hospital says 10 people killed.
Both will be correct, but omission of context makes you assume different outcomes
Referring to Gaza institutions in general as Hamas-lead is adding implicit context - it says "according to Hamas and it's questionable". An encyclopedia should use the latter language. Also it's not like every single thing coming out of Gaza is untrue, just because Hamas is there.
Just like it shouldn't say flat earthers are crazy, people who speed are assholes, or which color is the best.
Gaza Health is a Government body, the Government is Hamas, and no independant figures are available due to Netanyahu-led government locking out observers and delibrately targeting journalists within.
https://cpj.org/2024/10/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-...
That seems fair.
In the meantime, the only government-like structure left in Gaza is Hamas, and so if you say the Gaza Health Ministry, anyone who knows what's going on, understands that Gaza is run by Hamas, which makes the reporting super dubious, AND clearly Hamas-run. So I think for most people, it is super redundant to use it every time it's referenced. Once at the top of an article as a quick reminder, sure. But to insist that the name of the organization is the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which is a ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza government, that's foolish and only useful for folks with a specific agenda.
And that's exactly the reason why you need to label it: most people reading English language media like Wikipedia aren't going to make that kind of mental correction. That's only the kind of thing someone who is both already knowledgeable and reading in a guarded way would do.
It seems more like whitewashing the numbers for ill informed people
If it is just for articles that mention GHM but are not about GHM then it seems reasonable. The text "Gaza Health Ministry" in those articles should link to the GHM article and people can click that if they want to find out more about GHM including who controls it.
In general this seems like it would be a reasonable policy for pretty much any organization or person that has a Wikipedia page. When an organization or person is mentioned on another page it should only need qualification if the qualifier is the reason it is being mentioned.
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/29/1114599942/wikipedia-recessio...
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4703442
https://dawnmena.org/saudi-arabia-government-agents-infiltra...
https://forward.com/opinion/550600/wikipedia-holocaust-disin...
https://slate.com/technology/2023/12/wikipedia-road-highway-...
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202401124365
https://theconversation.com/wikipedias-volunteer-editors-are...
https://harpers.org/archive/2023/12/the-hofmann-wobble-wikip...
https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wik...
Aaron Bandler of Jewish Journal also wrote many articles criticizing Wikipedia's antisemitic problems in the wake of October 7 attacks too. Not to mention "The Wikipedia Flood" blog which is posting more reports on Wikipedia.
Which is good, because irrespective of any particular political controversy, Wikipedia has way more goodwill than it deserves. People should look at it way, way more critically, and stop with the hagiographic praise.
https://www.reddit.com/r/justwikipediathings/wiki/index
Another addition. Was Retweeted by Elon so I guess it's going to put pressure on Wikpedia but we'll see.