From the headline, one might assume he directly edited or locked the page when he just commented on the article's discussion page that it should have a more neutral tone.
That understates the situation significantly. Wales posted a long comment under the headline,
Statement from Jimbo Wales: This message is from me, Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia
That's not just another comment; it's an official statement from the most powerful person on Wikipedia.
Wales goes on to say, "As many of you will know, I have been leading an NPOV working group and studying the issue of neutrality in Wikipedia across many articles and topic areas including “Zionism”. While this article is a particularly egregious example, there is much more work to do."
In other words, an official body is watching and studying what you are doing, and policy actions may follow.
Finally, Wales does not accept any possibility that other points of view besides his own may be valid - not addressing many prior discussions. His belief is an assumed premise, and he demands ('asks') people to take actions on the basis of his beliefs. If you read the discussion, he continues that position.
That doesn't make Wales wrong or right, but he didn't 'just comment ... that it should have a more neutral tone.'.
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?
The page represents the consensus view among academics who study genocide, including the leading Israeli academics who study the subject.
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.
> There was a very long process of discussion and debate on the talk page
Could you link to it? It's seems key to the issue. Many refer to it - including in the discussion with Wales - but nobody seems to link to, refer to, or analyse it.
As you can see, it wasn't just a few editors saying, "lol, let's just say it's a genocide." Hundreds of people weighed in on the proposal. They looked at lists of recent sources.
There were previous discussions like this that came to a different conclusion. But as more and more sources started calling it a genocide, Wikipedia editors eventually decided the opening sentence had to be changed.
My complaint was not at all about the first sentence but about the total absense in the entire article of any alternative viewpoint, or even references to the conflict or the totally different treatment of scholarly consensus (because there is a scholarly consensus that hamas committed genocide too, in fact, there is consensus about multiple hamas genocides, and about many genocides committed by other palestinian factions including the PA). And as I pointed out even the beginning of the conflict, Hamas' attack, which is a genocide without any discussion about it, is barely mentioned at all, and only as an "attack".
Because once again, your comparisons just doesn't work.
Wikipedia title for an article that 90% of scholars (WITH academic credentials) agree hamas and palestinians committed genocide on Jews:
"Allegations of genocide in the October 7 attacks"
Wikipedia title for an article that 90% of scholars (who paid 20 euros to be considered scholars, the IAGS) agree Israel committed genocide against Gazans:
"Gaza genocide"
(IAGS does not require academic credentials to be a member, and many members have none)
Note that the scholars alleging Hamas' committed genocide in the October 7 attacks are largely the same as the in the "Gaza genocide" article. In ONE of those articles both genocides are represented ... in the other they aren't (except in the non-user-editable part).
Of course, on the page describing the hamas' genocide, none of the your arguments apply. The various viewpoints are represented (frankly ad nauseam), including arguments by individual scholars denying the genocide. On that page Wikipedia seriously makes the argument that "a massacre with genocidal intent" does not constitute a genocide. On that page scholarly consensus that a genocide occurred is described as "allegations of genocide". It continues like that, with for every scholar mentioned every tiny caveat they put anywhere in their paper repeated. For example that information sources may not be reliable as to intent.
On that page it is extensively mentioned that there are accusations against Israel committing genocide in Gaza, whereas on the "Gaza genocide" page it is not mentioned at all that hamas' committed genocide (except in that consensus is that hamas' definitely committed genocide against Israeli too ... oh and of course, there's the title.
I could keep going, pointing out that even in this article it is not mentioned that hamas' has in fact committed multiple genocides, including against Palestinians (in Al-Shifa hospital, among other places), and that the Palestinian Authority has done so as well, including against Palestinians, Jordans, Lebanese, ...
You really need someone to explain to you why the systematic destruction of all of Gaza, murder of tens of thousands of civilians, and intentional blockade of food, water and electricity by Israel, a country with overwhelming military superiority over the Palestinians, is viewed as a genocide, while the Hamas raid on Israel on October 7th, 2023 isn't? There are some people - primarily Israeli propagandists trying to distract from Gaza - who have called the latter a genocide, but the former is being called a genocide by huge numbers of scholars of genocide and human rights organizations.
You really need someone to explain to you why "if your group is 'weak' you get to commit genocide without punishment" is an incredibly, incredibly bad principle?
And no, the UN has called hamas' actions genocide, as I pointed out, are mostly the same people as for the "Gaza genocide".
If your group is weak, it's impossible for you to commit genocide. The idea that Hamas would ever be able to commit genocide against the Israelis is absurd. The reason why Israel is able to commit genocide against the Palestinians is because it has overwhelming military dominance.
Israel can kill Palestinians at will with almost no resistance. It can cut off food, water and electricity. It can bomb every hospital in Gaza. It can bomb almost every apartment building. It can destroy every water treatment plant. Etc. Etc. The most Hamas can do is launch a raid a few kilometers into Israel for a few hours, and that's only if the Israeli military isn't paying attention.
There is only one thing holding Israel back: fear of international pressure, in the form of sanctions, boycotts, etc.
Oh, one might even add: there was no need whatsoever to change the definition of genocide to come to that conclusion. There was no need to declare a paid mailing list "academic experts on genocide", just to get "academic experts on genocide" to say something is a genocide. No need for years of propaganda, change laws and definitions after the fact.
Who knew? Just emptying two automatic weapons in a kindergarten classroom, leaving no survivors, because hamas fighters thought they were Jews, that event, just that one incident, is genocide. Along with hundreds of other war crimes that also count. Even if two of those children (the black ones) weren't even Jewish. Raping, killing and torturing women because they're Jewish is genocide.
Is your claim seriously that cutting off electricity is worse, or justifies something like this? Because we all know why people think those victims aren't worth caring about ...
The IDF has killed more babies alone than the total number of Israelis killed on October 7th.
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has nothing to do with Judaism itself, and the Palestinians don't care that the Israelis are Jewish, so I don't know why you keep bringing Jews into this (except to somehow relate it to the Holocaust).
And when you go to the page about the Holocaust, it doesn't mentioned alternative opinions either, and barely mentions that holocaust denial is a thing (instead, "Holocaust denial" has its own article)
Do you believe Wikipedia should "both sides" the holocaust? Or do you not hold the genocide of Palestinians to the same standard?
Any ongoing genocide will have its deniers, its minimizers, and its apologists. Those people will even persist after the "dust is settled". That doesn't mean an article needs to give the same attention to the beliefs of people who are not experts, who are misled, or who are intentionally dishonest.
That becomes circular: if it's a genocide then deniers shouldn't be given much weight. It also doesn't address the other core issue: How does Wikipedia handle controversial issues?
I think Wales is full of it - he's giving orders in an official capacity and threatening them with action if they don't comply, and he's brazenly lying about it - a demonstration of power and a threat. Still, I think your comment is more inflammatory than helpful because it doesn't address the core issues, it just throws a rock.
I'm pointing out the absurdity of saying an article lacks "balance", or claiming "neutrality" lies somewhere between "there is a genocide" and "there is no genocide"
If Jimmy Wales believes there are compelling claims that Israel is not committing genocide, then rather than expressing this as necessary for a NPOV (neutral point of view) he should just admit that this is bias on his part. This doesn't address the consensus among people who actually study genocide that Israel is committing genocide. The UN has announced that Israel has committed genocide. Doctors without Borders, Oxfam, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and the International Association of Genocide scholars have called it genocide.
Siding with the experts is standard for Wikipedia's editorial standards; if it wasn't, the Holocaust article would also seek "neutrality" by using much less decisive language about the validity of that genocide.
Back in the days of the Bell System, the upper management at AT&T believed that it was going to be circuit-switched forever, even as Bell Labs was building packet-switched audio networks and it was becoming clear that packet-switching was a vastly more efficient solution to moving large amounts of mixed data around at a time. The development of efficient switching networks [0] was fundamentally resulting in continually building bigger networks that took up more space -- it was the Strowger step-by-step problem all over again. Moving to a packet-switched system meant that you could have an infinite number of "circuits" so long as you kept track of the paths taken.
But even as AT&T Long Lines implemented this, upper AT&T management was firm that the fundamental design of the network was not to shuffle packets around but instead to connect point A and point B with services on either end for the subscriber.
Even when they did eventually try to accept the packet-switched system, ISDN was too big and bulky, too slow for anything practical, and by the time it was useful, Ethernet/IP came along and ate its lunch.
Jobs sticking to his guns here and breaking the shitware monopoly on pre-installed phones is probably a bigger part of the full story than the phone itself (as likely the black rectangle would be developed by someone eventually, phone carcinization).
Surely making deals with companies like Apple and Mozilla to be the default search engine was a big part of building that market share. How many iPhone users bother to set a different search engine in Safari?
Do you use iCloud Private Relay? YouTube gives that message and Google requires a CAPTCHA for web searches very often when iCloud Private Relay is enabled.
