There was an article yesterday about Jimmy Wales commenting on edit wars on the Wikipedia entry for Genocide in Gaza (or similar title). The article didn't indicate his taking one side or the other, but I'd prefer if people didn't use name-recognition to influence such things (yes, even if they take the same side as me because others will do the same in the other direction).
Fwiw, I downloaded a torrent of footage documenting the genocide last year. I don't think it would be considered appropriate for me to link to it here on HN, but I wanted to raise awareness that torrents such as this exist.
I'm also on a torrent full of CDC data that was taken down by the current admin plus a couple of other public-service torrents. You can find stuff like this too. I got mine from a certain federated clone of the R site.
The position Wales was taking was that Wikipedia shouldn't be calling it a genocide in its own voice ("wikivoice"), which means taking a side rather than neutrally documenting the controversy.
Larry Sanger also made a similar statement. The two Wikipedia founders had a falling out back in the day, and it's the first time in a long time that they've publicly agreed on anything.
Neither has any special power on the wiki though. One might hope that both founders pointing out NPOV issues could be a wake-up call to stop interpreting the NPOV policy "creatively" to push an agenda,[3] but realistically nothing seems likely to change.
[3] As an example of "creative workarounds" to Wikipedia's neutrality policy, one of the justifications for renaming "Allegations ..." to "Gaza genocide" was a rather bizarre idea that neutrality doesn't apply to titles since they're "topics", not statements. The statement implied by the new title was then predictably used as one of the justifications for changing the article body to use "genocide" in wikivoice.
Whatever your point of view is, he explains clearly why the article is biased:
> At present, the lede and the overall presentation state, in Wikipedia’s voice, that Israel is committing genocide, although that claim is highly contested. This is a violation of WP:NPOV and WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV that requires immediate correction.
> A neutral approach would begin with a formulation such as: “Multiple governments, NGOs, and legal bodies have described or rejected the characterization of Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.”
>but I'd prefer if people didn't use name-recognition to influence such things
You describe a laradox. If Jimmy Wales didn't say it, you never would have ended up making this comment. And thus attention to the matter that there are even edit wars on Gaza would be suppressed.
We're a social species, so attaching a familiar name or face will always get more attention. You can even observe this on Reddit in how including a person holding the artwork (male or female) instead of the art alone results in more upvotes. so the face doesn't even need a reputation behind it.
Well, was. Your chart ends in 2024. It doesn't cite a source, so I'm curious about when in 2024 that number pulls; start (just a few months into the war) or finish?
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide does not require that perpetrators are successful in reducing the population of the targeted group, only that they "intend to destroy [it], in whole or in part" and take any of five specific categories of action with that intent.
Sorry, but that's super weak logic. That's like saying the KKK are perpetrating a genocide against blacks in the US right now. Or Hamas is perpetrating a genocide against the jews in Israel right now. At some point of failure to execute a plan, it no longer becomes a genocide.
There must be a difference between "genocide" and "attempted genocide" at the very least.
Fwiw, I downloaded a torrent of footage documenting the genocide last year. I don't think it would be considered appropriate for me to link to it here on HN, but I wanted to raise awareness that torrents such as this exist.
I'm also on a torrent full of CDC data that was taken down by the current admin plus a couple of other public-service torrents. You can find stuff like this too. I got mine from a certain federated clone of the R site.