Wikipedia row erupts as Jimmy Wales intervenes on 'Gaza genocide' page

> he just commented on the article's discussion page that it should have a more neutral tone

He also said it in a '"high profile media interview about the article'.

I think that goes without saying. The real question is what's the line between neutrality and letting a vocal minority dictate editorial decisions? Especially when the vocal minority has biased incentives towards making those changes.

> Another editor responded: “There's also an ‘ongoing controversy’ over whether mRNA vaccines cause ‘turbo cancer’ and whether [Donald] Trump actually won the 2020 Presidential election. Do you want us to be [bold] and go edit those articles as well?”

Nope, what makes Wikipedia good is that you can trust a majority of it. Let's not downgrade "Gaza Genocide", to "Killings in Gaza" just to please the perpetrators of said genocide. All the experts agree on the nature of what is happening there, the current wording of this page has been carefully weighted and debated against the evidence. If you have solid arguments, advance them on the discussion page of the article, as anyone is welcome to.

Go read the Grokipedia article about the Gaza genocide if you want a laugh. The first sentence is 83 words with multiple nested clauses. It's gibberish.

Also feel like Wikipedia was never the go to platform for unfolding situations.

Thank you for sharing that, turns out to be a lot more measured and balanced than the news article makes it out to be. Damn media always fueling the fires rather than spreading understanding and clarify. I think both sides seems to be raising good points, and probably the truth and more balanced view sits in the middle.

I continued reading through the talk page and eventually come across this:

> the United States government is exerting serious political pressure on Wikipedia as a whole to reveal the real life identities of many editors here who disagree with the current military actions of the government of Israel.

I have not heard about this before, what specifically is this about, if it's true?

Reading the discussion, this appears to be an instance of the system working as intended. People are discussing Jimbo's message and weighing his position against the position of previous editors of the article, and they are weighing the merits and adherence to Wikipedia policy of each.

> 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. It should go without saying that I am writing this in my personal capacity, and I am not speaking on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation or anyone else!

I've definitely noticed this a lot more lately on Wikipedia where an article will be really quick to label something as "pseudohistory" or "pseudoscience" or likewise in the summary. Sometimes it makes sense, but there are quite a few articles where the difference between "crackpot" theories and acceptable "fringe" areas of study are fairly subjective. Or that someone feels the need to stand up a separate page about "denialism" of a topic where it was largely unnecessary.

And even for actual pseudoscience topics like Flat Earth Theory - the page has so much good information on it. But the summary on the page is terrible and does not even reflect a good summary of the page's own content! Mostly because people feel an unnecessary need to shoehorn in assessments of the myth status of the theory.

The money is going into an endowment, not funding random political activities. The point of an endowment is to eventually have enough money to live off of the interest forever (which is tough if the organization like Wikimedia keeps growing).

They actually make more money every year from the interest on their endowment than they do from donations at this point.

(All the more argument that they should be knocking off the massive nags though)

Do you have a source for those allegations about their funding?

Ultimately it's a numbers game, and editors with an anti-Israeli agenda have the numbers. Jimbo's post reads as if he's encouraging chances so that the article adheres to NPOV, but I think he understands that's rather futile, and is really just trying to draw attention so that more readers will be aware of Wikipedia's biases.

When I look through those Wikipedia talk pages what always strikes me is that it is as if a whole raft of not-so-smart people have finally found something they can be experts on. These then use their own developed lingo and the fact that they have more time and expertise about WP than their usually smarter and better informed subject expert counter party to bludgeon them with all kinds of mumbo-jimbo to the point of abandoning the issue altogether. The really sad thing is that this still produces an encylopedia that is better than anything that you could have paid money for.

Per Wiki's own article, there are many countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide#/media/File:Inte...) that disagree with the genocide distinction. Those countries are not just the US - they are large and small nations from all parts of the world. Is that not the definition of highly contested?

> I say "it's only highly contested by Israel".

There seems to be a few governments, not just Israel, that doesn't consider it a genocide. As far as I can tell, most governments, especially western ones, do consider it a genocide at this point though.

But the mere fact that it's contested probably means Wikipedia shouldn't posit one of the positions as true, even though I personally believe it to be a genocide too.

It is mentioned in the article, but buried pretty deep:

> The Israeli government ... denying that their military operations constitute genocide.

You have to scroll pretty far to find it.

I think Jimbo is saying, NPOV would have that assertion much higher, even in the lede.

Exactly. There's another 20th century genocide that is "highly contested" in specific odious circles, but there's no reason to present that opposing viewpoint in an encyclopedic treatment of it, given mounds of evidence of intent and outcomes for both.

Highly contested by the people committing the genocide, while Jewish figures from across the world are calling for Israel to be sanctioned [1]

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/22/jewish-notable...

"Highly contested" but not by genocide scholars or international law bodies.

Every genocide is contested by the people doing it and its apologists. Let's imagine someone commented on the holocaust wikipedia page:

> I assume good faith of everyone who has worked on this Holocaust "genocide" article. At present, the lede and the overall presentation state, in Wikipedia’s voice, that Nazi Germany committed genocide, although that claim is highly contested.

This would rightly trigger a lot of outrage. Yes, it's also accurate to say that it's "highly contested". Honestly this really highlights issues with striving for "neutrality", when there is bias in the people defining what neutrality is.

Your comment goes against HN Guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . That's it.