Quote from him:
I assume good faith of everyone who has worked on this Gaza “genocide” article. At present, the lede and the overall presentation state, in Wikipedia’s voice, that Israel is committing genocide, although that claim is highly contested.
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.”
Respect for Jimmy Wales 📉📉
I don’t think it’s the place of Wikipedia to put together the UN’s opinion and the UK’s opinion (to take two examples) and conclude that the UN’s can be stated as fact while the UK’s can’t.
I agree that the UN’s is correct, but it makes Wikipedia worse, not better, to ignore disagreement on important subjects.
Do you take the same broad-minded approach to Holocaust denial? Vaccine misinformation? Intelligent design?
I take the same approach, yes: where there is well-established consensus, Wikipedia should state that as fact. Where there is disagreement with the consensus, it should be noted proportionately.
But there is no lack of consensus on the things you mention.
The genocide of Gazans is in the same place: a few ideologically-motivated crazies arguing for the side that is obviously both factually and morally bankrupt.
I agree it’s ideologically motivated, but that doesn’t affect the fact that there’s a lack of consensus. There are serious governments and academics and commentators who disagree.
Probably in time they will see the truth but that’s not for Wikipedia to predict.
No there isn’t. All the arguments rely on genocide denial and ignoring repeated, clear statements of intent by Israeli government officials, soldiers, MP’s and citizens, whilst clearly having a clear bias towards exaggeration when it concerns claims about acts committed by Palestinians.
That’s just repeating the claim that they’re ideologically motivated.
Western governments, sans the US, are serious governments.
Because they are, as well as materially motivated.
As opposed to every government that is non-western, which are by definition non-serious???
What denotes serious vs non-serious government worthy of weight? Why would you not merely look at the evidence, and make determinations independent of the will of any particular government? Why would being “serious” mean they’re not materially or ideologically motivated? Why would the US under Biden be more serious when Biden repeated the false claim of beheaded babies? Why would Starmer, who declared Israel had the right to withhold power and water, be any more serious? Why would any of these countries that have smeared Palestinian advocates as anti-semites and introduced laws to crack down on even peaceful protests be “serious” and worth weighing in their view of what constitutes genocide as if they are neutral observers, not guilty co-conspirators?
So if you’re just repeating the claim, there is no point. Say something new?
So the statements of the Israeli government would not have much weight in this, as they have obvious incentive to lie. The government of Russia should not have much weight, because it wants to whitewash its war crimes in Ukraine. The government of the US should not have much weight, because it has been eviscerated of everyone of any intellectual capacity.
They are not neutral observers, but (some of them) make serious statements and are capable of responding to facts even when it concerns an ally. We don’t see that with the US. We do see it with the UK, so even though it is not neutral, it forms part of the lack of consensus.
Going on the basis of consensus means that sometimes Wikipedia will not state as fact something that is a fact. And that’s fine. It’s better than the alternative.