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 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.
So if you’re not going to say anything of substance, there is no point. Say something that doesn’t waste peoples time?
Good to know we’ve dealt with all 3 governments.
Somehow you’ve managed to be both inane and absurd. We can’t state facts because there’s no consensus, there’s no consensus because there are material and idealogical incentives to deny facts, so therefore liars and and co-conspirators get to pre-empt statements of fact, and this is better than the alternative to stating facts, because it might offend those who want to deny them. And the basis of this allowance of self censorship for alignment with the guilty is that some are “serious”, and they are “serious” entirely because they are “capable of responding to facts even when it concerns an ally”. This is despite the UK (a “serious” country) being directly complicit, having hidden its own legal advice on the sale of arms to Israel, having been in near lockstep with the US on policy, having declared Israel “does have that right” to deny power and water to Palestinians as collective punishment, having cracked down on domestic protests and made Palestine Action a proscribed organisation for mere trespassing and maybe criminal damage (of spraying paint on a plane), I could go on.
If you are not able to extrapolate, I’m not going to give an opinion on all ~200 governments in the world, or any significant fraction of them.
Fundamental error. Wales and the wikipedia ethos is not about “not offending” people; it’s about creating a resource that can be trusted by as many people as possible.