this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2025
323 points (98.2% liked)
Wikipedia
3879 readers
207 users here now
A place to share interesting articles from Wikipedia.
Rules:
- Only links to Wikipedia permitted
- Please stick to the format "Article Title (other descriptive text/editorialization)"
- Tick the NSFW box for submissions with inappropriate thumbnails
- On Casual Tuesdays, we allow submissions from wikis other than Wikipedia.
Recommended:
- If possible, when submitting please delete the "m." from "en.m.wikipedia.org". This will ensure people clicking from desktop will get the full Wikipedia website.
- Use the search box to see if someone has previously submitted an article. Some apps will also notify you if you are resubmitting an article previously shared on Lemmy.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
While I generally agree (obviously), the critics are technically correct that there is a problem of (lacking) viewpoint diversity among WP editors. Which has led to some unfortunate cases which are easy to point to. For example, the dismissal of the lab-leak hypothesis as "conspiracism" during Covid. Or, very recently, the coverage of what's going on in Gaza, and specifically the casual use of the G-word. That coverage is blatantly written from a biased perspective, as the WP founder himself has been (very rare event) complaining about. He understands that credibility is everything. It's not enough to be "right", you have to be trusted. Sometimes that means phrasing things in a more neutral way so as to accommodate good-faith objections. I really worry about this because it feels like many people do not understand it, or want to understand it.
The lab leak IS a conspiracy theory and israel IS carrying out a genocide in Gaza. These are not opinions. It seems like you are trying to reach a definition of 'neutrality' in good faith, but you're currently saying that the truth should be hidden/altered to accommodate people who refuse to believe the truth. Opinions go under a subheading in a wikipedia article - there is no reason to give opinions the same amount of screen space as facts. Credibility is not everything - credibility is just credibility. If the point of a website is to publish facts then it is enough to just be 'right'.
Yeah the Gaza article freeze really bothered me because by all objective measures, it's a genocide. Jimbo didn't need to fucking freeze the article just to tell it's authors "State this in terms of the objective measures instead of Wikipedia's voice, and put the opinions under their own header". His selective treatment wreaks of bias or political pressure, both very dangerous things for a credible source.
On the lab-leak theory, the current state of opinion among experts is somewhat different from a few years ago. You seem not to be aware of that. On the Gaza issue, I can hardly be bothered to get into it, it's impossible to have a rational discussion about this subject (which I find deeply sad). Suffice to say that a lot of people disagree with your view (including me? I dunno - who cares?). The role of Wikipedia is to describe that discussion calmly, not to bark at readers that they're wrong and should correct their wrongthink.
"If we prove that the sky is blue, but I say it's red, Wikipedia should say the sky is purple"
What is currently happening in Gaza is a genocide, by exact definition of the word. Nobody contests that, and even the UN has called it genocide.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/09/israel-has-committed-genocide-gaza-strip-un-commission-finds
The Covid lab leak is also a conspiracy theory, and no reputable scientist doubts it. The latest reports about it have come from the Trump administration taking control of government websites to post misinformation. They also said climate change doesn't exist and vaccines and tylenol cause autism, which is another conspiracy that has been proven to be false. One should not give credibility to such articles.
Yes, yes. The very founder of Wikipedia agrees with me on these issues (specifically, what I wrote, not the extraneous anecdotes you added), not with you (plural). It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch with mainstream opinion, how extremist basically, the user base of Lemmy is.
When you say founder of Wikipedia do you mean the one who still actively involved or the one guy who was involved for a little while 20 years ago and is now a giant right-wing fuck nut.
But... Literally the Gaza thing follows the definition of genocide, and has been called genocide by international governing bodies. What else do you want? I'm sure if there are other opinions, they can be added under a "controversy" tab, but the accepted definition of the Gaza issue was a genocide. Genocides don't need to succeed in exterminating all members of a group to be considered such, they need to destroy the social fabric of a community either via forced displacement, mass murder or widespread violence. This is what happened in Gaza.
But I agree, debating Gaza in depth is not worth it here. I also agree many people were jumping the gun prematurely in pushing for a "genocide" tag before there was any official source claiming it, but after two years, the genocide tag was the most substantial and officially supported position, which means it's the responsible way to frame the situation. You can add all nuance and opposing views later. For the record, if there had been no major international consensus reached on the use of the word "genocide", I wouldn't agree with including it as the main descriptor for this conflict.
Facts are difficult to measure, but the responsible thing is leaving the definitions to actual experts on the matter, even if experts can get it wrong. Because non-experts are prone to manipulating and misunderstanding key facts that then snowball into entire myths and belief systems.
You say the COVID lab leak theory is no longer a conspiracy theory, but I haven't found a single reputable journal that supports that claim, so... What are your sources?
- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
This is the definition of genocide. What is happening in Gaza is that the IDF is systematically killing palestinians on the basis of their ethnicity, which is genocide. Nobody can dispute that at this point, and there is no middle ground.
However,
https://www.scnr.com/article/u-s-doctors-report-idf-snipers-intentionally-targeting-children-in-gaza_ebe4ffd74b6a11ef9c930242ac1c0002
("US doctors report IDF snipers are intentionally targeting children in Gaza")
(Archived version) https://archive.is/ZMHTE
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2025/11/03/israel-bombs-toys/
("Israel has been caught disguising bombs as toys to kill Palestinian children")
(Archived version) https://archive.is/nCn3n
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-soldiers-ordered-to-shoot-deliberately-at-unarmed-gazans-waiting-for-humanitarian-aid/00000197-ad8e-de01-a39f-ffbe33780000
("'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid")
(Archived version) https://archive.is/EhYJy
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2025/11/occupied-west-bank-increased-israeli-violence-against-palestinians
("Occupied West Bank: Increased Israeli violence against Palestinians must stop")
(Archived version) https://archive.is/cdlCG
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/israel-using-water-weapon-war-gaza-supply-plummets-94-creating-deadly-health
("Israel using water as weapon of war as Gaza supply plummets by 94%, creating deadly health catastrophe: Oxfam")
(Archived version) https://archive.is/3vNtF
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/08/un-experts-appalled-relentless-israeli-attacks-gazas-healthcare-system
("UN experts appalled by relentless Israeli attacks on Gaza’s healthcare system")
(Archived version) https://archive.is/UtkBh
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/06/israeli-attacks-educational-religious-and-cultural-sites-occupied
("Israeli attacks on educational, religious and cultural sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amount to war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination, UN Commission says")
(Archived version) https://archive.is/iq6ca
Israel has been caught ordering the IDF to target innocent and unnarmed civilians in search for aid, it has relentlessly (and purposefully) targeted children, it has destroyed all water, health and education infrastructure and deliberately poisoned the land to make it unlivable. It's impossible to argue there is no intent, because Israel's actions have been very deliberate.
I should also add that IDF soldiers are loving this genocide:
https://theintercept.com/2024/08/09/israel-prison-sde-teiman-palestinian-abuse-torture/
("Video of Sexual Abuse at Israeli Prison Is Just Latest Evidence Sde Teiman Is a Torture Site")
(Archived version) https://archive.is/1kjbp
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2025/4/16/israeli-soldiers-filmed-themselves-destroying-gaza-see-the-video-evidence
("The first livestreamed genocide")
(Archived version) https://archive.is/4Zli4
IDF soldiers have been caught multiple times abusing and torturing palestinians in israeli prisons, many times for fun. They also like to upload videos of themselves killing palestinians and laughing at it to social media.
Lastly, the UN report I linked on a previous comment (and every other genocide report) have already analysed the facts, and if you had read them, you'd know they already come to the conclusion that there is intent, and a lot of it.
After years of a continued genocide, that has been televised and broadcast to the whole world, and after seeing all the war crimes Israel keeps committing against the palestinian people, it is inexcusable to still defend the position that it is not a genocide.
So fuck off, and stop defending a bunch of nazi, genocidal war criminals.
I think you replied to the wrong person (or at least I got the notification for your message), because yeah, I absolutely think Gaza meets the definition of a genocide.
Oops 😅
Yeah I meant to reply to the other user (it was late at night and I didn't look too much at what I was replying to). Idk how to change the person I'm replying to so I'll leave this here. You're good tho.
The definition of "genocide" contains an element of intent, which is all but impossible to prove. A lot of reputable sources (now) say the Gaza situation it is a genocide, a few say it is not. This is not physics or maths, it's not a question with a "correct" answer. Moreover, it's now politicized, which means large numbers of readers are watching eagle-eyed for signs of bias. It would have been simple to entitle the article "Gaza anti-insurgency" or whatever and then note in the first sentence that there is "growing consensus" around the word genocide. That would have been irreproachably correct and it would have maintained trust about Wikipedia's NPOV. Instead of treading carefully like that, Wikipedia is stomping around and telling people what to think by including the trigger word in the title (telling people what to think never, ever works, incidentally). Jimmy Wales is right. This episode has sapped the whole project's credibility. People here need to decide what's more important: feeling good about their own righteousness, or Wikipedia's survival as a credible information source. Not just credible for them, but credible for everyone, including the vast number of people whose values they may not share.
On the Covid issue, replace "genocide" with "conspiracy" as the unfalsifiable emotion-laden word and it's roughly comparable. Beyond that I find it just too boring to get into a debate about right now, sorry.
"the source is that I made it the fuck up" for the COVID thing. Not a single reputable source says that.
I actually agree with the Gaza thing though. It's fair to say that they should have added that as part of the first paragraph and not as the title of the article. At least initially.
But it's also true that the only reason the Gaza genocide has become politicised is because of Israel's status as a key US ally. If the exact same actions had been taken by a wildly unpopular government in the west like Iran, I'm sure no one would be complaining about it being called a genocide after so many reputable organisations have called it such as well.
Which begs the question: is the politisation really coming from those calling it a genocide or from those who don't want to do so?
Why the need to make your point aggressively like this?
To (try to) wrap this up, my objection in that case is to the characterization as "conspiracy". The proximate cause of the pandemic are still not fully understood. It is not black and white, just as Gaza is not black and white. The lab-leak hypothesis was never a "conspiracy" in that negligence (among lab technicians) is by definition not conspiratorial. Still less was it "racist" (by that standard the "wet market" explanation is surely more "racist" still - how absurd!). And yet I believe both of those slurs were pushed into the Wikipedia article at some point by activist editors, even into the title. Now that seems to be corrected. Hallelujah. The lab leak theory is a theory, not a conspiracy. Contrary to your belief, a bunch of reputable sources (now) accept that it is at least possible if not the most likely cause. Again, it hardly matters who's right, what matters is that Wikipedia should be in the business of laying out the facts, not pushing readers towards pre-judged conclusions.
Oh the "I made it the fuck up" is actually a very popular meme, so although it's aggressive, it was more a tongue-in-cheek reference than a direct attack to you as a person. The meme for reference
Anyway, the lab theory isn't the most insane theory as it stands, and as you say, it's not crazy at all to think of technicians being irresponsible. However, it does tend to share a lot of room with the actual conspiracy that COVID was a coordinated man-made attack, and in fact, the two were almost completely undistinguishable for a good chunk of the pandemic. To the point where I thought you definitely meant COVID being lab-grown as a coordinated attack, and not an accident, which I do believe is far more likely.
So yeah, Wikipedia is written by humans who do either have biases or who are too quick to judge situations. But overall, it is still one of the most impartial and reputable sources we have online.
As for Gaza, I definitely don't think most people who feel icky calling it a genocide would be so hesitant if Israel weren't a US ally, or allied with western values in general. Like I said, there is virtually no world where other non-allied governments doing the same thing wouldn't be almost unanimously called a genocide, as shown by the Rohingya genocide, which is almost never questioned as such.
Interesting. All is provisionally forgiven.
On the lab-leak boredom-fest, yes I agree that the intent-vs-accident distinction is crucial and that the intent variant absolutely qualifies as conspirationism given that there's zero evidence for it either empirical or rational. You're right that the two were conflated problematically.
BTW it would be hard to be less conspirationist than me. I am about as skeptical as they come. I'm not even down for JFK, i.e. the starter-level conspiracy. Imagine that!
On Gaza, that's an interesting counterfactual about the Rohingya, I admit that it's somewhat persuasive. Personally I just hate emotion-charged words which are impossible to falsify because they require insight into other people's minds. I share Orwell's take: words should have clear meanings, agreed upon by all, or they should just be avoided (except in poetry). But of course the emotional valency is exactly why most people love the word genocide. Who cares about accuracy, it feels so good! Similar situation for "racist", "fascist", "woke" and bunch of others.
BTW I read recently that the framers of the genocide crime did not predict the power it would take on. They thought the other universal crimes (i.e. war crime, crime against humanity, and - especially - aggression) were all at least as bad as genocide. Maybe the fact that it's a neologism gave it extra power.
How is the gaza genocide article not neutral? It reads the same as other genocide articles like the Rohingya genocide.
Stating objective facts that all of us have seen in the news isn't biased.
If right wing dipshits get offended by objective truth, that's their problem. Not the rest of ours.
Are you talking about Jimmy Wales or Larry Sanger?
So, "co-founder"
Adding to what other people said, the only way to be "unbiased" about genocide is ignorance. To quote The Canary, anyone who claims to be unbiased about what's happening in Gaza is fucking lying.