I'm very disappointed by the new Israeli apartheid AFD at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Allegations_of_...
Whether we like it or not "Israeli apartheid" is a concept that is discussed and debated in scholarly books and articles and within Israeli society itself. However, it is a disagreeable concept and it's understandable that people who support Israel would want to rubbish it and delete it.
It will be a sad day for wikipedia if the article is deleted, however. We have articles on many contestable concepts but our task is not to censor but to make sure the articles are well written, balanced, NPOV and sourced.
There is a systemic bias in WIkipedia on certain subjects. The Middle East is one of them because there are more fluent English speaking Israelis and Jews than there are fluent English speaking Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims. As a result, we have more editors who are pro-Isreal than pro-Palestianian and more admins who are on one side of the question. This is probably biased in the other way on the Arabic wikipedia and probably relatively balanced on other language wikipedias but in English it's a problem that we have to come to grips with if we are to maintain our neutrality and our credibility.
On 8/9/06, M. Queen mqueen05@gmail.com wrote:
There is a systemic bias in WIkipedia on certain subjects. The Middle East is one of them because there are more fluent English speaking Israelis and Jews than there are fluent English speaking Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims.
Can you give an example of an article that you think is unduly biased in favor of Israel, and say exactly which parts of it illustrate that bias? Also, could you say what your user name is?
Sarah