http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-editing-zionist-groups
Yesha Council, representing the Jewish settler movement, and the rightwing Israel Sheli (My I srael) movement, ran their first workshop this week in Jerusalem, teaching participants how to rewrite and revise some of the most hotly disputed pages of the online reference site. "We don't want to change Wikipedia or turn it into a propaganda arm," says Naftali Bennett, director of the Yesha Council. "We just want to show the other side. People think that Israelis are mean, evil people who only want to hurt Arabs all day."
And on Wikipedia, they believe that there is much work to do. Take the page on Israel, for a start: "The map of Israel is portrayed without the Golan heights or Judea and Samaria," said Bennett, referring to the annexed Syrian territory and the West Bank area occupied by Israel in 1967. Another point of contention is the reference to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – a status that is constantly altered on Wikipedia.
In 2008, members of the hawkish pro-Israel watchdog Camera who secretly planned to edit Wikipedia were banned from the site by administrators. Meanwhile, Yesha is building an information taskforce to engage with new media, by posting to sites such as Facebook and YouTube, and claims to have 12,000 active members, with up to 100 more signing up each month. "It turns out there is quite a thirst for this activity," says Bennett. "The Israeli public is frustrated with the way it is portrayed abroad." The organisiers of the Wikipedia courses, are already planning a competition to find the "Best Zionist editor", with a prize of a hot-air balloon trip over Israel.
2010/8/20 Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/18/wikipedia-editing-zionist-groups
Yesha Council, representing the Jewish settler movement, and the rightwing Israel Sheli (My I srael) movement, ran their first workshop this week in Jerusalem, teaching participants how to rewrite and revise some of the most hotly disputed pages of the online reference site. "We don't want to change Wikipedia or turn it into a propaganda arm," says Naftali Bennett, director of the Yesha Council. "We just want to show the other side. People think that Israelis are mean, evil people who only want to hurt Arabs all day."
Not wanting to turn Wikipedia into a propaganda arm and wanting to show the other side is a legitimate intention and until these people do anything bad, we can safely Assume Good Faith.
The whole thing is a non-issue. It has already been discussed on Foundation-l : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-August/060582.html
On 20 August 2010 16:54, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
The whole thing is a non-issue. It has already been discussed on Foundation-l : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-August/060582.html
As I said there:
==== Despite the media attention, I don't think the integrity of the encyclopedias' content is in any danger at all, and I don't think this is any sort of special case of activist attention.
Wikipedia gets waves of activists and is used to dealing with them. The ones who don't take the time to understand Neutral Point Of View, their stuff gets removed. The ones who do, their stuff stays and their cause gets accurately described and represented. Best case, we get more good new Wikipedians.
This applies to any activist for any cause whatsoever and has applied at least since I started on en:wp in 2004.
The advice I have for activists is: strict neutrality with excellent citations will do your cause justice. Everything else will be removed.
The broader advice is: there is no plausible attack on the integrity of the encyclopedias themselves that is not already something we are quite used to dealing with on a daily basis for many years :-) ====
That said, it's interesting to see the media interest. People care a *lot* about the integrity of Wikipedia. Which is nice, since we do too.
- d.
On 20 August 2010 18:00, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Despite the media attention, I don't think the integrity of the encyclopedias' content is in any danger at all, and I don't think this is any sort of special case of activist attention.
Wikipedia gets waves of activists and is used to dealing with them. The ones who don't take the time to understand Neutral Point Of View, their stuff gets removed. The ones who do, their stuff stays and their cause gets accurately described and represented. Best case, we get more good new Wikipedians.
Not really. Most groups find it incredibly hard to recruit activists to edit Wikipedia. Something on this scale is exceptional and worrying.
This applies to any activist for any cause whatsoever and has applied at least since I started on en:wp in 2004.
False. The LGBT mob would be the most obvious counter example.
We've also never entirely managed to deal with the supporters of various gurus.
The advice I have for activists is: strict neutrality with excellent citations will do your cause justice. Everything else will be removed.
The broader advice is: there is no plausible attack on the integrity of the encyclopedias themselves that is not already something we are quite used to dealing with on a daily basis for many years :-)
A large group of trained people who can use not-english sources. Thats novel.
Continuing media coverage from yesterday, by the New York Times:
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/readers-discuss-wikipedia-editin...
geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
The LGBT mob would be the most obvious counter example.
Care to elaborate?
-SC
The LGBT mob would be the most obvious counter example.
Care to elaborate?
Not 100% sure, but I believe this is a reference to "...a campaign against Wikipedia in Serbian by an irrelevant LGBT organization..."
It was discussed on the [Foundation-l] list back in July.
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-July/059735.html
If this is incorrect, please let me know. :) -Avicennasis
Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
The organisiers of the Wikipedia courses, are already planning a competition to find the "Best Zionist editor", with a prize of a hot-air balloon trip over Israel.
Is that a balloon ride over Eretz Israel or just Israel?
-S
On 09/14/10 10:02 PM, stevertigo wrote:
Gwern Branwengwern0@gmail.com wrote:
The organisiers of the Wikipedia courses, are already planning a competition to find the "Best Zionist editor", with a prize of a hot-air balloon trip over Israel.
Is that a balloon ride over Eretz Israel or just Israel?
That depends on how hard they can blow. :-)
Ec