[WikiEN-l] Fwd: Special Report: Exposed - Anti-Israeli Subversion on Wikipedia

[Elias Friedman]

Hi. I just got this. I thought the community should see it.

-Eli

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: HonestReporting <action at honestreporting.com>
Date: Wed, May 14, 2008 at 9:30 AM
Subject: Special Report: Exposed - Anti-Israeli Subversion on Wikipedia
To: elipongo at gmail.com






Exposed - Anti-Israeli Subversion on Wikipedia

Dear HonestReporting Subscriber,

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia anyone can edit, may strive for
pure democracy, but that doesn't mean it's always fair. Our colleagues
at CAMERA learned this the hard way last month when their effort to
fight anti-Israel bias on Wikipedia ended in several members being
banned from the site and bad press for the organization. CAMERA's
campaign involved recruiting volunteers and instructing them in the
basics of Wikipedia participation. The Palestinian advocacy group,
Electronic Intifada (EI), however, branded the effort "a plan to
rewrite history" and filed a bitter complaint with Wikipedia
administrators, resulting in unusually stiff penalties for the CAMERA
volunteers involved.

EI's chief evidence against CAMERA was a series of private e-mails
exchanged by CAMERA staff and their volunteers. An EI staff member
infiltrated the group and turned the e-mails over to Wikipedia,
claiming they revealed a plot by CAMERA to manipulate Wikipedia and to
pass off "crude propaganda as fact." An investigation followed,
resulting in two indefinite bans and several shorter-term bans for
CAMERA members.

A closer look at Wikipedia's inner workings, however, reveals there is
more to the story. Research carried out by Social Media expert Dr.
Andre Oboler, a Legacy Heritage Fellow at NGO Monitor, reveals that it
was EI, not CAMERA, that manipulated Wikipedia to achieve its
ideological goals.

Dr. Oboler and HonestReporting also found that despite Wikipedia's
clear policy against political advocacy, initiatives such as "Wiki
Project Palestine" and the Yahoo group "Wikipedians for Palestine"
used the Wikipedia platform to promote their ideological views,
largely unopposed by the Wikipedia community. CAMERA, however, was
singled out by the administrators in order to "send a strong message
to lobbying groups, campaigns and other advocacy groups."

WIKIPEDIA AND THE NEUTRAL POINT OF VIEW

With nearly 60 million visitors a month and 10 million entries in 253
languages, Wikipedia has become a primary resource for students across
the world. A Google search for almost any topic will return a
Wikipedia entry at or near the top of the list of results.

But despite its popularity, Wikipedia does not always provide the most
accurate information. What sets the encyclopedia apart from other
sources is its reliance on the "wisdom of crowds" - allowing any user
who spots an error in any entry to simply change it himself,
anonymously if he chooses.

Not surprisingly, this feature turns controversial topics such as
"Jerusalem" or "Terrorism" into battlegrounds between people with
sharply different agendas. To counter the problem, Wikipedia
established the neutral point of view (NPOV) as one of its guiding
principles. The NPOV policy is meant to ensure all sides are presented
equally on a topic until a consensus eventually emerges, a process
that can take many months of intense debate.

Unfortunately, NPOV is another noble goal not always applied equally
by Wikipedia users. Dr. Oboler tracked the activity of Wikipedia user
Bangpound, an individual revealed to be EI staff member Benjamin
Doherty, who appears to be looking to spin EI's view of CAMERA's
campaign. Here is how Dr. Oboler describes his activity:

At 14:08 on April 21 EI boasted publicly to someone thought to be a
member of CAMERA's staff that CAMERA and its editor have been exposed.
He links to the EI article about CAMERA [accusing CAMERA of a
Wikipedia conspiracy]. At 14:26 the same person edits the CAMERA page
making it say "CAMERA also attempts to use Wikipedia to covertly
disseminate discredited pro-Israeli propaganda."  They add that EI
have e-mails that "outlined an attempt to subvert Wikipedia editorial
controls and leadership structures" - an accusation designed to make
Wikipedia editors see red. At 14:44 they edited the Wikipedia page on
reliable sources adding "CAMERA cannot possibly be considered a
reliable source" and again they outline their accusations. These edits
appear aimed both to discredit CAMERA and to promote EI. It was clever
marketing as well as clever advocacy, and it took under half an hour.
[For the full transcripts of these edits see Dr. Oboler's research on
Zionism on the Web].

But according to Dr. Oboler, EI's manipulations on Wikipedia pale in
comparison to other pro-Palestinian groups such as "Wiki Project
Palestine" - an effort supposedly aimed at improving articles related
to Palestinian culture and society but misused to promote a political
agenda, and the Yahoo group "Wikipedians for Palestine."

The real organized effort [to recruit outsiders to promote
pro-Palestinian views on Wikipedia] appears to be from "Wikipedians
for Palestine," a group that was advertised to individuals both on
Wikipedia and through at least one Palestinian campaigning
organization. That group was active for over two years. It was
detected, questions were raised on and off Wikipedia, and then
…nothing seemed to happen, then or now.

People commenting on the CAMERA case who were shown to be involved in
this Palestinian group first proclaimed the group's innocence. Then
they made a number of misleading claims off Wikipedia, stating, for
example, that they "never recruited neophytes to edit Wikiepdia," and
that their group is "independent and never bankrolled and backed by
any organization, let alone one as well staffed and funded as CAMERA."
 They were challenged by an administrator to give access to their
group so the archives could be checked, as was done to CAMERA. They
promptly deleted the group - destroying all archives.

Wikipedia apparently dropped the issue because no one had infiltrated
the group or had evidence revealing the content of the deleted
archives. According to Dr. Oboler, it is impossible to know exactly
what it accomplished over the past two years.

What is clear is that its claims on the group's home page were
designed not only to defend themselves but also to attack CAMERA. The
group may or may not have actually recruited people who were not
editors, but they certainly tried to. The penalties to CAMERA are for
trying to recruit people, not for any problematic editing on Wikipedia
(itself a very unusual thing in a Wikiepdia investigation - normally
only actions on Wikipedia are considered).

COMMON FORMS OF ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS ON WIKIPEDIA

Anti-Israel bias in Wikipedia takes three primary forms: vandalism,
blatantly false allegations, and attempts to marginalize the Israeli
perspective.

Vandalism, such as efforts to change Jerusalem to 'Capital of
Palestine,' tends to be relatively harmless. Editors discover these
kinds of changes quickly and "revert" them to the 'community
consensus'. Wikipedia allows editors to be notified by email if
someone has changed a favorite entry. It also keeps a history of all
changes, making it easy to restore the original content.

A more insidious form of bias is the use of false information. An
example can be seen on the 'Egypt' 'Camp David Accords' entry, where
clear anti-Semitic incitement in the Egyptian press was dismissed as
simple 'Anti-Zionist criticism'. This entry alone attracts 150,000
viewers a year, and the related 'Egypt' entry, which doesn't mention
the issue at all, is viewed 3.5 million times annually.

More common are attempts to marginalize Israeli and Zionist content
and lend more weight to the Palestinian or Arab narrative. The entry
"Massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war," for example,
lists only those allegedly committed by Jews. Another example is the
original 'Hebrews' entry, which fails to mention the undisputed fact
that Jews always prayed in Hebrew, and that it became their primary
everyday language in Israel since the early 20th century.

This category also includes entries that serve to diminish the
perception of threats against Israel. For example, several Iran
articles are apologetic about Iranian president Mahmoud Admadinejad's
calls for erasing Israel from the map, reassuringly explaining the
threat as mistranslation of Farsi, which supposedly only meant 'erase
off the pages of time.' However they fail to mention that the same
slogan was also painted on ballistic missiles in Iranian army parades.

PRO-PALESTINIAN ADVOCACY: WIKIPROJECT PALESTINE

A WikiProject is a Wikipedia's community feature allowing people with
common interests to collaborate on particular encyclopedia topics. A
project's homepage is essentially a central billboard allowing users
to share articles of interest with the Wikipedia community.

The 'Palestine Project' goals, stated on its page, fall within the
accepted Wikipedia guidelines:  To "Maintain information on Palestine
including history, culture, geography and contemporary political,
socio-economic and ideological context; Improve Palestine-related
articles by expansion, verification and copyediting." And finally: "Be
thorough and watch for POV in particularly controversial articles."

Despite the warning, however, the actual content promoted by the
project appears geared towards online advocacy. There are 210 articles
marked as "high importance". About half are related to the
Arab-Israeli conflict. Many appear because of their influence on
public opinion on the Palestinian cause.

In its hall of fame for best articles, the Palestine Project page
lists four best biographies. One is by Norman Finkelstein, a staunch
supporter of the Palestinian cause, whose controversial bestseller
"The Holocaust Industry" accused Jews of exploiting the Holocaust for
financial and political gain.

There is also a large number of small articles that appear to have
been posted to add weight to the Project's page, giving it the
appearance of significant substance. Many of these articles are posted
by anonymous users so that they will be difficult to track. This is
particularly suspicious behavior considering the community-building
nature of WikiProjects.

According to Dr. Oboler, the entire project appears to be an organized
effort to promote the Palestinian point of view on Wikipedia.

In trying to kill off an attempt by CAMERA to get pro-Israel people
involved in Wikipedia, Electronic Intifada may just have thrown a
spotlight on the real and far more successful campaign to control
Wikipedia... the campaign that caused CAMERA so much concern in the
first place.

THE PROBLEMS ON WIKIPEDIA

A study of user involvement on Social Media sites such as Wikipedia
suggests that only 1% of site visitors become heavy contributors. But
according to Dr. Oboler, the involvement of more people and greater
diversity ultimately benefits sites like Wikipedia:

CAMERA was right about the problems on Wikipedia. People should
consider getting involved in Wikipedia and making use of the resources
they have (such as books) to improve the accuracy of articles they
take an interest in (on any topic imaginable). The first goal must be
to improve Wikipedia. That this helps reverse manipulation of the
truth is one side effect. Good well-sourced arguments will not only
expose mistakes, they will also make Wikipedia better.

Editing Wikipedia is not hard and, in time, people will learn how it
works and become part of the community. If you do want to get
involved, pay attention to the policies, the five pillars and other
information you will be shown when you join. If you run into problems
there are plenty of people on Wikipedia more than happy to help or
provide clarity about Wikipedia itself.

The truth will win out, but someone needs to make sure it is heard,
footnoted and properly sourced.

Dr. Oboler is also a post-doctoral fellow in Political Science at
Bar-Ilan University where he is researching online public diplomacy.
This research covers Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Google Earth and
Wikipedia among others online platforms. More on his research can be
seen at  http://www.zionismontheweb.org/internet_warfare/ . Details on
Wikipedia (the background data of which was shared with
HonestReporting) are being added during this week.


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--
Elias Friedman A.S., EMT-P
President Congregation Knesseth Israel
http://www.ellingtonshul.org/

elipongo at gmail.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Elipongo