Edit Wars: Wikipedia and Palestine

What do you do if you want to find information quickly? For most people, the answer is Google, and for most topics, Wikipedia will be the first result. Wikipedia was created in 2001 as an ‘online encyclopaedia’, and in November this year, saw 4.3 billion independent views. Beyond active use of the site, Wikipedia is also used to train AI tools such as ChatGPT, therefore is a key global information platform. 

As a public encyclopaedia, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone with an account. These edits are expected to maintain the ‘neutral point of view’, and information must be ‘source-based’, but Wikipedia is a public forum. Therefore, when conflicts are raging in the real world, they are transferred to Wikipedia. Since the Hamas attack on 7th October last year, an information war has been raging on Wikipedia. 

Each language version of Wikipedia has its own editors, administrators, and policies. This means there can be significant discrepancies between sites. For example, the Independent Arabic noted major differences between the English-language site and the Arabic-language site descriptions of the 7th October attack, and accused the English site of anti-Palestinian sentiment. However, accusations of bias come from all sides, depending on which narrative is favoured.

Farah Mustaklem is a Palestinian Wikipedia editor, who has been involved with the site for over eighteen years, and edits both the English and Arabic sites. Farah agrees that the Arabic site “shows much less of a pro-Israel bias than the English version”. Due to this, Arabic Wikipedia faces accusations of bias itself. On the 23rd December 2023, the main page of Arabic Wikipedia closed for 24 hours in an act of protest against “the continuing genocide in Gaza, calling for the end of the war.” Farah explains that the closure was the product of “consensus within the Arabic Wikipedia community to act to show solidarity with the Palestinian people and bring attention to their plight, amidst rampant misinformation and disinformation campaigns.” 

This statement received significant criticism. Itzik Edri, chair of Wikimedia Israel, publicly commented that this decision made “the entire site go dark”, and that he had “never felt so ashamed” of Wikipedia. Edri claimed that Arabic Wikipedia’s actions went against the shared “vision” of the movement, and the decision inspired significant criticism of undermining the neutrality of the site. However, Farah highlighted that such protest blackouts are not new to Wikipedia: English Wikipedia blacked out in 2012 to protest US anti-piracy laws, and in 2022 Georgian Wikipedia changed its logo to the colours of the Ukrainian flag to protest Putin’s invasion.

Regardless of disputes between other language sites, English Wikipedia is the most influential site: it receives 48% of Wikipedia traffic. This influence goes further than direct reads, because, as Farah explains, it is common for editors of other language editions to “simply translate the articles from English, biases and all, and spread the narrative presented there into their own languages”. Therefore, other language sites cannot always escape mainstream narratives. As Farah explains, Wikipedia editors must base content on so-called “respectable media sources”, which are often Western. Therefore “if the narrative in the Western mainstream media is lopsided, it is easier for it to find its way into Wikipedia”.

As a Palestinian, Farah tends to stay away from editing articles on the site about Israel or Palestine, due to “overdue influence of the Israeli narrative”: he says you need a “very thick skin” to be engaged. On the other hand, Wikipedia editors tend to have more leeway than mainstream journalists, so can present underrepresented views if they can cite coverage. The English page for the ‘2023 Israel-Hamas War’ has undergone thousands of unique edits since October, to update the page as new information comes in, but also both spreading and correcting misinformation. 

In Farah’s experience, edit wars are a “common occurrence”, especially surrounding Israel and Palestine. They are so common that English Wikipedia has stricter rules on edit warring on content about Israel/Palestine than it does for other content. Usually Wikipedia allows 3 reversions of edits within 24 hours, but since 2008, Israel/Palestine pages only allow one reversion. English Wikipedia also has an arbitration committee specifically to decide on edits relating to Israel and Palestine. Due to the contentious nature of the Israeli bombardment, and the amount of disinformation, articles on Israel and Palestine can only be edited by editors with more than 30 days of experience and 500-plus edits.

However, Farah claims that “edit warring is inevitable” still, and that “the loudest and most persevering voices” tend to win out. The talk page edit logs of the ‘2023 Israel-Hamas War’ page show the difficulties of attempting a ‘neutral’ stance on a conflict that has been labelled genocide by some (TNA article link). The title of the page has been debated over and over again, and disputes rage over almost every element of the page: if it is necessary and source-based to use the term ‘apartheid’, if accusations of Israeli genocide should be included in the introductory section, and where to include numbers of journalist casualties. All of these topics, and their placement in the article, impact the narrative, no matter how much Wikipedia attempts neutrality. The back-and-forth of the editing process shows emotion and anger behind the edits of these ‘wikipedia warriors’. 

These conflicts mirror discussions found across newsrooms and social media sites across the world: Farah emphasises that “Wikipedia is only as good as the community behind it”. Despite its flaws, several have argued that Wikipedia is vastly preferable to social media, where 47% of UK adults get news from. Conflict on Wikipedia mirroring the situation in Israel and Palestine is not new; it has simply escalated in line with escalating violence. In any war, information is a powerful weapon, however especially in Israel. As an apartheid state that is still backed by much of the international community, shaping international perceptions is crucial. In 2010, two Zionist groups launched courses in ‘Zionist editing’ on Wikipedia. Right-wing ‘Israel Sheli’ and pro-settler ‘Yesha Council’ ran workshops teaching how to rewrite disputed pages on Wikipedia, to use the site to promote Zionism. 

Clearly, despite attempts towards a ‘neutral point of view’, Wikipedia cannot escape battles over language and bias. As a public forum, Wikipedia is plagued by human squabbles, and by genuine conflict over the nature of information. For many, editing Wikipedia has become the space to push back against what they see as false narratives, and help challenge perceptions.