Wikipedia suspends pro-Palestine editors coordinating efforts behind the scenes

An arbitration committee set up by Wikipedia for “Palestine-Israel Cases” has banned two editors indefinitely and imposed restrictions on three others.

These measures were taken against the said editors following attempts at “canvassing,” which is regarded by Wikipedia as bringing fellow editors into a discussion regarding a specific edit “with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way, and is considered inappropriate.”

The committee highlighted the off-wiki misconduct in the Palestine–Israel topic area, accusing editors of making edits in the Palestine–Israel topic area after off-wiki canvassing requests and “encouraging other users to game the extended confirmed restriction and engage in disruptive editing.”

“Wikibias,” an X account that examines these attempts and exposes anti-Israel bias on the Free Encyclopedia, lauded the decision taken by the committee, adding that other “toxic editors” are still manipulating information in articles such as “Use of Human Shields by Hamas.” The outlet continued: “it is high time the Arbitration Committee takes immediate action to thoroughly investigate and hold all editors… accountable for their distortion of Wikipedia content.”

A history of anti-Israel coordination efforts

Wikipedia, a self-described endeavor where anyone can contribute to the world's common knowledge, is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, an NGO which, as a matter of principle, rarely interferes in the content and editing process of specific entries, even when facing stories of widespread bias and misinformation.

In August, the blog “The Wikipedia Flood: Documenting Wikipedia's Anti-Israel Bias”, published an expose showing how pro-Hamas editors were using Wikipedia as a battlefield to promote their anti-Israel agendas. This included off-wiki coordination endeavors through personal correspondence on email and social media platforms such as Discord, despite the fact that Wikipedia’s own standards prohibit these.

According to the blog, these groups of editors collaborated to set up “war rooms” with weekly meetings to coordinate editing efforts, with some in the group self-describing as an “instrument of the Gaza war for the elimination of Israel.”

Last month, The Jerusalem Post published an investigative report (LINK) on the bigotry, misinformation, and bias found on Wikipedia’s Arabic version, which included a plethora of examples from offensive generalizations against Jews to denial and downplaying of the October 7th Massacre. It also revolved around Arabic Wikipedia’s distinctive editing pool which limits automatically accepted edits to a closed group of editors, differing from the English version which mostly allows editing freely.

The Post’s investigation also interviewed Ashley Rindsberg from Pirate Wires, who himself published an in-depth expose of the group of pro-Hamas editors which he deemed to be “hijacking Wikipedia.” In the expose, Rindsberg pointed to roughly 40 editors who have worked together to delegitimize Israel on the website, also removing the terror group’s of expressions of antisemitism as shown on their 1988 charter. He also exposed that following October 7th, a group named Tech for Palestine launched a campaign to coordinate the editing endeavors of 8,000 articles on Wikipedia, but when they were exposed – they proceeded to delete all of the pages and chats they were operating.

Disdain toward the bias on the Free Encyclopedia is not limited to activists and reporters only. Larry Sanger, one of the founders and creators of Wikipedia, has also voiced his concerns regarding the bias on the platform Wikipedia, being cited in 2021 as saying that he wouldn’t trust it as a source despite being amongst its creators. Sanger warned that Wikipedia “has changed”, implying that it is no longer “committed to neutrality” as it used to be, due “a big, nasty, complex being made behind the scenes to make the article say what somebody wants them to say.”