Wikipedia has banned eight volunteer editors from making changes to articles on the Israel-Palestine conflict, following a ruling on Thursday by its Arbitration Committee.
The group was brought up before the “quasi-judicial” committee due to allegations of poor personal conduct on the site, including personal insults and misrepresentation of sources.
Six of the banned editors are from the pro-Palestinian camp while two were pro-Israeli in their posting.
The Arbitration Committee, informally dubbed the “Wikipedian High Court” is a panel of senior Wikipedia editors whose decisions are binding.
Its rulings against the eight emphasised that they related to misconduct, rather than any issues with the content they edited.
According to the site’s page about the Arbitration Committee, this is in line with other rulings, which generally focus on user conduct and not factual disputes.
It comes after the online encycolpaedia came under fire, with critics accusing it of “anti-Israel bias” in its articles.
Earlier this month, it came to light that an entry detailing an IDF operation to rescure hostages in Gaza labelled the mission a “massacre”.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claimed that over 200 Palestinians were killed during the rescue. However, it does not distinguish between civilians and terrorists in its casualty figures.
Likewise, an October 24 report released by the American media company Pirate Wires claimed that scores of Wikipedia editors led a coordinated campaign to delegitimise Israel and present radical Islamist groups in a favourable light over recent years.
“A powerful group of about 40 editors is hijacking Wikipedia, pushing pro-Palestinian propaganda, erasing key facts about Hamas, and reshaping the narrative around Israel with alarming influence,” according to the report.
Indeed, one editor removed mention of Hamas’s 1988 charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel, from an article on the Islamic terrorist group, six weeks after the October 7, 2023 massacre.
The group also attempted to promote the interests of the Iranian government by editing articles that documented the human rights violations of officials in the Islamic Republic, according to the report.
Elsewhere, in June, Wikipedia editors targeted the Anti-Defamation League, declaring it an “unreliable source” whose data could not be relied upon when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The ADL has praised the site’s decision to ban editors “in the wake of a massive effort by anti-Israel editors to spread misinformation and hate across the platform.”
The pressure group had already listed all but one of the newly-banned anti-Israel editors as “being part of a bad-faith campaign in an attempt to undermine the credibility of ADL.”
“In light of this, it is now imperative for Wikipedia to begin work immediately to undo the harm caused by these rogue but prolific editors who have wreaked havoc across the platform, causing untold harm to potentially hundreds of entries about Israel, the October 7 massacre, Zionism and topics relating to antisemitism,” said ADL CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt.
“As we have said before, Wikipedia needs to wake up to the reality that this is a systemic problem across the platform that needs immediate action. There is still a lot more that must be done to ensure that Wikipedia can live up to its policy around the encyclopedia holding a neutral point of view,” he added.