Requests for comment/Severe Problems in hewiki/Background

Please Note

This page is a part of an elaborate RFC about the situation in Hebrew Wikipedia. As such, I consider it to be on-topic and fitting to the inclusion policy. If you think otherwise, please contact me before deleting it.

<< back to main Hewiki Problems RFC page

Chapter 1: Background

The self coup in the state of Israel was preceded by almost two decades of preparations, primarily involving the gradual integration of settlers and religious radical right organisations into centres of power in Israeli society - the military, education system, and civil service. Similarly, the current situation in Wikipedia comes as the culmination of long-term processes, detailed below:

1.1 The Establishment of Majority-Vote Decision Making in Hewiki

Hebrew Wikipedia was established in summer 2003 and grew rapidly, until around 2007 it stabilized at approximately 8,000 editors, including about 800 active editors (five monthly edits or more) who aggregately created about 100,000 edits per month (more editors will join during the 2nd decade of the 21st century, as described below). The number of articles grew at a fairly constant rate, reaching 100,000 in 2010. As the number of editors grew, disputes between them increased, especially in articles related to Judaism, the history of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. The ability to reach consensus through substantive discussion gradually diminished. Over the years, it became accepted practice that content disputes could be resolved by majority vote - either in formal "Poll Pages", or by counting "pro/con" votes on talk pages. "Majority in discussion" or "as determined by vote" became acceptable justifications for adding or removing content, and even for wording of information. This problematic practice became the core of Hewiki's problems, as the ability to reach a majority in discussions or poll pages replaced the need to convince through encyclopaedic arguments and the reliance on quality sources. In January 2005, the "Parliament" was formed - a special page where the community votes on rules and policies took place. In 2007, a "Parliament" poll set the minimum bar which an editor must pass in order to have the right to vote in any poll: at least one month as an active editor, and at least 100 edits in the 90 days which predated the poll. These conditions remained in effect until changed by the bureaucrats in June 2024.

1.2 Long-term Political Takeover by Settlers and Extreme Right-Wing Forces

Over a decade and a half ago, conservative and religious forces began taking initial steps to strengthen their position in hewiki. In August 2010, the first "Zionist Editing in Wikipedia" course was held, targeting a crowd of nationalist religious settlers, stating its goal as "to influence Wikipedia's policy regarding the neutral point of view and ultimately the content in the encyclopedia." The course was organised by the umbrella organisation of the settlements in the West Bank, in cooperation with the right-wing organisation "My Israel". The organisers described the goal of the courses as "To create a significant group of nationalist editors, which will contribute in all areas of the encyclopaedia and gain credibility". Participants were promised that they will join "a special community on Wikipedia, which will teach its members about the ways of editing." The course was successful and received extensive media coverage, which may explain the sudden addition of about 2,500 new editors between August and October 2010. It's unknown how many additional courses were held in this format since then, but one of the organisers and instructors in these courses, a senior Wikipedia editor, said in a radio interview that "we also organise Wikipedia training for schools, youth movements, and even the military forces".

In 2013, the strategic right-wing libertarian organization "Kohelet Forum", which would lead the judicial overhaul in Israel a decade later (see section 2.3), began employing editors on Wikipedia. These editors expanded articles related to the Forum's political agenda, particularly around Israel's judicial system. It's unknown how many editors Kohelet Forum employs on Wikipedia: on the one hand, it has six declared paid editors, on the other hand, most of them haven't been active since 2019. However, in 2023, a Kohelet Forum personel told a Wikipedia check user that "many users edit Wikipedia from the Forum's offices."

In mid-2014, and again in late 2018, several articles appeared on "Hidabroot", a popular fundamentalist site aimed at religious outreach, accusing Wikipedia of "atheism" and "leftism". These articles featured statements like "Wikipedia doesn't want you to know that evolutionists can be wrong; that Einstein believed in God, etc.”. The articles called the religious public to join Wikipedia as editors, and included "tips and tricks" about phrasing scientific facts in a "more neutral" way (for example: instead of "Dinosaurs were a superorder of reptiles that went extinct about 65 million years ago" they recommended "Dinosaurs is the name given to a group of fossil remains of reptile-like creatures found since the late 18th century"). These articles might be related to the spike in Wikipedia participation starting August 2014, and to another spike in early 2019.

In recent years, additional courses and organizations of right-wing and religious groups have become known, such as the courses of "Torat Lechima", training by a nationalist organisation called "Kol Israel", courses by the Yesha Council, and additional projects that were only hinted about.

1.3 The Result of the Nationalist and Religious Infiltration

After a decade of massive settler and ultra-Orthodox enrolment to Wikipedia, their viewpoint gained a significant majority in polls and discussions. Many reached administrator and even bureaucrat positions, and their dominance in the article namespace was very noticeable. Here are just a few examples of misleading and non-NPOV information that was included in hewiki by 2020 (items 1-3 were fixed later, after more liberal and secular editors joined hewiki):

Settler leader Orit Strook was defined as a "human rights activist" (fixed after 9 years in a 2022 poll);
The Biblical story about Moses receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai was presented as "a historical event" (fixed in 2023 to "biblical story", after 6 years);
The biblical flood was presented as "an event that became mythical" (fixed in 2020 to "a biblical story", after 2.5 years);
The article "Settler violence" was deleted;
Several articles performing Palestinian defamation were routinely written and maintained , such as "Illegal Palestinian construction in Area C", which ignores illegal Jewish construction in Area C (settlements and outposts) and the article "Destruction of Israeli heritage sites" which deals only with destruction of antiquities by Palestinians;
The article "Israeli occupation of the West Bank" was renamed to "Israeli rule in Judea and Samaria".

1.4 The Struggle Between Conservatives and Liberals Reaches a Peak - Years of Self-Coup and War in Gaza and Lebanon

In early 2023, with the establishment of the current Netanyahu government, the new Minister of Justice announced a "reform in the judicial system". Dozens of senior legal experts and political scientists interpreted this as a self-coup, intended to subordinate the judicial system to the government (see partial list here, and here). Subsequently, a massive liberal-democratic protest movement arose, with weekly demonstrations by huge crowds.

The internal struggle within Israeli society was reflected in hewiki, where articles related to the judicial overhaul, the war, and associated public figures became battlegrounds of edit wars and endless discussions. Pro-overhaul editors utilised their majority among active editors to insert content supporting the overhaul and reduce or eliminate criticism about it, even when expressed by experts and published in reliable sources. In July 2023, it was discovered that an employee of Kohelet Forum, an organisation which led the judicial overhaul, operated several sock puppets to protect the Kohelet Forum article from expert criticism about its actions. The sock puppets were blocked, but the affair was suppressed by the bureaucrats, unlike similar cases that received a special page in Wikipedia namespace (such as this one, that one and more).

Several mainstream news channels and social media networks reported extensively about the "Wikipedia wars", which caused a surge in liberal editors joining hewiki to prevent the nationalist religious viewpoint from dominating it. The liberal voice in Wikipedia strengthened, and its influence on the article namespace was noticeable: several attempts to delete the protest against the overhaul or minimize the professional criticism about it were blocked; articles about rabbis and yeshivas lacking notability were deleted; conspiracy theory spread against left-wing politicians was stopped; and several biases in articles about democracy and Palestinians were corrected. Conversely, editors who supported settlers and the government attempted to protect articles about their politicians and insert "incriminating information", sometimes amounting to actual conspiracy theories, about liberal politicians and military chief officers.

After Hamas's terror attack on October 7th 2024, the inner political disputes intensified, with the liberal public blaming of Netanyahu and his government for policies which enabled the attack, and the religious right-wing public blaming of the heads of the military. After Israel's invasion to Gaza, the religious conservative public supported a strong and merciless military attack on Gaza, while the liberal public warned against civilian casualties and called for a prisoner exchange deal and a quick end to the war. This heated dispute reflected once again in hewiki. For example, several conspiracy theories about chief commanders in the military collaborating with Hamas on October 7 were spread through government media channels, and repeated attempts were made to insert these contents into hewiki (see these edits in the articles about the IDF chief of staff and head of national security service). Concurrently, repeated attempts were made to diminish or delete claims about the accountability of Netanyahu's government for the events which led to the massacre. Admins and bureaucrats generally chose to not intervene in such cases, claiming NPOV despite the fact that in many instances the deleted content was clearly notable, verifiable and backed by strong references, and the added content had no references or came from questionable and politically biased sources.

The bureaucrats tried to handle the situation with increasingly forceful measures, which sparked growing community resistance. Initially, a new policy named "Bridge Over Troubled Water" was introduced, containing expansion of bureaucrats' powers to determine article content, delete articles they deemed unnecessary, and distance what they called "problematic" editors from "political articles" (although no formal definition of "a political article" was ever presented). The policy declaration received support mainly from conservative and religious editors, while liberal editors were less enthusiastic about it. After the first actions under the policy were imposed on articles of right-wing orientation, right-wing editors also joined the opponents, and the policy was abandoned. Instead, the bureaucrats began taking a hard line against editors who were accused of "constantly argueing about political articles and being a burden on the community". Some of those editors were blocked for periods ranging between a week and a month, and others were placed under mandatory mentorship. Part of the community supported these measures, but another part warned that this wasn't an attempt to solve hewiki's underlying problems, but a mere use of force to determine the content of articles. Opposition to the bureaucrats' actions peaked with two polls for adminship rights removal - one against the bureaucrat Dovno and one against the bureaucrat Garfield. Both proposals were denied, but did gain 40% of support, which reflected the fact that the community was unhappy with the bureaucrats' conduct. The bureaucrat Dovno halted his activity when the poll in his case started, and a few months later announced his retirement. The remaining two bureaucrats began to complain publicly about "agents of chaos" who "take over Wikipedia and push a political agenda".

1.5 The Self-Coup in Hebrew Wikipedia

In early June 2024, without any warning, a new period began in hewiki, with several waves of mass blockings (dozens of editors), individual blockings of the most prominent liberal editors, ad-hoc rule changes, an ongoing "state of emergency", and constant threats hinting that "thirty more editors might join the blocked ones."

This document details events that occurred mostly since this date, and some in the year before it. Our claim is that the body of evidence indicates an attempt to take over hewiki while moving away from the principles and values that are the foundation of the global Wikimedia movement.

Background

Elimination of Opposition