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Requests for comment/Severe Problems in hewiki/Hypocrisy and Double Standards

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Chapter 2.6 - Hypocracy and Double Standards

Many of the bureaucrats' actions described above were characterized by hypocrisy and double standards, meaning behavior that presented different faces in different situations and especially towards different people, in a manner that was neither honest nor genuine. Here are several examples:

  1. The bureaucrats repeatedly claimed that "influence/bias networks" operate in Hebrew Wikipedia, within which "recruitments" of editors take place to bias votes and articles, "endangering" the Hebrew Wikipedia. They completely ignored the fact that they themselves formed the strongest influence network in Hebrew Wikipedia, one composed of senior permission holders: bureaucrats, administrators, and patrollers who appointed each other and acted in an authoritarian and non-transparent manner to block dozens of editors and impose sanctions on others, thereby enabling significant bias in votes and articles. They also ignored the fact that it is not within their ability or authority to prevent off-Wikipedia connections between editors. Such connections exist constantly between editors who meet at Wikimedia Israel Foundation meetings, between students in the same faculty, between friends from the same town, editors belonging to the same religious community, and of course between admins. A bold example is this checkuser vote, in which voters for "Gabi S." (a liberal veteran editor) were accused of being coordinated, while the fact that almost all the admins voted for the other candidate, the admin "Barak A", right after the poll began - wasn't considered coordinated or "networked".
  2. As detailed above, the bureaucrats acted to indefinitely block dozens of editors from Hebrew Wikipedia. According to Hebrew Wikipedia procedures, blocking is not a punitive measure but a protective one, designed to prevent hostile users from inserting errors or garbage to Wikipedia. However, the bureaucrat ״Bikoret״ has encouraged several blocked editors, who were accused of harming Wikipedia, to return and edit under a new user account (he writes about it here and here, and a blocked user has testified that she received mail from him). This action raises the question: if ״Bikoret״ doesn't see the return of blocked editors as potential harm to Hebrew Wikipedia, why were they blocked? Is this after all a punitive measure or perhaps a desire to prevent these editors from having voting rights in the coming year? (as mentioned, voting rights require a minimum of one year of activity)
  3. As mentioned above, following the "state of emergency" the bureaucrats closed the Parliament and stopped all votes on granting permissions. However, they deviated from this in several cases that were convenient for them, as these involved editors close to them. For example, the vote for selecting a checkuser where the admin Barak A received permissions; extending PurpleBuffalo's administrator permissions; and selecting additional administrators whose names were raised by the bureaucrats themselves - according to the new policy which wasn't approved by the community, and although almost 40% of editors opposed this poll (see section 2.3.8, Gaslighting and Misepresentation of Truth).
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