The crying “History” button at the top right sends its regards. Yes, the World Jewish Congress has published a report that demands Wikipedia add a feature to view the history of articles, see what actions were performed by whom, and “host forums and discussions within the Wikipedia community to address concerns about neutrality and gather feedback for policy improvements”. It also wants to force all admins and above to reveal their real names.
Have they never been on Wikipedia before. You can already see the edits and attribution. If their information is correct they should submit an edit and offer proof. Going to be hard for them to sweep the Palestinian genocide under the rug though.
Israel has a team of people influencing the image of their state positively throughout Wikipedia. Get fucked.
Can you not literally see the edit history of Wikipedia articles?
No, it means that the subject matter is ridiculous enough to be satirical, but unfortunately it isn’t.
No, it just seems too ridiculous to be true. Read this community’s sidebar.
The report actually suggests a new bias and neutrality editing framework with its own edit history, unrelated to existing content editing tools.
In other words, the argument is that the current editing framework does not do enough to specifically address bias and neutrality. That seems pretty clear to me regardless of current events.
I know edits to add and correct bias do happen. I agree it would be nice if power editors, at least, were not anonymous. I wish there was a Wikipedia that could only be edited be verified, trusted experts. The potential is there with the fediverse. And in fact I thought Wikipedia was working on this. I requested an invite but never got one.
Such edits for neutrality (as well as to insert bias) are made. There is a history. It is talked about and recorded. It is searchable. It is distributed. Man, you should hear these Wikipedia editors talk to each other if you haven’t, it’s like a different language.
Anyway: the source article suggests an extra layer to that system, with public standards and criteria supported by research, which it also proposed, and suggests that editors could be monitored for bias based on such standards.
I see the potential for draconian abuse but this is one website. As I said, I hoped there would be a fediverse instance to consolidate legitimate expert, factual information. Someone shared a website with me the other day that included such technical analysis for current events. I will link it when I get another minute.
E: here’s that link https://www.sciencemediacentre.org
Wikipedia do lock articles so that only editors with good standing can change them. But obviously that’s not necessary for every article because 99% of articles are not political and are in fact about a type of moss that grows in the Canary Islands.
A wikipedia written by only verified trusted experts is called an encyclopedia, we have those online now. I think there was once a wikipedia-like online encyclopedia way back when in the late 90s or early 2000s that would only allow verified experts in whichever subject to participate to edit and create articles. I can’t find what I’m talking about atm but it basically died from lack of participation and only had a hundred or so entries.
I agree it would be nice if power editors, at least, were not anonymous.
Everything has to be sourced from a reputable source. So I don’t see why this is a huge problem. As long as they’re sourcing their edits, and using reputable, verifiable sources, why should it matter if they’re anonymous or not?
Also, reading the 3 pages of recommendations again, I don’t think that’s what it said:
Transparent Editing History: Ensure that all changes to articles are transparent and traceable.
This helps in identifying editors who may consistently introduce bias into articles.
That sounds like normal editing history for everything to me.
Rather than talk about what Wikipedia should or shouldn’t do to improve, people should take the initiative of helping to improve it themselves. Wikipedia is ultimately a collective of its volunteer editors, so the best way of enacting change on the platform is getting more people to make informed, unbiased improvements to articles.
Bias against Israel is similar to bias against racism/genocide, there is nothing bad about this at this fucking point
Gee, I wonder what some murders want with the real names of people who they don’t like.
Anyone curious why privacy is so important even if you’ve done nothing wrong?
Fuck Israel.
