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Shira Klein op-ed

The community will recall that Shira Klein co-wrote the journal article with Jan Grabowski that precipitated the Polish-Holocaust arbcom case. Now Professor Klein has published an article in the American Jewish magazine The Forward that defends Wikipedia against charges of antisemitism made by the Anti-Defamation League and others. Zero^talk 15:13, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

An interesting, thoughtful and useful article. Thanks for posting, Zero0000. Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi 15:19, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Klein also points out that it isn't just the ADL, but politicians and the Heritage Foundation, which relates closely to the recent threatening letter sent to the WMF. Given how anti-Wikipedia the Grabowski-Klein article had been, I'm actually quite pleased to see Klein write this now. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:14, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, this was very much not what I was expecting from a section titled "Shira Klein op-ed". _signed,Rosguill ^talk 18:16, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's what I was expecting. She was always a serious scholar. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:17, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Barkeep, I'd like some of what you've been drinking. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:20, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would be interested if she and Grabowski would conduct their research in the same way now that the WMF research white paper exists. I suspect not. But the idea that what they did wasn't serious academic inquiry, through appropriate peer review, always seemed unfair to me. I have made criticisms about this paper but despite those criticisms I would never say it wasn't work done by serious scholars. Indeed criticism of others papers are a proud part of the academic tradition. But yes I rather would expect serious scholars of Wikipedia to defend it against ways the ADL has attempted to prove its case which is certainly serious but is hardly scholarship of any kind. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:27, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I fundamentally revised my opinion of Shira Klein when I read this paper of hers published earlier this year ...
The Growing Rift between Holocaust Scholars over Israel/Palestine, Journal of Genocide Research

... and when I realised that her name, along with Omer Bartov's, was the first signatory on https://www.academicsforpeace.org/petition-august-2023 (notably published just weeks before, and completely overshadowed by, Oct. 7).

The paper co-authored with Grabowski contained errors obvious to any Wikipedian – but to err is human. As far as present-day events in the Middle East are concerned, I have nothing but the utmost respect for her. Andreas JN 466 13:19, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm guessing the size and effectiveness of the misinformation amplification ecosystem probably severely limits the impact of articles like this. It seems to be the case that a large number of people out there prefer misinformation that reinforces their existing views. Sean.hoyland (talk) 06:38, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Somewhere that I can't find just now, Klein wrote that the English Wiki had a more balanced coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict than the Hebrew Wiki. Zero^talk 13:41, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This might suggest that English Wiki is doing relatively well WP:BATTLEGROUND-wise, considering. Or it might suggest there's plenty of room for it to get worse. Sean.hoyland (talk) 14:41, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One thing that struck me is that the German and Hebrew Wikipedias, last I looked, had no pictures of Palestinian suffering at all in their two main articles on Oct. 7 and the war (German: de:Terrorangriff der Hamas auf Israel 2023 and de:Krieg in Israel und Gaza seit 2023). The German Wikipedia has more pictures of destroyed Israeli houses than houses destroyed in Gaza in those two articles, and while it has images of injury and suffering in Israel, it has zero images of Palestinian dead or injured, not even mourners or people queueing for food. Just ... nothing, zero, zilch, nada.

(And please don't go over there and complain in AI-translated German, because that just makes things worse.) Andreas JN 466 15:51, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps this effort to obtain UNWRA imagery will help. Sean.hoyland (talk) 16:27, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not the lack of images, there always have been images available. It's just that discussions early on, back in 2023, ended in favour of removing them. There were concerns that Palestinian sources like WAFA were unreliable and that such pictures were part of a Hamas propaganda effort. Others said images of dead or injured children were "too graphic" to show. So for one reason or another, they were removed. Andreas JN 466 17:03, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Documenting reality in compliance with Wikipedia policy is helping Hamas, and editors who do that are Hamas supporters, or antisemitic, or pro-Palestinian, or suspicious at the very least. That seems to be the idea that has been seeded and encouraged to grow by many partisan misinformation sources in the media and social media who complain about bias in Wikipedia. It is kind of amazing that the norm is to think about editors as falling into pro-Israel vs pro-Palestinian camps, rather than editors who advocate on behalf of state and non-state parties that carry out acts of mass violence that harm civilian populations and editors who do not. Sean.hoyland (talk) 18:42, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yup. And so it goes. Andreas JN 466 23:15, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A beautiful Billy Joel song, on the unfortunately-titled-with-hindsight album Storm Front. Sean.hoyland (talk) 06:17, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I was unfamiliar with that song. The phrase "So it goes" comes from Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse 5 where it is said whenever someone dies. I have always suspected that the slightly unidiomatic character of the phrase, which is part of its special appeal (the normal English phrase would be "That's how it goes ..."), is due to Vonnegut's German parents, who apparently only spoke English to him, but might have spoken it in a slightly idiosyncratic way. In German, the phrase "So geht's ..." is a common way of expressing the notion that something is happening and you are powerless to change it. Ironically, this is not how "So it goes" is translated in the German editions of Vonnegut's book – the German translation is "Wie das so ist" ("That's how it is"). The reason is that "So geht's" can mean any number of things, depending on intonation and facial expression, a very common and very different meaning being "That's how it works", "That's how you do it", another being "That way is acceptable". So in print the phrase would have failed to convey the sentiment clearly. Andreas JN 466 07:58, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's a bit of a coincidence. I was thinking about the 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?' line a few weeks ago having been reminded of it in a George Saunders essay, and thought it was about time to re-read some Vonnegut books. So, I visited my local bookshop. There were none. Disappointing. Sean.hoyland (talk) 11:42, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It seems humanity is now doing rather better at stopping glaciers than at stopping wars. :/ Andreas JN 466 14:51, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And then you have the off-site peanut gallery. In case you didn't know, I am "one of the vilest, most slippery antisemitic editors on Wikipedia." And a 10/7 rape denier. And they are absolutely right: I am paid by a state to edit Wikipedia; my own (not Qatar). It is called "Old-age pension", Huldra (talk) 23:57, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Andreas JN 466 08:16, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Zero0000 "Historian Shira Klein, comparing coverage of the Gaza war on English and Hebrew Wikipedia in 2024, said that "where the distortions lie, are in the Hebrew Wikipedia."" Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:58, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I recall when I first started editing the Arab Palestinian villages still existing in Israel, they were all "Bedouin", and typically were said to be recently founded. That was because they were directly translated from Hebrew wikipedia. Some of those places turns out to have thousands of years of documented history(!) On he.wp that is AFAIK, often still mostly missing. See eg:

Taibe, Galilee ("The village was established in 1920 by sons of the Zoabia family from Jordan"),
Tamra, Jezreel Valley, ("The village was founded in 1918 by sons of the Zoabia family from Jordan"),
Uzeir ("The village was established at the end of the 19th century by sons of the Arab al-Heib tribe"),
Sulam ("The village was founded in the 18th century by sons of the Zoabia family from Jordan"),
Kafr Misr ("The village was founded by the Zoabia family, who moved to the area from Jordan")

So yeah, I learned early, that you cannot trust he.wp one bit, Huldra (talk) 21:43, 17 May 2025 (UTC) PS; after ~20 years editing Palestinian places, I have still absolutely no idea as who the mysterious Zoabia family is/was.[reply]

Another quote: "Haaretz journalist Omer Benjakob said in 2023 in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that "Unlike many Wikipedias in languages with a global span, like English, Spanish or Arabic, Hebrew Wikipedia resembles its Polish or Hungarian counterparts in being more of an "Israeli Wikipedia." It can be seen a having an implicit pro-Israeli bias."" Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 04:42, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"The corresponding English language page does offer more balance in its photographic narrative of the Gaza conflict, no doubt thanks to the moderating operation being carried out by the editors of Wikipedia. ... As is to be expected, Wikipedia tells viewers of the English-language page that “The neutrality of this section is disputed” and there is a lively but civilised discussion about how to improve the page’s impartiality." That's from 2014. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:24, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, great find!!! I hadn't realised that Benjakob had written about this in the past. Well, if he does it again, he should definitely include the German Wikipedia in his analysis; it is an outlier among major European languages in this respect. Andreas JN 466 08:04, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, just realised the second quote was by Everton Gayle, not Benjakob. Andreas JN 466 08:07, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Grabowski has responded: [1]. The background to this is that Klein and Grabowski are diametrically opposed regarding Israel's behavior in Gaza. Zero^talk 15:58, 21 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My reading of what Grabowski wrote is that he is mostly focused on the issues raised in the paper he and Klein wrote about our content on Poland, and he isn't really looking at our coverage of other issues in the way that Klein did in her recent commentary. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:24, 21 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Quite. For Grabowski's views on Gaza see [2] (which he co-signed) and [3]. Andreas JN 466 03:23, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

L235 re-appointed as full clerk

Original announcement

Incredibly happy to see this!!! theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 20:32, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

+1

~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:40, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! House Blaster (talk • he/they) 21:15, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome back to the clerk team! Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 09:16, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome back! --qedk (t 愛 c) 18:22, 21 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's awesome! You could probably be part of a training team. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:17, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very glad to be back. I will note for the benefit of the community that I submitted a somewhat unconventional application (copy here) where I describe how because "[c]andidly, I do not expect to be as active as I once was as a clerk[ – ]I'm no longer able to review every arbitration-space edit within minutes during my waking hours, as I once was" – I plan to focus on more of a process/technical improvements angle as a clerk. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 02:28, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@L235: If you would like to bounce ideas off me, as a fellow nerd of the arbitration process, please get in touch -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 12:23, 23 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

RFC on extended confirmed

Please see Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Extended confirmed definition. It is a proposal to change WP:XC from 500 edits + 30 days to 500 edits + 90 days. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:14, 25 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the notification WhatamIdoing. We actually voted on this (with the same proposed 500 + 90) at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel articles 5/Proposed decision#Changes to extended confirmed, where the opposition was largely (but not exclusively) based around it not being our decision - but rather the community's at an RfC. Great to see that RfC happen, and it will be interesting to see how it concludes. Thanks, Daniel (talk) 20:19, 25 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't follow ARBPIA5, so I didn't know this. I found the stats gathered in the last week compelling, but other people might have different reactions (which is fine). As for the outcome, I hope for WP:BEANS reasons that it there's a WP:SNOW storm one way or the other. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 25 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]