Wikipedia co-founder joins editing conflict over the Gaza genocide page

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has jumped into a conflict over the online encyclopedia’s page on “Gaza genocide.” Just days after a Wikipedia editor froze changes to the article, Wales posted a statement on a page dedicated to discussing edits, saying the article “requires immediate correction” and is part of a broader neutrality problem on the site, where “there is much more work to do.”

On October 28th, a Wikipedia editor changed the status of the “Gaza genocide” page to “protected,” meaning editors can’t make changes to the article until November 4th, or until “editing disputes have been resolved,” according to a notice at the top of the article. As noted by Wikipedia, editors typically protect pages to prevent vandalism or “edit wars,” when multiple editors disagree about an article and continuously revert each other’s changes — which some editors mentioned happening recently on the Gaza page.

Wales joined discussions about the article on November 2nd. He wrote that he has been “studying the issue of neutrality” across Wikipedia and that the Gaza genocide article “is a particularly egregious” example of the problem.

“At present, the lede and the overall presentation state, in Wikipedia’s voice, that Israel is committing genocide, although that claim is highly contested,” Wales said. He added that a “neutral approach would begin with a formulation such as: ‘Multiple governments, NGOs, and legal bodies have described or rejected the characterization of Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.’” Currently, the article bases its position that a genocide exists on conclusions from United