The Wikipedia Flood's Latest Claim: An Invasion by Pro-Israel Automatons

Beware of the pro-Israel automatons

Back in August I described how Wikipedia's highest tribunal, its "Arbitration Committee," had begun to consider if it would deal with infighting in the "Israel-Palestine" topic area. With great reluctance, it decided in November to begin a case. 

The Wikipedia Flood—the Hamasniks and antisemites who control articles on everything related to Israel—is of course anxious to turn the proceedings in its favor. They have done so largely through three tactics:

1. They deflect through meaningless charts and tables designed to "quantify" that your lying eyes deceive you, that vast stretches of Wikipedia haven't become systematically slanted against Israel. This can be an effective tactic, because Wikipedia editors are often nerds, easily swayed by charts and statistics.

2. They've claimed that "sockpuppeting" by pro-Israel people is the real problem, even though this crude tactic is easily caught and has no lasting impact on the articles.  

Meaningless 'data' is a Flood favorite

3. Lastly we have the Flood's latest gambit. They are contending that the problem is you. Yes you, the reader of this blog and other critical coverage of Wikipedia's anti-Israel bias! If that is, you are a Wikipedia editor. In which case you should be drummed out of the site, based purely on edits that maybe, possibly, align with external criticism of Wikipedia.

There is a lot of criticism of Wikipedia on multiple websites, such as the largely anti-Israel "Wikipediocracy," which has entire sections aimed at influencing content, but that doesn't bother them. 

The Flood is claiming that the very act of reading the coverage that has come out in recent months about how dreadful Wikipedia has become—including this blog, Aaron Bandler's fine articles the Pirate Wires piece by Ashley Rindsberg, and reams of other coverage—turns you into a mindless automaton carrying out "tasks," even if you've been editing Wikipedia for years and are a reasonably sentient human being.  

Don't believe me. Just look at what they've written.

In a "workshop" page associated with the Arbcom case, Wikipedia Flood regular "Sean.Hoyland" (who is not a party to the case despite his years of hammering away at hundreds of articles) pursued that theme at length in several posts, including this one:

I don't know whether "editing influenced by outside suggestions" is prohibited or allowed. There are a lot of external actors trying to exert an influence over Wikipedia content every day. They are not part of the community, and they are not sanctionable. Should editors be allowed to participate in those campaigns/influence operations by executing the tasks they assign? To me it makes no difference whether the editor agrees or disagrees with the objective of the task or whether that external party's view is consistent or inconsistent with Wikipedia's policy. It's about whether there is a firewall between what happens on wiki and what happens off-wiki. 

Note what I've put in boldface. Coverage is spun as "tasks" that, if "executed," contaminate Wikipedia like a computer virus that requires a "firewall." 

By this logic, the existence of outside news coverage  and criticism of Wikipedia is the problem, not the contents of that coverage and criticism.

How do we know that a Wikipedia editor has been programmed into a robot, carrying out the commands of nefarious forces? Sean.Hoyland sets forth the criteria as follows:

What you can observe is the external 'change x to y' task, whether it was actioned, and the parties involved. You can then ask questions about the nature of the source that created the task and the objective of the task e.g. is the source a supporter of an organization that carries out acts of mass violence against civilians like ISIS, the Assad regime, the Israeli military, Hamas' military wing, the Russian military, and is the objective consistent with the [Wikipedia] Universal Code of Conduct that prohibits "systematically manipulating content to favour specific interpretations of facts or points of view". For me, it is not about what current policy says. Current policy doesn't work. It's about making sure bad actors who shouldn't be anywhere near Wikipedia content have zero impact on content.

As spun by Sean.Hoyland, criticism of Wikipedia's anti-Israel slant becomes, again, a "task," and coverage favoring Israeli military is put on a par with ISIS, the Assad regime, Hamas and Putin. That, he claims, falls afoul of Wikipedia's "universal code of conduct," so therefore such people (meaning you, by reading this blog) are "bad actors" who "shouldn't be anywhere near Wikipedia content" and must "have zero impact on content."

While Sean.Hoyland clearly has no problem with Wikipedia criticism sites in general, only the ones that expose the Wikipedia Flood, his position, if adopted, would make all Wikipedia criticism sites off-limits to Wikipedia editors. This has resulted in some pushback on the anti-Israel Wikipediocracy website.

I should point out here that Sean.Hoyland is a veteran anti-Israel operative whose activities were documented as far back as 2019 and has been mentioned in this blog several times, mainly for producing the meaningless "data" and charts I mentioned above.

That's the Wikipedia Flood's Arbcom game plan. True, this "coverage=tasks" gambit is a sign of desperation, an indication of how much they hate, loathe and despise outside attention to their exploits, but don't underestimate them. They are sophisticated and, I believe, professional operatives who do this for a living.

Their claims may seem phantasmagorical or simply idiotic, but remember that they do a superb job of getting their way, and there's no reason Arbcom won't be swayed by their smorgasbord of deflection, bogus "data" and lies. 

After all, some Arbcom members use their real names. Would you want to antagonize pro-Hamas editors, whose supporters and sponsors can only be surmised, if they knew who you were? 

All one can say with certainty is that even if Arbcom wants to curb the Flood, which is far from certain, it would be an uneven situation. They are overworked, often non-anonymous volunteers facing off against anonymous propagandists. It's no contest. In such a situation the determined, singleminded operatives will always get their way.