Wikipedia 'Arbitrators' Tearfully Sanction Pro-Hamas Editors, Scream at Anti-Pro-Hamas Editors

Arbitrator 'ToBeFree' is too busy with other things to look at evidence

Wikipedia's so-called "Arbitration Committee" yesterday issued a final decision in its months-long examination of "Palestine-Israel" editing. Much attention has focused on the topic bans imposed on six pro-Hamas editors, which Jewish groups like the ADL are celebrating.

I described the arbcom decision in my last blog post and explained in my X feed why the rejoicing is unwarranted. 

In this post I will explain further how arbcom employed blatant double standards in crafting its decision, which was whipped together by the volunteer, unpaid, unaccountable "arbs" with little thought.

Wikipedia jurist "CaptainEek"

As I mentioned in my last post, the principal drafter of the decision, "CaptainEek," was so anxious to penalize the pro-Israel editor AndreJustAndre that she just  outright lied and claimed, without evidence, that AndreJustAndre had complied with requests by me, in this blog, to edit specific articles.  I don't do such things, as even a casual skim of this blog would have revealed. 

That was voted down by the committee. Yet only not a single arb pointed out that she was just making stuff up. 

One arb, the 28-year-old German "linux enthusiast" "ToBefree," adopted CaptianEek's reasoning, saying "I'm not a fan of the proxy editing for a blogger and do think such behavior is rather disruptive than something to be endorsed." 

The fact that there was no "proxy editing," and no one produced any evidence that there was, didn't bother him. He just accepted her assertion as proof.  

ToBeFree was not alone. The arbs voted penalties and non-penalties based upon how other arbs voted, and made comments revealing their own biases and prejudices. Few arbs appeared to actually read the evidence.

One common theme was that topic bans of pro-Hamas operatives would deprive Wikipedia of fantastic editors. 

That arose during a topic ban discussion concerning Levivich. He is one of the worst of a bad bunch, a dogmatic anti-Israel operative who has worked hard to turn the article on Zionism into an anti-Zionist polemic, and performed similar tasks for the Cause in dozens of other articles. 

There was overwhelming evidence of such "non-neutral editing" and that he repeatedly bullied and harassed other editors, but it was ignored by a disturbingly large number of arbs.

Even though ultimately deciding to impose a topic ban, multiple arbs actually praised Levivich and insisted that he was a darn good editor, a real asset to "the project."

"I think Levivich is generally an excellent and thoughtful editor, and I was actually quite impressed with them at times," said CaptainEek. His effort to turn the Zionism article into pro-Hamas garbage didn't bother her, and it's probable from the praise she lavished on him that she approved. 

Captain Eek described Levivich as being "well meaning" even when he was attacking other editors. She said that she "respected" his desire to "work from first principles" (i.e., denigrating Israel at every opportunity), and that he should "focus what he is really best at: the sources. I don't think anybody had better dedication to sources in this topic area than Levivich."

This is true. The evidence was overwhelming that Levivich cherry-picked some of the most extreme anti-Israel "sources" in his efforts to turn Wikipedia articles into Hamas propaganda.

Other arbs picked up on that theme, reacting not to the evidence but to their colleague's praise.

Wikipedia jurist "H.J. Mitchell"

"Levivich is very skilled at digging through sources, but his pattern of behavior here is often disruptive," said the arb "Elli." 

 "A net-positive" said arb "HJ Mitchell," a smug Brit who poses proudly in an underexposed photo on his user page, wearing an ill-fitting t-shirt and sporting a bad haircut. 

When it came time to consider penalties for Levivich, a mere  "admonishing" came within two votes of passage. CaptainEek favored that, reminding her colleagues that "Levivich is a great researcher, and one of the most source focused editors in PIA." 

Yet even that non-penalty was opposed by ToBeFree, "The evidence provided for the finding of fact leading to this conclusion here is insufficient to me," he said, proving again that he didn't even skim the evidence.

Ultimately the arbs topic-banned Levivich, which CaptainEek rejected. She described this longtime Hamas tool as "generally conducive to feedback, so I have every reason to believe they'll take the concerns here to heart." Topic banning him, she said, would "be a waste (and fulfill Icewhiz's deepest dreams)." 

That bizarre reference to "Icewhiz" refers to a long-banned pro-Israel editor who is often trotted out in paranoid fashion as an offsite pro-Israel evildoer, as I mentioned in a recent post.

CaptainEek continued: "As I've already identified, Levivich is very dedicated to using quality sources in the topic area, and is generally quite principled. A topic ban just goes way too far." 

HJ Mitchell proposed an alternate remedy that would have allowed his buddy to insert anti-Israel propaganda only in "historical conflicts or the broader Middle East conflict." But that was so peculiar that it failed to win enough votes.

And on and on it went. Administrator Zero0000, a longtime anti-Israel editor who has received scrutiny as far back as 2019, received a mere warning despite extensive evidence of his misconduct, and even though administrators are supposed to be held to higher standards than ordinary editors.

 

The two pro-Israel editors didn't get kid gloves treatment, and weren't praised as net-positives or skilled and so on. BilledMammal was falsely accused of "misrepresenting sources" and that he "weaponized reporting systems against perceived ideological enemies." The latter was based in part on "private evidence," which is Wikipedia-speak for poison-pen letters sent to arbcom on the sly.

AndreJustAndre was similarly raked over the coals by the arbs, who came close to banning him from Wikipedia completely, a penalty that wasn't even considered for pro-Hamas editors except Ïvana, who this blog revealed was running an offsite coordination effort.

After the ban effort failed to get enough votes (though it came close), the arbs crafted a special humiliation just for Andre, a "suspended site ban" under which he is subject to banning if someone who doesn't like him takes it up with arbcom.  "And we really mean it this time!" exclaimed arb "Theleekycauldron." 

The takeaway here is that Wikipedia's highest tribunal, which wields great power, is a joke. Its members are as unserious and ditsy as their idiotic handles and the screwball photos they put on their user pages. 

Their laziness, stupidity and cheerful incompetence isn't a bug in the Wikipedia system. It is a feature.

Wikipedia's 'Arbitrators' Prove There Are No Adults in the Room—Only Kangaroos

Wikipedia's kangaroo court points up the need for Section 230 reform

As I've mentioned in several posts, Wikipedia's highest tribunal, its "Arbitration Committee," has been grappling with the "Palestine-Israel" topic area since August. Over the past two weeks, they finally cranked out a tentative decision.

The proceedings are still underway, and there is still potential for mischief. But it's been mostly decided, and the great Aaron Bandler has done a thorough job of summarizing its "actions" in Jewish Journal. 

As Aaron explains, the anti-Israel editors Iskandar323, Levivich, Nableezy, Selfstudier, Makeandtoss, and Nishidani were topic-banned, which can and will be appealed after one year. Zero0000, an administrator, was "warned." Two pro-Israel editors,  AndreJustAndre and BilledMammal, were also topic banned.

My takeaways:

• While there was much whining by the affected anti-Israel editors, this was a net win for the Wikipedia Flood. They far outnumber editors willing to oppose them. Six topic bans barely dent their ranks, while two of the most active editors seeking to restore balance to articles were topic banned, and one faces a possible site ban as described below. 

• Arbcom ignored some of the very worst anti-Israel editors, such as the rape-denier Huldra and the silky Sean.hoyland, valued by the "Flood" for cranking out meaningless "data" to "prove" that Wikipedia is awash with pro-Israel "sockpuppets."

• Only one pro-Hamas editor was banned, Ïvana. That took place before the proceedings began and was caused by her role in an offsite pro-Hamas effort to slant editing on Wikipedia. Exposure by this blog and Ashley Rindsberg in Pirate Wires made that impossible to ignore. 

• At this writing it appears that the most active pro-Israel editor in the case, "AndreJustAndre," may be banned from the site based on trumped-up misconduct allegations by anti-Israel editors. None of the topic-banned pro-Hamas editors face that punishment.

• 

  Meet 'CaptainEek'

  The arb who drafted the preliminary decision, "CaptainEek," didn't even pretend to read the evidence and "workshop" analysis. Her laziness was so blatant that she was derided on Wikipediocracy, a criticism site that pays close attention to arbcom. One regular sneered, "With CaptainEek at the helm, the Titanic would never have hit an iceberg. It wouldn't have made it out of port." 

• CaptainEek claimed in her decision draft that AndreJustAndre made "specific edits after an off-wiki blogger requested those edits be made." That, she later clarified, referred to this blog. That contention was so utterly bonkers—even a casual reader knows that I don't "request" edits—that it was rejected by the other arbs. 

• While they did not adopt Captain Eek's wildest claims, most arbs were almost as irresponsible and lazy as she was. The panel's arbitrary decision-making was harshly criticized by other editors in the "talk" page of the proposed decision. On Wikipediocracy, a user pointed to "multiple editors calling out arbcom for conclusions based on incorrect ‘facts,’" and added "They didn’t read the evidence. They just want to be done."

In short, arbcom showed outright favoritism toward pro-Hamas editors by their selective and skewed enforcement of the rules, and proved itself to be a classic "kangaroo court." 

That's not hyperbole. Arbcom fits the dictionary definition of "a court characterized by irresponsible, unauthorized, or irregular status or procedures."

The very fact that I have to refer to a member of Wikipedia's highest tribunal by their juvenile handle shows how utterly broken Wikipedia is. Most arbs, CaptainEek among them, conceal their identities in star-chamber fashion despite the immense power they wield on the site.

 

What these anonymous Wiki-jurists proved in this case is that Wikipedia's highest tribunal is both unwilling and unable to curb highly organized propagandists who infiltrate the site to push pro-Hamas and antisemitic propaganda. 

Their actions prove that they are unserious. The goofy pictures they post of themselves, like the ones CaptainEek posts on her personal Wikipedia page (above) just gild the lily.

And since arbcom is an outright kangaroo court that disregards evidence and behaves without accountability, it is actually an obstacle to improving the site. How can editors oppose the pro-Hamas operatives if they believe arbcom will come swooping down and kick them out without a valid reason?  

Wikipedia's editor-oversight panel is allowed to fester like this for a reason. 

The highly compensated executives of the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the servers, take no responsibility for Wikipedia content because of Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934. 

The Congressional Research Service says that Section 230

generally precludes providers and users from being held liable—that is, legally responsible—for information provided by another person, but does not prevent them from being held legally responsible for information that they have developed or for activities unrelated to third-party content. Courts have interpreted Section 230 to foreclose a wide variety of lawsuits and to preempt laws that would make providers and users liable for third-party content. For example, the law has been applied to protect online service providers like social media companies from lawsuits based on their decisions to transmit or take down user-generated content.

There's a need for that law and it shouldn't be repealed. It protects innocuous websites from unwarranted legal attack. But it can function as a recipe for lack of accountability, and that is not acceptable. 

Section 230 should not apply to Wikipedia.

Pro-Hamas Editors Use 'Wikipedia Lawfare' to Ban Pro-Israel Editors

 

Pro-Hamas editors claim a defunct account is an 'Emmanuel Goldstein' pro-Israel mastermind

Since August I've described how Wikipedia's highest tribunal, its so-called "Arbitration Committee," has been slowly and reluctantly addressing editor misconduct in the "Palestine-Israel" topic area. That effort is finally winding down, and a key part of the pro-Hamas editors' strategy is clear.  

They claim that the main problem in this topic area is not their own behavior, not their "ownership" of articles, not their perversion of Wikipedia's "neutrality" mandate, but widespread, improper pro-Israel editing.

That's right. Your lying eyes deceive. The real problem in articles accusing Israel of genocide and massacres etc etc is excessive pro-Israel editing due to diabolical use of "sockpupeting," in which villainous pro-Israel people create phony accounts to pad talk page discussions to go in their direction.

The fact that discussions in these articles' talk pages never, ever go in the pro-Israel direction, and the articles themselves are notoriously anti-Israel, is never mentioned when pro-Hamas editors push this line. They portray themselves as heroic "defenders of the Wiki" who are a front line of defense against those horrible people, preventing further damage to Wikipedia, further pro-Israel bias.

This nutty claim is made frequently on the arbcom case "evidence" page, in which prolific pro-Hamas editor "Makeandtoss" posted a chart—arbcom loves charts!—to "prove" that the "actual root causes of problem are sockpuppets who are canvassing, stonewalling, coordinating and disrupting." 

This claim is absurd on its face, for the simple reasons that all the sockpuppets claimed in that chart were caught, and before they were caught absolutely nothing they did had any lasting or even transitory impact on anything. All were new accounts, all outnumbered, all shouted down.

Most genuine sockpuppeting are easy to catch, because Wikipedia used a device called "checkuser" to determine if someone is using computers with the same or similar IP address to create multiple Wikipedia accounts.  

And here's where it gets interesting. If checkuser comes up naught, Wikipedia's pro-Hamas editors have long been able to get accounts banned by claiming that the accounts are editing similar to accounts that were banned a long time ago. This is known as "behavioral evidence." Wikipedia administrators, who are often hostile to Israel themselves, fall for this ruse frequently.

Long-defunct banned pro-Israel accounts, especially one dormant since 2019 known as "Icewhiz," are commonly used for that purpose. 

Icewhiz is frequently accused of contaminating Wikipedia by his voracious Israel advocacy and prolific sockpuppet-making, making that long-banned editor a kind of "Emanuel Goldstein" figure, to be hated by all right-thinking Wikipedians.

The beauty of accusing someone of being an "Icewhiz sock" is that you don't need much evidence. In fact, you can get people banned if the evidence doesn't amount to anything.

Of the 12 accounts cited by Makeandtoss in his chart, nine of which were supposed "Icewhiz socks," all but were two were caught by "behavioral" evidence despite nonexistent or dubious technical evidence. 

For example: Two pro-Israel accounts in the Makeandtoss chart, "UnspokenPassion" and "O.maximov," were blocked as Icewhiz socks in September after a complaint by the anti-Israel editor "Levivich."

He contended that "O.maximov and UnspokenPassion show the same basic POV, similarity of comments, and "drive-by" habit," as "evidenced" by the following horrors:

Israel

• O.maximov ("if the Israeli War of Independence isn't mentioned, then it makes no sense to mention the Nakba")
• UnspokenPassion ("If we include Nakba, we’d have to bring in more narratives, like the Independence War, as mentioned above.")
• This is the only edit UnspokenPassion has made to the talk page, no edits to the article; O.maximov has edited both

Genocide of indigenous peoples

• O.maximov ("We're looking at two groups, both with historical ties to the land, both claiming indigenity.")
• UnspokenPassion ("The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is generally understood as a struggle between two ethnic groups, both laying claim to being indigenous.")
• These are the only edits either account made to that article's talk page. O.maximov made one edit to the article; UnspokenPassion has made no edits to the article.

Palestinian suicide terrorism - an article created by UnspokenPassion

• UnspokenPassion ("... the term 'terrorism' is entirely appropriate (for instance, see examples like Islamic terrorism, Jewish extremist terrorism, etc.).")
• O.maximov ("It is unclear to me why there are calls to remove the term from this article while its usage in the above mentioned articles like Jewish extremist terrorism, Islamic terrorism, and, I will add, Israel and state-sponsored terrorism is accepted.")
• This is the only edit O.maximov has made to this article or its talk page

Based on that nothingburger, the two editors were assumed to be that villain Icewhiz, up to his old tricks. Administrator (and arbitrator) H.J. Mitchell agreed, saying:

I'm reluctant to draw definitive conclusions here but the behaviour is consistent with previous IW socks and CU data shows that both of these accounts are unusually sophisticated in obfuscating their IPs. Both are using proxies and are very careful not to overlap. I'm gonna call this  Likely and block both.

Note that the technical evidence actually does not prove that these editors are the same person, but he ascribes that to them being "unusually sophisticated in obfuscating their IPs." The problem is that "the behaviour is consistent with previous IW [Icewhiz] socks." Which he does not elaborate but apparently refers to the nothingburger quoted above. 

Veteran anti-Israel editor "Sean.hoyland" piled on with a presentation of his own, which he placed in a Google Docs file to nail another pro-Israel editor, ABHammad. (Be careful clicking on that Google Docs file, as it shows your account if you are logged in to Google). ABHammad was subsequently kicked off Wikipedia on the basis of that "evidence."

What's happening here is the Wikipedia counterpart of "lawfare," and they are making the most of it. Pro-Hamas editors are contending in the arbcom case that these sockpuppets, even though they were caught, even though their influence is nil, are just the tip of the iceberg of a massive pro-Israel editing push, and that the topic area is already infected with bogus pro-Israeli accounts.   

In one recent posting, Makeandtoss claims that he has "extremely important new evidence relevant to what I had described as 'systemic and institutional manipulation.'" 

A day later, obviously shaken by the enormity of the crimes he has uncovered, he posted:

I have now emailed the committee my evidence, which unfortunately does indeed indicate extensive state actor involvement, particularly at the highest levels. This evidence can be posted in other WP venues to raise awareness among both editors and admins, but I believe it is particularly relevant for this one, so that preventative action can be taken.

Oh no! Thank heavens for heroes like this, protecting Wikipedia from this scourge. 

Will all that massive pro-Israel sockpuppeting and "manipulation" be curbed?  Will arbcom valiantly fight this horror, this stain on its reputation? Stay tuned.