Israel National News - Arutz Sheva
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2:04 · 114K views · Aug 18, 2010
A short news segment from Arutz Sheva about a course on pro-Israel editing of Wikipedia.
HN cites it, mostly critically, as evidence of organized political efforts to influence Wikipedia content.
5 comments from Hacker News
Sure there is a lot of spam but there is also a lot of political pressure to influence politically controversial articles. This rather old video was an eye opener for me. this video
To be fair, the JIDF has been astroturfing Wikipedia for far longer: this video Who knows where the balance actually lies, but it's not just pro-Palestinians doing the propaganda here. Israel has engaged in far more propaganda than pretty much everyone (except maybe the United States) since the hasbara policy was first established following the public image fallout from the Sabra and Shatila massacre. [LINK]
There is a lot of demand to control the narrative on political articles. Some political groups [1][2] have mobs of Wikipedia editors trying to influence what you read. I'd be surprised if they didn't have a few moderator roles otherwise a lot of their work would be reverted. [1] this video [2] [LINK]
You sign an NDA when you take the job. Going public often opens up the possibility for lawsuits. Plus, a lot of these things are already publicly known, but most people don't think that it affects them: [LINK] this video [LINK]
I like how Wikipedia is referred to as the world's encyclopedia, while stuff like this goes on: this video