There's certain individual or group that edited under the name "Icewhiz", was banned, and now operates endless sockpuppet accounts in the topic area to influence Wikipedia's coverage on the Middle East. One of them was an account named "Eostrix", that spent years making clean uncontroversial edits until one day going for adminship.

Eostrix got 99% approval in their request for adminship. But it didn't matter, because an anonymous individual also spent years pursuing Eostrix, assembling evidence, and this resulted in Eostrix's block just days before they became a Wikipedia administrator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investiga...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Com...

It's a useful contrast to a place like Reddit, where volunteer moderators openly admit to spreading terrorist propaganda or operating fake accounts when their original one gets banned. You don't get to do that on Wikipedia. If you try, someone with far too much time on their hands will catch you because Wikipedia doesn't need to care about Daily Active Users and the community cares about protecting a neutral point of view.

Not denying the existence of influence campaigns. There have been several major pro-Palestinian ones recently, which is probably why this letter has been sent. But the only reason you know about them is because Wikipedia openly fights them instead of covering them up. Most social media websites don't care and would rather you don't bring it to their attention. That is why Reddit banned /r/bannedforbeingjewish.

No claims, no evidence. No sources, except "it has come to my attention" and "information received by my office".

This is getting ridiculous. Is there anyone associated with this administration who does not have a record of promoting Russia's positions?

https://www.propublica.org/article/ed-martin-trump-interim-d...

It's always projection with the MAGA crowd

https://emilygorcenski.com/post/on-truth/

""But one of the most significant differences critical for moving from polarization to productivity, is that the Wikipedians who write these articles aren’t actually focused on finding the truth. They’re working for something that’s a little more attainable, which is the best of what we can know right now. "

There is a long legacy of authoritarian regimes attacking curious places, universities, historians, museums, books or any institution that grounds itself in reality which provides you a way to reasonably criticize authoritarian actions. Many authortarian regimes will "purge" as many of the country's intellectuals as they are able.

Wikipedia is absolutely the enemy of this administration and authoritarians everywhere in the world would love to see it's demise or collapse into chaos.

Whether the Wikipedia page for Israel says Gaza is a genocide or not, or that it's an ongoing debate matters. It matters because it influences what people think and therefore what they consent to or what they deem worth fighting for or applying resources to and that goes for just about any issue out there. If you can't read about the suffering that racism has caused, then how bad is racism really? If there are no examples of successful labor movements, then why would you hopelessly start one?

Please donate now to show your support. It's time to fight back against this crap.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A9die

[1] "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_the_man_and_I_will_giv...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/health/nejm-prosecutor-le...

...now where's my ladder..

https://12ft.io/

You guys control the servers, if anything you have the psyop advantage.

However, the librarians are very vocal about self determination and keeping wikimedia out of important decisions.

However they'll be worlds apart on history, economics, anthropology, sexuality, politics, previous leaders and so on.

Our Wikipedia is the world seen through the eyes of the New York Times + Harvard. Our Wikipedia is probably correct about Physics, botany...

How dare they? Don't they know that's our job Mr Putin?

Yo dawg, I heard you like to appeal to conspiracy theory types...

Why would someone introduce lots of seemingly indiscernible edits into important articles, fully knowing that the edit history is available to anyone who wants to look?

It would make more sense to spread propaganda in a place that doesn't fully track it.

Unless the exposition of such tracking edits as an obvious smoking gun exists to be staged to look like someone else did it.

Of course, it could all be to trigger a recursive conspiracytheorypocallipse that further erodes any belief in community generated content.

What should we do, Master Anakin? There's too many of them conspiracies.

Wikipedia could also stop operating as a 501c3 and incorporate.

But the typical out for these organizations are that they are not responsible for what people post. I don’t feel like that is very responsible. They already have moderation on the platform.

But Wikimedia/pedia can’t claim 501c3 status. It could spin off the political content/controversial into 501c4 which has more leeway. It can tighten editorial controls, emphasize first amendment, look at Section 230. Publish reports showing how misinformation is identified and corrected, partner with fact checking organizations.

But also if they cannot police their own content without an unpaid army of volunteers then herein lies the bigger issue with their model.

Well that is apparently very false when it comes to american politics and jewish matters. On the positive side, for other countries and languages the biases are very different and quite wide ranging.

Maybe this threat by the US government is a good thing, it will force wikipedians to take their head out of the sand and go back to wide-ranging NPOV , and remove all those judgemental adjectives and epithets that are thrown around in so many articles.

I don't believe the idea of wikipedia can be threatened because it is a really resilient idea across political lines and there are billions who will want to recreate it.

Me and Gemini actually found a major fault on one politician's wikipage, but decided there is no change correcting that, because there is no "trusted source".

And the reason for that with government controlled media monopoly it is easy remove any references, only hearsay remains.