On July 25, after a couple of months of debate, the Wikipedia entry “Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza” was changed to “Gaza genocide.” This was done despite the fact that the International Court of Justice in the Hague has not made an official ruling on the matter, in the wake of South Africa’s petition to the court alleging that Israel is committing or facilitating genocide in Gaza.

The Los Angeles-based Jewish Journal, which followed the Wikipedia discussion and vote, wrote that the editors who voted on this change claimed to be relying on an academic consensus based on statements of experts on genocide, human rights, human rights law and Holocaust historians.

  • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I don’t know if you’ve ever read through a debate on a contentious and well attended topic on Wikipedia, but they tend to differ to experts, academics, and reliable sources, as it’s a Wikipedia policy (the easiest policy to appeal to in fact).

    Sounds like this was more than one ‘point of fact’ or on lone editor at play. Perhaps we read to different things here:

    The Los Angeles-based Jewish Journal, which followed the Wikipedia discussion and vote, wrote that the editors who voted on this change claimed to be relying on an academic consensus based on statements of experts on genocide, human rights, human rights law and Holocaust historians.

    Sounds like they used high quality reliable sources to define the characterisation of the events. Which is a very Wikipedia approach to take.