Talk:Gaza genocide/Archive 22#Statement from Jimbo Wales

I believe that Wikipedia is at its best when we can have reasonable discussion rooted in a commitment to write articles that reflect a neutral point of view. I believe that's especially important on highly difficult or contentious topics.

I was asked point-blank in a high profile media interview about this article, and I answered with transparency and honesty: this article fails to meet our high standards and needs immediate attention.

As many of you will know, I have been leading an NPOV working group and studying the issue of neutrality in Wikipedia across many articles and topic areas including “Zionism”. While this article is a particularly egregious example, there is much more work to do. It should go without saying that I am writing this in my personal capacity, and I am not speaking on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation or anyone else!

I assume good faith of everyone who has worked on this Gaza “genocide” article. At present, the lede and the overall presentation state, in Wikipedia’s voice, that Israel is committing genocide, although that claim is highly contested. This is a violation of WP:NPOV and WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV that requires immediate correction. Remember: "This policy is non-negotiable, and the principles upon which it is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, nor by editor consensus."

A neutral approach would begin with a formulation such as: “Multiple governments, NGOs, and legal bodies have described or rejected the characterization of Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.”

Be bold and start editing (WP:BOLD). Move from debate to concrete improvements immediately.

Assume good faith (WP:AGF). Avoid personalizing disagreements. Focus only on text and sources.

Attribute, don’t assert (WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV). The lead and body must not declare a legal conclusion. Present who says what, with attribution and dates.

Balance by due weight (WP:UNDUE). Include significant, high-quality sources from all sides—governments, courts, NGOs, commentators. No side should speak in Wikipedia’s own voice.

Use the best sources (WP:RS / WP:V). Prefer primary official statements and major secondary coverage. Avoid synthesis (WP:SYN / WP:NOR).

Clarify scope. Separate factual reporting on conduct and casualties from legal characterization. Editors with strong, policy-compliant sources who have felt sidelined are welcome. Your participation is needed now. Editors are reminded this article falls under the Arab–Israeli conflict topic area; all participation must comply with the corresponding editing restrictions and civility expectations.

By focusing on verifiable sources and neutrality, we can quickly deliver an article that meets our standards for contentious topics. — Jimbo Wales Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:03, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

It is a bad faith read of the community when suggesting that among the most read and debated articles on the community is poorly done. there has been dozens of hours of discussion and rfcs galore to reach this version of the article and im certain there will be more. Consensus is always evolving but this article represents the latest consensus.

if there is something wrong here, its the WP:1AM assertion that policies arent followed here. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 16:29, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

The rfc that did the change is here. [6] @Beland was the admin who did the close that lead to the sentence in dispute. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 16:37, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

It isn't bad faith at all. The wiki way is to always be open to reconsidering, particularly on important issues. Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:10, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Assuming good faith on my part, if there is a suggestion that the lead should be changed and that more wikipedians need to have a say on the lede, the community (or at least I) implores you to start a bold rfc to see if consensus has changed. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 17:24, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Stating something is poorly done is not bad faith that is just stating his view. Good faith does not require everyone to like every single thong done on wiki and think it is done well. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 18:54, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that "poorly done" is the accusation here. He claims that there is a lack of neutrality in this article (which I can see). This is to be expected of what is probably the most debated-on article on the English Wikipedia at present. OmegaAOLtalk? 06:57, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

GPTZero says "We are highly confident this text was AI generated" (98%) about the "What I'm asking for" part. Which is probably a prominent example of how GPTZero can sometimes be wrong about this. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 16:29, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Indeed, GPTZero is wrong. Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:07, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 17:17, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

GPTZero probably digested several thousand revisions of [[User talk:Jimbo Wales]] as part of its training. ;) Andreas JN466 23:24, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps you should explain in detail what you, in your personal capacity, think is wrong with the article so that your suggestion can be debated. If you would like the characterization of the article changed, you need to justify and 'sell' the change. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 16:32, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Multiple groups and bodies have described or rejected the characterization of the earth as flat. That's just science!Dan Murphy (talk) 16:45, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Funny, but I think it's reasonable to insist that @Jimbo Wales: defend and state his positions in his own words without expecting the community to lobby on his behalf, as he's said he's in his personal role and wrote, At present, the lede and the overall presentation state, in Wikipedia’s voice, that Israel is committing genocide, although that claim is highly contested.

Great... then he can do the same thing any of us have to do. Show your homework and argue your position. Station and rank mean nothing. He's just an editor. No offense. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 16:48, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Let's start with this quote from WP:NPOV: "Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts. If different reliable sources make conflicting assertions about a matter, treat these assertions as opinions rather than facts, and do not present them as direct statements." Surely you aren't going to argue that the core assertion of the article is not seriously contested? Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:14, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Certainly it is, I'd be a lunatic to dispute that. Anyone would. The question is, for anyone who follows WP:NPOV... what's the WP:WEIGHT of that sort of contention? Governments come and go. They are only arbiters of their own opinions at the time of that opinion. They are not and never are arbiters of historical fact. They've even tried with guns. It doesn't work. So we have to collaboratively weight out what the NPOV answer is.

We did: Talk:Gaza genocide/RfC on first sentence, 21 September 2025

So, again, respectfully: you want this change, you need to roll up your own sleeves, and then be prepared to join the leaderboard for most comments on this talk page. I hope you have the next few weeks of vacation time to spend on it. Good luck. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 17:19, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

It's very unfortunate if it turns out that joining the leaderboard for comments is the only way. Rather, I think it more likely and more worthwhile, if people assume good faith, take a look at the sources, and find a path to neutrality. This will involve recognizing that arguments that some reliable sources and major parties in the glboal debate can be conveniently ignored, and that to do so means taking sides in a way that is inconsistent with our duties under NPOV. Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:27, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

This will involve recognizing that arguments that some reliable sources and major parties in the glboal debate can be conveniently ignored, and that to do so means taking sides in a way that is inconsistent with our duties under NPOV.

To be clear... WP:NPOV does not allow for or even mandate that we include or hold up all sources as equal on a topic, and never has. That determination is part of NPOV, as it lines up with WP:WEIGHT.

We don't even seriously argue some Robert F. Kennedy Jr. type anti-vaccination positioning anywhere, for instance, or for moon landing hoax or flat earth theories. Those are extreme examples, but even on the spectrum of those to the Gaza genocide, the same basic formula and calculus applies. The conclusion of an article under WP:NPOV on anything contentious is always inconvenient for someone. That's neither a bug nor a feature. It's a mirrored reflection of consensus reality. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 17:34, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

It is correct to say that we are not required to hold up all sources as equal - there are fringe sources in most topics and it would be silly to include them. But it is also correct to say that just because some people think some relevant parties (the government of Germany let's say) are getting it wrong, we can just ignore them. Our views on the matter aren't what's important - relevant views which are widely reported in quality media have to be acknowledged and attributed, whether we agree with them or not.

It's sort of a straw man argument to compare "moon landing hoax" to the topic here. Of course no one is arguing that we should treat the moon landing being a hoax as a serious contender. Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:42, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

The German government is an inherently political body, not a neutral, objective or academic source. They say all sorts of things for political reasons, some of which they know to be incorrect. Support for Israel is a central tenet of German politics, so much so that Merkel and all subsequent Chancellors have declared it to be *the* German raison d'état. So yeah, the German government would say water isn't wet if it felt it had to say that in Israel's defense. -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:21, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

There is no such thing as a neutral objective source in this field. All of the academics engaging in this debate are partisan in one way or another, because it’s an inherently political question, although some might have more nuanced positions than others. Reliabile isn’t the same as unbiased, and peer-reviewed isn’t the same as neutral. BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:58, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

we should not mix fact and opinion here @Thucydides411:. merkel coined, and german politicians said and continue saying "Die Sicherheit Israels ist deutsche Staatsräson." which translates to "the security of israel is raison d etat". it is fact, as you can google it and find merkel saying it. that his can be translated to "support for israel" is your opinion. merkel especially was very diplomatic and very clear at the same time (which is my opinion), her and netanyahus relation is reported to not be the best (can be googled, the subsequent video says so). fact is 2018 palestinians trying to prevent israel settling carried merkel posters. --ThurnerRupert (talk) 05:37, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The idea that Staatsräson means unconditional support for Israel is not an "opinion." Anyone who follows German politics to any extent knows this. The German government has extreme difficulty condemning even the most clear-cut, egregious war crimes that Israel commits. They'll be asked point blank about the murder of Palestinian journalists and either essentially say "no comment" or start talking about October 7th, as if that justified murdering journalists. They are the absolute last people whose opinion we should be consulting on genocide in Gaza. -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:35, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

But what about RFK JR? He's the US secretary of health and human services, so he should be considered a relevant party in matters of health, science, and medicine, representing the US government. Should his views be equally weighted against academic sources, e.g. on the causes of autism? Truthnope (talk) 08:45, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Academics in the hard sciences are generally more unassailable than those in the social sciences. RM (Be my friend) 09:09, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

But what makes the views of governments significant in matters of the social sciences? Jimbo gives the example of the German government as being a relevant party whose views should be considered. What makes the views of governments necessarily significant in the social sciences, while being safely ignored in the hard sciences if they disagree with mainstream academic opinion? Truthnope (talk) 10:05, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

What makes academics with known anti-Zionist biases predating this war, as I assure you many of the academics who believe it's a genocide are, any more reliable than the German government. RM (Be my friend) 11:25, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Assuming this applies to all the academics who have called it a genocide, per the categorisation of the Israeli government, the difference is that such academics are experts in the field, and have published their analysis in peer-reviewed academic journals, which is a higher standard than a government issuing a statement, especially when it involves the staatsraeson of Germany. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 11:38, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

What makes any academics reliable, if somebody could accuse them of having biases? There exist people who would say that climate scientists have are biased towards exaggerating the effects of climate change to further their careers (I do not believe this). I'm sure there are politicians and business leaders who would say this. Anyway, this doesn't answer my question on why a government would inherently a reliable source in genocide studies, but also safely ignorable in natural science. Who is a reliable source in genocide studies? Who isn't biased? Truthnope (talk) 19:50, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

What makes any academics reliable, if somebody could accuse them of having biases?

The short answer is, the peer review process. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 20:05, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I personally don't consider elected officials a good source at all, except for showing that government's position on an issue. We want a consensus of academics (and, to a lesser extent, journalists), not politicians. QuicoleJR (talk) 16:54, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

It's actually fascinating: your take is the theoretical as-written/created idealized version of Wikipedia, and mine is based on precedent, practice and custom over decades. Our articles would be quite different if we'd stayed strongly as originalist as you frame this. It's a curious mirror of the matter of stare decisis and precedent in American courts. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 17:47, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Sure - as a practical matter of course having solid policy written down clearly doesn't magically make it happen. I think we agree on that. Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:43, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

No one needs to join a leaderboard of comments to get a change they can state their view argue it for a while then leave. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 18:57, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Highly contested, sure. Seriously contested? No. The contesting amounts to WP:MANDY and public relations by the governments participating in and facilitating the genocide. The highest quality secondary sources agree. Cambial — foliar❧ 17:25, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

That isn't how neutrality works. It is not up to us to adjudicate the matter and take sides. Ever. It's our job to report neutrally on the debate. Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:28, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

It is how neutrality works. We give different weight to sources based on their provenance, contra your claim below that academic consensus is not the most important factor to consider. We are not an outlet for non-academics who are not experts to launder their public relations exercises and give them credence that they otherwise lack. Cambial — foliar❧ 17:48, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Like -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:36, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Like - this is key. -Darouet (talk) 01:41, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Like VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 13:08, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

It's not Wikipedia's job to determine whether a statement is PR or not. We can suspect the motives of governments, and we can also suspect the motives of self-appointed human rights groups whose neutrality is not always assured. As of now we have some academics saying it's genocide, others saying it isn't, a vote from the International Association of Genocide Scholars that as it turns out was letting anyone join for a fee, and reports from NGOs who are not the final arbiters. We should take a closer look at some of these claims when they apparently argue for an expanded definition of genocide simply to include Gaza into it. That does present an issue. We also have to take the opinions of governments into account, as well as the fact that the ICJ has not ruled on this issue yet. This is a contentious debate that is far from over. It's simply not appropriate to state in Wikivoice that it's genocide. RM (Be my friend) 18:25, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

argue for an expanded definition of genocide simply to include Gaza into it^{[citation needed]} But I shall take a wild shot in the dark that you are referring to the Amnesty Report, which to put simply, is a flat out lie about what the report actually says. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 18:36, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

The war in Gaza has also prompted an unprecedented push by dozens of states that have asked the ICJ to apply the genocide convention more liberally so as to make it “more effective” at preventing mass violence, said William Schabas, a professor of international criminal and human rights law.--Guardian, 2024.

Final decisions in the suits are not expected for several years, but they’ve already altered an ongoing debate about whether the definition of genocide ought to be updated for the 21st century... The Genocide Convention effectively enshrined this paradoxical understanding of the Shoah and established a nearly impossible bar for genocidal intent based on its example. As a result, international courts have rarely recognized more recent mass killings as instances of the crime, and peoples seeking to have their suffering recognized as such have been bitterly disappointed. The suits brought by South Africa and Nicaragua aim to challenge this state of affairs and make the Genocide Convention the tool for prevention and protection that Lemkin wanted it to be... The genocide scholar A. Dirk Moses puts it even more stridently. “The broader view of genocide is the more accurate one,” he says. “The law is designed to allow states to hide, but ordinary people are not fooled.”... There is also momentum building behind a new convention that would patch the loophole that the Genocide Convention exposed.--New York Times, 2024.

The main difficulty, as Dirk Moses highlights, is that “the genocide frame” is “fundamentally limited by the concept’s legal parameters.” Yet, these parameters are not necessarily fixed. Admittedly, the definition of genocide is “narrow,” the judicial approach to interpreting it has been “relatively conservative,” and judges have hitherto declined to broaden it through judicial interpretation (as opposed to amending the Genocide Convention). Nevertheless, law is a space for political contestation, and legal rules are interpreted and applied within a political context against a background of normative assumptions. This contestation includes interpretive choices and disagreements, such as whether judges should resort to a literal reading of the Genocide Convention or focus on drafters’ intent (e.g. regarding the inclusion of ethnic cleansing short of physical destruction within the definition). “Reliance upon the drafting history,” writes William Schabas, “tends to freeze the provision, preventing it from evolving so as to take into account historical developments and changed attitudes.” In the context of Gaza, states like Ireland seek to broaden the definition to include blocking humanitarian aid, arguing that “restricting food and other essentials in Gaza may constitute genocidal intent.” More generally, political mobilizations have undermined “longstanding rules of genocide gatekeeping,” writes Darryl Li, and may thus lead to “extricating genocide from a desiccated legalism that serves the status quo and injecting it with an explicitly anticolonial politics instead.” -Journal of Genocide Studies, 2025.

The problem is that – in the absence of an admission or a bundle of incriminating documents – then such special intent can only be inferred from the facts if it is the only reasonable inference that could be made. Should the definition of genocide be expanded to cover a greater range of protected groups, either by amending the genocide convention or by creative judicial interpretation? Should it be easier to infer the existence of genocidal intent from a pattern of facts? Both are important questions. Yet, until they are answered in the affirmative, it will remain difficult in law to apply the label of genocide even to the most egregious of mass killings. The labels of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” are more easily applied, but the “crime of crimes” remains elusive.--The Conversation, 2025.

BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:50, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Schabas is new to me, though in that piece Schabas is not arguing for a broadened definition himself, and is stating that some states want the convention applied more liberally, which doesn't in itself necessarily suggest that the states want to change the definition. On Moses, and subsequently in Sultany's work building on him, he doesn't seek the expansion of the Convention, but instead the enshrinement of new crimes that may be more effective at preventing genocide. On Sultany where he makes claims of Ireland, not that my opinion as an editor counts for much in countering his assessment, but, restricting food and essentials is something that is already covered in current Genocide Convention (2c), but not something that has been adjudicated in court yet. But again here, it is not the relevant specialist/expert making the claim that it should be broadened to include Gaza, but reporting on states that seem to want to. Similarly with Sweeney, he makes two comments, one on determining intent, which isn't really about "broadening" the definition, and the one that does relate to broadening the definition is about including groups that are not currently covered (national, ethnical, racial or religious group), and Palestinians as a group can be counted as one of those four potentially, so there is not a need to expand the definition in this manner to cover Gaza, unlike legal scholars and lawyers who argue that political, gender, or sex groups should be included.

All that being said, Schabas, Moses, and Sultany, who have all published pieces where they argue that Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide, are still perfectly good sources to include from such pieces. To argue that they should now be disregarded on the pieces you highlight, as an example, is the same logic used when news outlets lied about the Amnesty Report. The Amnesty Report detailed the short-comings of the Convention and pointed to the history and active contemporary of criticism against the Convention, which was reported as the report "inventing a new definition of genocide", where after highlighting such context the report then only details how the evidence they collected supports the determination of genocide per the Genocide Convention, that is the legal definition of genocide. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:14, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Your comment is why I want specific citations for the statement, as these are things we need to discuss, but just waving broadly to the notion means it could really be any of dozens upon dozens of potential things published over the last 60ish years. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:17, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

You write that "It's not Wikipedia's job to determine whether a statement is PR or not." Indeed not. We do give significantly less weight, if any credence at all, to statements by participants in the genocide, such as the governments of UK, US, and Israel. Human rights groups are not participants in the genocide. The consensus of editors, about the state of the academic consensus, was already decided by a lengthy RfC. This comment section in response to Jimmy is not the place to relitigate the consensus of editors. Cambial — foliar❧ 18:45, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

The Uk gov and US gov have not been stated to be participants in what the article calls a genocide it says they are POTENTIALLY complicit. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 19:03, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

No, participants in the alleged genocide. This is about whether it in fact is one. Given that the founder of Wikipedia himself has basically publicly stated that this article is deeply flawed and doesn't meet Wikipedia's standards, I do in fact believe we should relitigate it. RM (Be my friend) 20:39, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales is a co-founder of Wikipedia. The other co-founder Larry Sanger also has various opinions on the current state of Wikipedia but they do not override community processes either. NICHOLAS NEEDLEHAM (talk) 19:33, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Circular logic. --notJackhorkheimer ^{(talk / contribs)} 20:32, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Like - True RealStanger43286 (Let's talk!) 06:28, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

 Dislike - This represents a poor understanding of what neutrality is and what it requires. Larry Sanger (talk) 17:25, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

You posts here demonstrate that you, unfortunately, have no understanding of what neutral means. Imagine if we applied your twisted logic to other contentious topics. Your post is a shocking for one who is familiar with the norms of Wikipedia and the mechanics--well developed at this point--of dealing with contentious topics. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 22:25, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

It seems incredibly brash to assume that all editors, regardless of race, religion, or opinion, who believe in the ideas of wP:NPOV and reject the incredible bold, almost WP:RGW attempt by editors to identify the horrors in Gaza as an entirely factual, 100 percent 'genocide' (when various reliable and secondary sources dispute this claim) as being "public relations" of the governments of Israel/the U.S./whoever. Cheers, atque supra! Fakescientist8000 21:58, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

The community painstakingly documented the opinions of experts over almost 2 years and came to the conclusion through a well-attended RfC that there is overwhelmingly consensus that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. You have presented no evidence to the contrary so far and have not engaged with either the sources or process used to arrive at that conclusion. So yes, I would argue that the core assertion of the article is not seriously contested. EvansHallBear (talk) 00:14, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Jimbo, this current state of affairs was decided by a heavily attended request for comment that was closed by a respected admin. [7] You of all people should know that the ideas of "neutrality" and "bias" are subjective, from the complaints you've been hearing from American conservatives. The question is, why should the opinions of the largely impartial UN and human rights scholars be weighed equally to the obviously partisan opinions of commentators and governments? You are allowed to disagree with the consensus of the Wikipedia community, but it is patronising to scorn the community as being "wrong" for following the opinions of the UN, genocide scholars and major human rights organisations. You can claim that you're "just doing this in a personal capacity", but your invoking of being a member of the WMF's "NPOV working group" give the impression that this might be somehow at the behest of the WMF. If you don't want to be asked hard questions on your commercial book tour, you don't have to do them. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:47, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

"The question is, why should the opinions of the largely impartial UN and human rights scholars be weighed equally to the obviously partisan opinions of commentators and governments?" - Because that's what neutrality demands. We have major governments, analysts, NGOs etc, debating the issue. Our job, as Wikipedians, is not to take sides in that debate but to carefully and neutrally document it. "Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them." Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:17, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia has never, ever treated all voices as equal, nor does policy demand we do. If we did, the Earth article would state that Earth's shape is under debate. But we don't do that because scholarly consensus is that Earth is roughly spherical. Instead, flat eartherism is presented as what it is: a fringe movement without scientific backing.

The Gaza genocide is less clear than Earth's shape, but that doesn't change it isn't policy to pretend all sides in a debate are always equal. Cortador (talk) 18:35, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Comparing the considered statements of multiple national governments, well-known political analysts and others as dismissable in an issue of global political importance as the claims of flat-earthers is pretty clearly not a very defensible position. Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:51, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Well, the American government is currently asserting that vaccines cause autism, should we update the article on vaccines then? Ita140188 (talk) 20:38, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Ita140188, this is is a false equivalence. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 20:57, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

It's really not. Their point is we don't "teach the controversy" on Wikipedia. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 21:07, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

How is that a false equivalence? Governments are generally not reliable sources, especially when it comes to things they have a stake on Ita140188 (talk) 06:43, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Please change "Gas" to Gaza. Assuming good faith means me assuming you don't mean "Gas". Zachary Klaas (talk) 23:41, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

The previous version of the article did no such thing; it merely attributed in the text the strong assertions that the crisis was widely regarded as a genocide rather than stating it as absolute fact. For what it's worth I am strongly anti-Trump and still agree that the current wording is not in line with our neutral point of view policy; I also wouldn't jump to the conclusion that Jimbo is doing this to appease someone. Passengerpigeon (talk) 10:31, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

History is riddled with governments and NGOs denying atrocities. To the contrary, NPOV requires that we be discerning in weighing opinions. Obviously it is very difficult to work out NPOV on highly controversial topics in an information space awash with propaganda, but this is what all the RFCs on this topic have been for. It feels very improper for the WMF to be intervening here due to political pressure, even if you are ostensibly acting as an individual. StereoFolic (talk) 19:51, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Would you give Flat Earthers equal weight on an article about Earth then by that logic? GarethBaloney (talk) 00:50, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Dear @Jimbo Wales, unfortunately, after volunteering for about 15 years in Wikipedia I have stopped the majority of my contributions. I, as the majority of other Israelis, served in the IDF. I, as the majority of Israelis and Jews am a Zionist. Wikipedia unfortunately now decided that I genocide and attempt grabbing as much land with the least amount of Palestinians. It doesn't matter what or how my life has been, it doesn't matter what my opinions are. No matter how good I will do, how many Palestinian friends I'll have or how many Palestinian lives I've saved, Wikipedia decided I genocide (with intent). The reason I have stopped my contributions is because after 15 years Wikipedia had a net-negative effect on my life - from now on, the project I helped build, is actively defaming me and my friends for life. If Wikipedia will decide that I'm 50 years old, that's what everyone will know. The truth no longer matters and the consensus (which usually sums up to a numerical vote) is used far too often for political reasons. After fighting for years on neutrality of articles, things that are completely obvious for any other country need to be fought for in the case of Israel. Even unrelated things such as the list of inventions was completely removed with specific remarks and references of Wikipedia policies to a standard not held in articles of any other country. If Israel invented the plastic drippers, the first response is "irrigation existed since ancient China". In other countries a different taste of carbonated drink like Fanta counts as an invention. The extra scrutiny when it comes to anything is obviously in by itself a strong NPOV issue, but we in Israel are few and when it comes to a vote we will almost always lose. As for articles, I've got used to the fact that if a media outlet will be against this common consensus, it will be marked as unreliable, and after years of battles I couldn't stay any longer. The sentiment that was given here "to be in the high score of comments" is exactly what decides for the truth, and we are far fewer, even without the repeated cases of canvassing. As for solving the situation, the policies are the same yet the end result shows different - without some kind of drastic change, I don't think Wikipedia will be the same. As a side note, I'm used to scrolling to Wikipedia pre October 7th - whenever I enter an article, I just go straight to view it before 10.2023 and in many cases it is much more neutral and accurate. Bar Harel (talk) 01:38, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

It is unfortunate that you feel this way, but, speaking as somebody with a jewish heritage myself, we do have available very reliable opinion poll statistics available which state an extremely strong support for extreme war crimes by the Israeli population, not just its government, which I find extremely depressing, especially given that I believe in "Never again means never again for anybody," and that people with a legacy of the Holocaust should know that better than anybody. David A (talk) 07:45, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

That poll is depressing indeed, but does not have anything to do with IDF actions. The IDF can commit war crimes even with no support for them and can be completely within international law even with full support calling for genocide. You have an alarming support for releasing Elias Rodriguez, the guy who murdered two inside the Jewish museum - does it mean that he is getting released? Noise is noise and neither the IDF nor our judicial system work based on noise. Bar Harel (talk) 12:57, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

There is an issue of the IDF having broad public support for its war crimes. And, it's not like the IDF are aliens from another planet. They are representative of a certain segment of Israeli society. JasonMacker (talk) 22:39, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I wouldn't say broad. Within every community you have rotten apples, more so during battle, but if you're wondering how it is on the ground - we find the claim completely ridiculous. We know who we're fighting, and it's not the Palestinian people. I can go at lengths in detail but as genocide requires intent that claim does not even pass the first barrier. I really don't care about the statements of our politicians from the far right as on the ground it de facto has little effect - we call Ben Gvir "Minister of TikTok". I don't really care about scholars who claim that my colleagues "enjoy" or "intent" or whatever based on numbers or based on whatever metric they use, and when the majority of them are on one side of the political spectrum you realize it's a political issue. Our job is not to resolve political issues. Bar Harel (talk) 10:38, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

We know who we're fighting, and it's not the Palestinian people.

The fact that the IDF has destroyed virtually all civilian infrastructure in Gaza and killed a minimum of 20,000 Palestinian children tells a different story. We're getting into "clean Wehrmacht" territory here. -Thucydides411 (talk) 10:59, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Can you concede that maybe you are too close to this? You are right it's not our job to resolve political issues, that's why we seek academic and international organizations consensus, and you may not care for their opinions, that's fine, but they are used in all sorts of articles, are we going to dismiss the UN and Amnesty international in all articles or just this one? What about Holocaust scholars? Do their Holocaust studies become irrelevant if they called Gaza a genocide?! I'm sure you and some of the people around you don't feel that intent but there is such thing as manufacturing consent, and your government might be manipulating you to make you accept their actions are less intentional, and of course if you have family or friends in the army you don't believe they are involved, but genocide is systemic, it's top down so what the politicians say and do matters! Scholars and outside organizations are better situated to see these actions in a historical context, contrast them with other genocides, what the leaders said and how the regular citizens got along with it. The metrics they use aren't made up, they reflect historical precedent, because with genocide the aim is to spot the warning signs before it's complete , before you and the people on the ground come to that realization, the signs might already be obvious to experts, hence why their opinion matters. Tashmetu (talk) 11:07, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I recently saw this documentary where a journalist was interviewing people in Israel about genocide in Gaza. I was shocked to hear their response. They are living in a bubble, only hearing Israeli media - they do not understand whats going on. They also have lots of pain and anger and revenge. Cinaroot (talk) 08:02, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I've experienced journalists going around Israeli markets interviewing random people. Somehow they always cut whoever didn't give them an answer good enough for their partisan viewership. "Reasonable answers" are usually bad for rating. The last Guardian journalist I saw walking around "happened to come across" the manager of Betselem, the most radical left organization in Israel probably, who told him how much we genocide. Go to right wing channels suddenly you'll see all left is bad and right are saints. Left wing suddenly the same just the other way around. Bar Harel (talk) 10:46, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I've seen that Guardian report, nothing in it suggests he just happened across the manager of Betselem. I went back and checked they are clearly sitting down for an interview. If anything you should be grateful for that journalist seeking her out or exhaustingly looking for any anti- genocide activists at the demonstrations, he's trying to highlight you guys aren't a monolith and you don't all support the genocide, the fact that you are upset with that is concerning. The Guardian isn't out to get you, you just aren't giving your allies much to work with they have to look hard for it. Tashmetu (talk) 11:17, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I think B'Tselem is something Israel can be proud of, another way to be pro-Israel. They stubbornly continue to do amazing work documenting reality to try to make things better. Sean.hoyland (talk) 11:42, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but who here decided that you personally have committed genocide? Literally nobody, unless you're intending this to be some sort of statement where you're admitting that you've taken part in that event. This whole statement is ridiculous, ignores the fact that the majority of academic scholarship deems this event a genocide, and whatever the last part at attempting more victimization is. 𐩣𐩫𐩧𐩨 Abo Yemen (𓃵) 10:33, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

As has been tried to explain to you on the relevant article page for Israeli inventions and discoveries, it is not anti-Israel/anti-Zionist to argue that the list was poorly curated and remove things that were not inventions or discoveries but instead improvements in performance on pre-existing items and technologies. The list as it has previously existed would be more aptly titled "List of things created and developed in Israel" as opposed to inventions and discoveries. So, to use the fact people tried to make the article actually fit the scope of the title as evidence of POV pushing (as you claimed on that talk page) and NPOV issues here, is rather silly. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:09, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Do me a favor, different types of bread count as an invention in other countries because of their shape. More silly than the NPOV issues here are the fact that we're being told what is our intent, like we're being told what is our favorite ice cream taste. I've seen dozens of rubbish reports from the UN, last one I gave to ChatGPT to find logical faults after I stopped counting. Bar Harel (talk) 10:56, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The last one you gave up your facultative abilities and asked a statistics engine to generate some text. It's nice to know I'm engaging with someone who doesn't give these topics the due effort required to discuss them on Wikipedia. Now knowing this, I can choose to ignore your further comments as coming from an unserious person. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 12:40, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

This is a blatant personal attack, and this conversation has gotten way off the appropriate topic for this talk page, which is improvements to the Gaza genocide article. Please stop or talk about something more productive. -- Beland (talk) 17:55, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

A person who admits to using an LLM for their assessments, is not taken serious by the community, and so I will follow such community precedent. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 18:15, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Its fine to criticize LLM usage, I strongly agree with that. But that is a clear personal attack. ← Metallurgist (talk) 04:08, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Quite used to it unfortunately. Bar Harel (talk) 09:16, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

This does not concern article content. -- Beland (talk) 09:25, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: Your assertion that neutrality means treating all sides of the debate with equal weight is frankly concerning. Some sources are quite simply more neutral and accurate than others. There's a reason that the pages for Modern flat Earth beliefs, Anti-vaccine activism, and Holocaust denial treat these positions as wrong despite the fact that they are hotly debated topics in modern politics. Not all opinions are valid and I think you know that. ArtemisiaGentileschiFan (talk) 00:54, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

ArtemisiaGentileschiFan: that is not what Jimbo is saying, although his response could have been better worded. He says that major governments, analysts, NGOs etc, are debating the issue. The most reliable of reliable sources are not in agreement about the issue, but this article is, which is the problem. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:01, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales please tell me if I have mis-represented what you are trying to say. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:01, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

and what makes you think governments, who have to protect international relations and political stability first before they can be caught saying tough shit out loud, are reliable or valuable in serious appraisal of this genocide? BarntToust 07:05, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Don't ask me. I'm not Jimmy Wales. That was his opinion. Although, you did forget about the other two groups mentioned: analysts and NGOs and a third one I'll add, genocide researchers. None of them have reached consensus that this is a genocide. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

That claim does not seem to be factually correct: [8] [9] [10] David A (talk) 07:53, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

There are plenty of opposing voices, though OmegaAOLtalk? 08:01, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

It seems we are starting to re-litigate the recent RFC. -- Beland (talk) 08:03, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Because the ones claiming genocide may not be entirely impartial? One prominent scholar who characterizes this as genocide is Martin Shaw , who has been arguing that the 1948 war was genocide since 2010. In that context it's pretty clear that someone like that was always going to accuse Israel of genocide in this war. Likewise NGO reports have been arguing for an expanded definition of genocide, arguing that the current one is too narrow. Sorry but we can't assume that these are fully impartial pieces of analysis coming the the conclusion that this is genocide as opposed to people who want to noticeably expand the scope of the crime of genocide. RM (Be my friend) 18:34, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

This is correct and yet I would not say, for example, that we could safely ignore or suppress the commentary of someone like Martin Shaw. I'm not sure if we actually quote him at the moment but if we do, we should definitely attribute it and if appropriate, offer some context so the reader can understand what it means.

There are arguments being put forward here that we ought to ignore the considered statements of major governments because they may have some motivation for putting them forward. (See the comment about governments who are said to be "participating in and facilitating the genocie.). I think that's not a compelling argument at all. Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:47, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Why should we 'suppress' the commentary of academic Martin Shaw, who writes about genocide? This is a fairly radical position to take from someone who apparently has not actually read our article, as if you had you would know we do include his commentary, attributed to him. Parabolist (talk) 09:19, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

He was agreeing with you that we should not suppress him. But it very much does matter as it suggests he's not exactly being impartial. We need to stop pretending that academics are unassailable, particularly in the social sciences. People like him are blatantly partisan and very obviously trying to rework the definition of genocide. We need to take that into account when deciding such a weighty issue. It's no small matter for Wikipedia to take sides in such a contentious debate by stating something like this in Wikivoice, and a lot of the discussion enters around academic consensus as if academics in the social sciences are as unassailable as academics in the hard sciences. RM (Be my friend) 10:16, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

This argument boils down to disregarding individuals who are relevant experts in an area because they have previously published conclusions on related events. Should we thus disregard those who say Gaza is not a genocide because they previously said the Nakba, Sabra and Shatilla, etc. were not cases of genocide? -- Cdjp1 (talk) 11:46, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The Nakba was very obviously not a genocide. Sabra and Shatila was more genocidal in nature but the direct perpetrators were not Israeli so Israel's level of complicity can be debated. RM (Be my friend) 19:22, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Could you answer the actual question instead of espousing your irrelevant opinions. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 20:33, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Who has called for any individuals to be disregarded? BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:58, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

As said "boils down to", and while an explicit call has not been made here presently, it has been on the same logic here previously, where we can't/shouldn't use sources from various scholars who specialise in the history of Israel-Palestine and the conflict, because they have accused Israel of various crimes previously in their work and comments. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:24, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree. I also think more context should be given when we use sources like Norman Finkelstein who has also been arguing the same points for his entire career. A lot of the Zionism page uses Finkelstein's work because he is critical of Judaism and Zionism while having a Jewish background. Which in some ways is similar to using Candace Owen's work on a page related to African American history. I don't think either one should be scrubbed from this platform but I think context and opposing POVs is important. Agnieszka653 (talk) 18:16, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I would point out that unlike Owens, Finkelstein also has relevant qualifications beyond having a Jewish background, alongside his work actually being engaged with academically. That being said, I do believe he is used more frequently than is really justified, compared to a wealth of additional sources available in these areas. I do not find it surprising, as he does have regular and large output in the area of more "popular" publications, so the material is easier for people to access than the scholarly literature that is locked behind the likes of Brill. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 18:29, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Your characterization that we're using Norman Finkelstein as a reliable source just "because he is critical of Judaism and Zionism while having a Jewish background" is disingenuous & inaccurate. He's a political scientist with a focus on the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, making him a subject matter expert. He also isn't "critical of Judaism" unless you consider support for the state of Israel as inseparable from Judaism, an idea I object to, being Jewish myself.

That you compare him to Candace Owen, a conspiracy theorist with no relevant expertise in African American history, is rather astounding. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 18:39, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Given the comments of other editors, did you have a specific change of text to propose? -- Beland (talk) 09:16, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

• Wow, the foundation has been getting a lot of pressure about this, hasn't it? Anyway, you know this isn't how we do things. Another RFC, sure. Reviewing the sources, sure. But a big from-above statement in the voice of Jimbo Wales speaking from the heavens to declare what must happen is not how Wikipedia works. The previous RFC was heavily attended, examined a massive range of sources, and was extremely lopsided, with a lot of in-depth policy-based arguments that you're not even attempting to engage here. That doesn't mean that it necessarily got it right, of course, that's why WP:CLOSECHALLENGE and WP:CCC exist, but if it's going to lead to stuff like this then the NPOV working group has gone awry and needs to be disbanded. We absolutely should not be sending anyone the message that they can change article content from above by pressuring the foundation - in the current political climate, that would be deeply harmful to Wikipedia as a whole. --Aquillion (talk) 16:56, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  Agreed. The contents of Wikipedia should never be dictated by outside pressure, especially from something as truth-challenged as the Trump administration. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:59, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  Indeed, outside pressure is irrelevant. NPOV is what matters. This article fails. There is, in the real world, significant dissent from the core idea in the article, including major governments, etc. We say, in WikiVoice, things that are very much hotly contested in many reliable sources and competent authorities. Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:09, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  The Armenian genocide has been consistently denied by the Turkish Government since its inception, which caused many governments, including that of Israel to not recognise the genocide, despite majority support among genocide scholars, see Armenian genocide denial for details. What is your point? Governments are not reliable sources for what constitutes a genocide because their judgement is inherently tainted by geopolitical considerations. Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:14, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  So is all that is requested here that we find and list reliable sources for contrarian voices, and this request is done in an unofficial, rather than head of Wikipedia, capacity due to NPOV quality standards rather than heavy pressure from the Republican United States government or similar? In that case, I think that Cdjp1 assembled a very long list of all professional assessment sources that we can examine for help, but there genuinely is a strong academic consensus regarding that a genocide is taking place according to the list in question and the available statistical surveys. David A (talk) 17:18, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  I found the list. David A (talk) 17:24, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  Genuinely strong academic consensus is debatable, but academics are not the only parties in the debate, nor arguably the most important parties. Our job is not to engage in the dispute, but to describe it. "The neutral point of view does not mean the exclusion of certain points of view; rather, it means including all verifiable points of view which have sufficient due weight." This means that a committee at the UN, or an academic, do not have privileged standing over other important voices. Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:23, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  Well, I suppose that we will have to further investigate the list I linked to above then. David A (talk) 17:26, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  nor arguably the most important parties, so, is this you stating that experts in fields should not be given more weight than the opinions of governments who act on the whim of politics? Shall we start giving weight to the opinion of USHHS under RFK that vaccines as a class of treatment are dangerous, in opposition to the experts who work in the fields of medicine, epidemiology, etc? -- Cdjp1 (talk) 17:35, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  I think that is a very good point. David A (talk) 17:40, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  That's right. Let's dispose of the idea that academics and NGOs are always completely unbiased. It's extremely clear that there's a massive amount of antagonism towards Israel among them. Academics in the social sciences should not be given the same amount of weight as those in the hard sciences. A professor of genocide studies can bias their work in ways that a professor of chemistry cannot. I think the fact that a lot of serious arguments have suggested that the definition of genocide needs to be expanded speaks for itself. We can cite them but we shouldn't automatically assume that these people are totally impartial. RM (Be my friend) 11:34, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

  the definition of genocide needs to be expanded^{[citation needed]} -- Cdjp1 (talk) 11:47, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

  Is your implication here that "academics ... in the hard sciences" should be given more weight on the matters of social science that "academics in the social sciences"? Katzrockso (talk) 03:05, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  Some people do genuinely hold that position and I can understand it. The way people usually explain it is that hard science is less subjective (you can't really argue about the fact that gravity exists because it does). Whereas in the social sciences, things can get more subjective, and you get stuff like the replication crisis. But that's more relevant when it comes to a lot of "pop science" nutritional or psychology claims. Scholarly consensus on historical subjects tends to be a bit more messy, but the reason it's useful to describe that it exists is because there is a fundamental difference between "most people in this field believe this" vs "there is this small minority of people who don't and are very vocal about it". So to me, the comparison is still useful, even if the fields are very different, because we're talking about the fundamental processes behind NPOV here when it comes to WP:FALSEBALANCE. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 04:02, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  I don't think the replication crisis in the social sciences and psychology is because they are more "subjective", it's because the systems being studied are a lot more complicated. There are also a lot of people doing a lot of experiments on a lot of different questions, so not everyone is focused on the same small number of tasks, like say, figuring out what the chemical elements are or what dark energy is. Doing proper double blind placebo-controlled experiments in a field like nutrition is very expensive, and there are not great institutional incentives to publish negative or unoriginal results. -- Beland (talk) 07:31, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  I wasn't arguing that the replication crisis is caused by the more inherent subjectiveness of social sciences. I agree it's because the systems studied are more complicated (as I was saying, you can't really argue about whether or not gravity exists). Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 15:58, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  In the history of natural philosophy and science, people argued a great deal about why, say, solid objects fall when dropped from a height. For a long time people didn't know there was a force that acted equally on all matter, in the same direction. In real life, due to friction, objects fall at different rates. Some matter, like smoke and steam, naturally goes up, not down, when released. The idea of "gravity" is somewhat modern, in the Western world displacing the idea that the four elements have natural positions in the universe, the center of which was at the center of the Earth. The Newtonian idea of gravity was also fraught because it implied an apparently impossible action at a distance without an intervening medium. It took many eons of human existence to figure out useful rules about how to argue about natural phenomena like falling, and even where data should be allowed to come from - some thought an artificial experiment would be an invalid way to learn about nature. (Not a reliable source!) We think of gravity as elementary and obvious because the scientific method has been applied to it and now many arguments have been resolved, but at times in some ways it has been just as fought over as the definition of genocide. Even though we now think of it as an uncomplicated question without the possibility for political bias, it wasn't always. There was a lot of Christian POV pushing in early modern Europe, we might say. One's theory of gravity and related cosmology could have theological and thus social and governmental implications and got people thrown in prison. -- Beland (talk) 09:15, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

  Academics and academic literature are the most important types of output for our purposes, as per WP:SOURCETYPES and WP:SOURCE. Are we ignoring policy when governments disagree now? Cambial — foliar❧ 17:46, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  You may note this policy warns that "Care should be taken with journals that exist mainly to promote a particular point of view," which is certainly the case with many social studies journals in contentious topic areas.

  The Journal of Genocide Research is responsible for an outright majority of journal citations in this article's works cited section (I counted 24 out of 42). It has run a piece from one of its editors, Omar McDoom, alleging "prosemitic bias" in the genocide studies field.

  In other words, the Journal's editorial decisions are guided by someone who believes that Gaza as a genocide is a minority viewpoint - the opposite of consensus! - obliging him to engage in advocacy. PrimaPrime (talk) 15:51, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  That is not at all what he said in the article. I would suggest reading past the title, but the title doesn't even make such an affirmative claim. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 16:06, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

• Major governments aren't reliable sources for statements of fact; they have no reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, no editorial controls, and so on. We could include them for attributed statements, but those statements express the opinions and positions of their leadership, which in turn are informed by their political realities. Would we treat who won the 2020 election in the United States as contested, simply because the current US administration does so? Would we treat climate change and the effectiveness of vaccines and faith healing and evolution and the cause of the Civil War as contested, when major governments take positions on them that are at odds with scholarship? We go by the best available sources, not by the gut reaction of a random man on the street; the fact that this may sometimes produce articles that ordinary people find surprising is a good thing, because our goal is to be an encyclopedia - a place where people can go to find the conclusions from the best available scholarship, not a mirror to their pre-existing assumptions. And at least as far as the previous RFC found, the actual high-quality scholarship on this topic is not divided. --Aquillion (talk) 17:22, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Your definition of neutrality is very flawed. "Neutral" is relative to the body of reliable sources, weighting higher quality sources (ie. scholarship) more. That way it is objective and practical, and hypothetically detached from individual editors' biases. Your definition appears to be "I'm under the impression some people in the world have different opinions on this, so we can't take a side", which is grossly impractical. What "feels neutral" varies wildly between people and is impossible to reconcile. We focus on sources. We're an encyclopedia, we aim to communicate facts and truth, which in our societies is best judged by scholarship. Kowal2701 (talk) 18:40, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

• I'd like to remind you of WP:AGF. Outside pressure is irrelevant. Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:20, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  One of the very first things you said in your statement above was I was asked point-blank in a high profile media interview about this article, and I answered with transparency and honesty: this article fails to meet our high standards and needs immediate attention. If you feel that your decision to post this here was unrelated to that or, at least, you don't feel that that question was pressure, that's your prerogative, but I don't think it's an unreasonable interpretation to make. This is especially true given that, as demonstrated at the recent ARBPIA case, this topic has been the locus of a massive amount of outside pressure in multiple directions; in particular, a massive amount of pressure is currently directed at the foundation itself ([11][12][13]). Regardless of your intentions, you are absolutely giving the appearance that you are responding to that outside pressure; as a topic area where people are unequivocally attempting to apply massive amounts of pressure to the Wikimedia foundation, it is particularly important that the foundation and those affiliated with it walk extremely cautiously here to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. And that is certainly not irrelevant - no matter how strongly you may feel it has not affected you, even the appearance of giving in to the very real pressure directed at the foundation could do severe harm to our mission. It is, at least, a reason to avoid things like the sweeping "statement from the founder of Wikipedia" banner, or the reference to being asked questions, or the reference to the NPOV working group when you're trying to interact with our consensus-building process as an ordinary user on this topic. --Aquillion (talk) 17:38, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  The point of mentioning that is to warn people. You should hear it from me first, not through the media. Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:55, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  You can't come here and complain about WP:AGF when your initial post here was to scold and lecture the community for being "wrong" because you felt we embarassed you on your interview tour to flog your new book. Most of us have earned absolutely nothing monetarily from our many hard hours of work on this encyclopedia project. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:16, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  They were stating their view not scolding the community and that is perfectly fine. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 19:13, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  Hemiauchenia, I urge you to refrain from personal attacks. I did not scold or lecture anyone. I did state some facts that people may find uncomfortable, and quoted from policy that has not been followed. Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:56, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  You did not "state some facts", you gave your position. You stepped into the most contentious topic on the cite, cited no sources, asked editors to go against established community consensus, & now you are saying that editors here haven't been following policy.

  Your position as founder gives you no greater sense of objectivity, nor should your personal opinion hold more weight then any other editor, & despite your objections to the contrary, you appear to be trying to supersede community consensus because you disagree with it.

  Cite your sources, support your statements, participate in consensus building like everyone else. I hope you understand that the way you've handled this has been highly disruptive & will likely put a lot of unnecessary strain on the community. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 22:50, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  Your position as founder gives you no greater sense of objectivity, nor should your personal opinion hold more weight then any other editor

  @Butterscotch Beluga: Please read Wikipedia:NOTDEMOCRACY. Plus, Jimbo is stating his opinion, not trying to supersede this article community's consensus. That is why this is called a statement. He has posted in a manner that any editor, even one not logged-in, can: it has so much user attention simply due to the exalted position Jimbo occupies within the community. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:06, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  Wikipedia works by allowing editors to make statements. Jimbo Wales as an editor is perfectly entitled to come to this article and make his view in a statement. That is fully in line with how Wikipedia works. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 19:07, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  Thank you. One of my biggest concerns here is how, unintentionally, the working of process have systematically excluded certain voices and led us to a place where NPOV policy is being violated. The attitude that some people should not be allowed to debate the issue is very troubling. Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:58, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  Yeah it concerns me too honestly we should not be excluding people from these sorts of debates it can cause all kinds of issues. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 22:45, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

The intro can be compared to the intro at Armenian genocide, where at the end there's a clear nod to the fact that Turkey denies a genocide (while stating academic consensus). NPOV concerns might be helped with clearer writing—for instance, in this article Israel's denial is embedded in the description of the court case. Maybe instead of saying The Israeli government has denied South Africa's allegations and has argued that Israel is defending itself mid-paragraph, Israel's broader rejection could go at the start or end of that paragraph (in such a way that makes sense in context). Or, if enough DUE voices reject that there's a genocide, that could be a paragraph of its own Placeholderer (talk) 17:15, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I very strongly support that Wikipedia should not attempt to state a conclusion here but should instead document all the relevant sides to the debate including UN bodies, academics, governments, analysts and commentators, journalists, etc. I am unpersuaded that it is somehow ok to take sides with some of those and not others, when the issue is far from settled. Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:34, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia serves as an encyclopedia that summarizes accepted knowledge about topics based on the balance of the reliable sources that exist. Wikipedia does not and should not give increased prominence to particular minority points of view based on whether or not a particular government possesses that point of view. We already have several articles that document diverging points of view from different "academics, governments, analysts and commentators, journalists", so I fail to see how Wikipedia is failing on this front. Katzrockso (talk) 18:04, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

The points of view that disagree with the conclusion of this article are not coming from fringe sources and are an important and ongoing part of the public discourse. We can't simply take the view that they are wrong and we therefore are relieved of our obligations under NPOV. Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:54, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I haven't watched hundreds of videos of bombings & children starving over the last two years for you do decide that reality doesn't matter. If we were talking about the Holocaust, Wikipedia rules would clearly state that you're engaging in denialism. Wikipedia is not a democracy where we have to have "both sides" Nobody asked you to do this, Jimbo. Yes. it's a Genocide. Free Palestine. Pago95 (talk) 17:32, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

That last sentence is absolutely inappropriate and is indicative of a problem where a lot of people want to call it a genocide because it looks ugly and then add to community consensus here. Sorry but war is ugly. Genocide has a specific meaning. We can't be calling everything a genocide just because there are horrible images. RM (Be my friend) 19:25, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

If you read through all of the Wikipedia pages connected to this topic, even without viewing any of the child-killing videos, you will likely notice that the attacks have been extremely well-proven to be far too onesided, systematically callously calculated, and deliberately targeted against civilians, journalists, and relief workers, with great amounts of genocidal rhetoric and popular public sentiments backing it up, to qualify as a "war". David A (talk) 19:46, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

We do not call it a genocide because "it looks ugly". That is a misrepresentation of the community consenus reached in the RfC. And I am quite certain that you are not dismissing the Holocaust or, indeed the 7 October massacre, as "sorry but war is ugly". Surtsicna (talk) 12:50, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

"instead document all the relevant sides to the debate including UN bodies, academics, governments, analysts and commentators, journalists"

That's what the article already does. What Isreal is doing is genocide. Israel and its allies will, of course, deny it as they always have, and the Israeli lobby will pressure slews of politicians and journalists into conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and amplify the voice of their non-lobbied supporters as much as possible, as they always have. This does not mean that Wikipedia needs to kowtow to those pressures, or conflate the minority opinion that Isreal is taking care not to systematically murder innocents with reality. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:31, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Am I the only one who thinks there's too much focus just on the article's first sentence? The concern to address is how to appropriately frame the objections of a significant minority. What was established in the previous RfC is editor consensus that the first sentence is backed by a consensus of reliable sources. But as at the Armenian genocide article, it's possible to state in Wikivoice something that some reject while at the same time appropriately referencing the rejection. (My own opinion is that a little stylistic change to the intro could go a long way). Discussion on the first sentence already happened under the appropriate process; it's counterproductive to get caught up on that when there's much more room than that for NPOV talk Placeholderer (talk) 18:22, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

good point Placeholderer. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:04, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your intervention, which is very important in trying to return to Wikipedia's standards of neutrality. Michael Boutboul (talk) 17:25, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, and I hope you'll have the time to help work out in some details the things that need to be done. My guiding light is to avoid stating contentious things in WikiVoice, instead attributing appropriately. This is not hard to do and will be part of the first work here. Jimbo Wales (talk) 17:31, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

The admonition to "be bold" in this context is concerning, when this page was locked to prevent edit warring just a few days ago. I do not believe that we should Move from debate to concrete improvements immediately in that context, particularly when the concrete changes suggested would run roughshod over the community's democratically-expressed consensus interpretation of the NPOV policy. In addition to being strongly persuaded by @Aquillion's policy argument above, I fundamentally do not agree that the NPOV policy should ever be interpreted or applied in a manner that requires us to engage in genocide denial. WillowCity^(talk) 17:43, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Agree that "be bold" is one of the worst things that could be advised here. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:05, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales Thank you for these important words. This is a first step toward correcting the bias and restoring neutrality to Wikipedia. The issues you raised regarding the article are valid and justified, and their impact has extended far beyond this particular entry. In recent months, I have encountered numerous examples showing that “the fact of genocide” has spread across various articles and become a definitive statement that cannot be contested. The correction must begin with this article and then address the broader damage and lack of neutrality it has caused across the platform. Below are a few examples (among many more) illustrating the influence of this article on Wikipedia as a whole:

1. On the In the news page, the page intended to serve as Wikipedia’s factual news source, genocide has long been presented as an established fact to its millions of daily readers. Thus, despite the existence of many organizations and states that do not recognize genocide as a fact, Wikipedia has not only adopted this position but also chosen to display it prominently on its homepage within the news section.
2. Moreover, not only has genocide been presented as an established fact, but a new article titled Gaza genocide denial has also been created. This effectively results in public shaming of individuals, institutions, or users who do not align with the accusation that Wikipedia presents as fact.
3. For example, in the background of Gaza Peace Plan, I attempted to include a range of perspectives concerning the issue of genocide. I mentioned that many academic researchers argue that genocide is taking place, but I also pointed out that numerous countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, have not recognized the occurrence of genocide. Furthermore, I noted that the South Africa's genocide case against Israel has not yet been decided. Therefore, while there are academic opinions asserting that Israel is committing genocide, there is no such determination from a political or legal standpoint. Another user deleted this section, reinstating the claim that there is a “scholarly consensus” on the existence of genocide, and argued that Wikipedia must remain consistent with other articles affirming it. The user also added the phrase "also should not engage in Gaza genocide denial"!
4. In the Israel article, editors have recently attempted, through an edit warring, to insert the genocide accusation into the lead section as an established fact once again.

I am wondering what can be done about this. The damage is already extensive, and the process of correction will take time. However, how can such a situation be prevented in the future? Wikipedia has reached a point where bias is evident and at times appears irreparable. In my view, only drastic measures could restore neutrality to Wikipedia and once again make it a reliable platform whose pursuit is truth. What do you think can be done? Rafi Chazon (talk) 18:43, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not pursue truth, if you want to have a wiki covering what you believe is truth you can easily fork Wikipedia and maintain your own. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 18:47, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

While I'm not totally comfortable with your wording, I agree with the gist of what you are saying here. Wikipedia is about documenting all the important sides of a debate, as compared to coming to a (widely unqualified) firm conclusion about "the truth" in seriously contested areas. We have to guard against doing that, particularly by allowing ourselves the indulgence of "I don't agree with this source, so this source can be ignored". Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:50, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Jimbo, this reads as incredibly dismissive and disrespectful of the community's work on this article. There was an extensive RFC, with strong arguments based in policy and a clear rationale from the closing administrator. Perhaps you could have participated there, or at a close review. I'm sorry you've faced pressure from the media, but choosing to take that outside pressure as a reason to come in here to try to unilaterally override the community's work and consensus is disrespectful to all the experienced, good faith editors who put a lot hard work into getting this article to the place it is. 🌸⁠wasianpower⁠🌸 (talk • contribs) 18:44, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia is decided by many people, not just one. Even the owner. GarethBaloney (talk) 18:47, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

WP:JIMBO is not the owner, he is the founder. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 21:42, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Jimbo is not trying to force through a decision. If he really, really wanted to, he would have. He's just making a statement; a call to action; his opinion. If you want to, you can make a similar statement just below his. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:08, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@OmegaAOL If you have spent five years on this website and are still under the impression that Jimmy has the power to unilaterally impose his will on what Wikipedia does and doesn't say, I must seriously question your competence. And not just as a Wikipedia editor. Dr. Duh 🩺 (talk) 14:12, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@Doctor Duh Except I don't think that. You didn't get what I meant. He's just making a statement on a publicly editable talk page like anybody else can is my point.

And not just as a Wikipedia editor. Personal attacks much? I know you're a bit newer here but those are widely frowned upon within our community. Snide remarks are fine but actual personal attacks are a no-no. I warn you to refrain from doing that in the future. OmegaAOLtalk? 16:21, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@OmegaAOL In your previous comment, you state Jimbo is not trying to force through a decision. If he really, really wanted to, he would have. This quite clearly and unambiguously means that you are under the impression that he could have forced through a decision, when his actual power these days is limited to the soft kind, and diminishing even in that area. WP:NOT gives more guidance on such general principles, you may find it a helpful overview. Dr. Duh 🩺 (talk) 16:30, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

actual power these days is limited to the soft kind @Doctor Duh, I am aware. I voted to strip Jimmy Wales of the last vestiges of his hard power around 2023(?), which, I believe, is when you made your account on the EnWiki.

His soft power is exactly what I mean. It alone could probably play a significant role in the forcing-through of that decision. Of course, such actions would be disastrous and fundamentally against the spirit of Wikipedia, but he possibly has the level of influence to "make it happen", much like the Queen and now-King has the influence to protect the Royal Family in many cases from investigation.

Thank you from refraining from the childish insults and personal attacks this time. OmegaAOLtalk? 16:36, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Pfff yeah, right. Jimmy has such tremendous social capital here after ~two decades of consistently getting shut down every time he ventured out of the shadows with some half-baked idea. I'm sure if he just tried hard enough, he could get that RfC overturned in no time at all. Dr. Duh 🩺 (talk) 17:46, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree 100% I think the RFC got it wrong and hopefully a new consensus can emerge. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 19:00, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, what high-profile media interview was this? I'm having trouble finding such a Q&A. -- Beland (talk) 19:17, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm assuming the interview has yet to be published, based on this comment about 2/3 hours after yours. Alpha3031 (t • c) 02:42, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Appalling overreach from Jimbo Wales, founder of Wikipedia Jimbo Wales, Jimbo Wales Jimbo Wales. This is a transparent end-run around our procedures and no amount of "AGF" will obscure that. REAL_MOUSE_IRL talk 19:32, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm sorry but that's not a very serious thing to say. Opening a discussion and quoting policy is a "transparent end-run around our procedures"? Hardly. Wiki *is* our procedure, and serious and thoughtful discussion about how to maintain our high standards of NPOV is at the heart of what we do. I'm afraid, REAL MOUSE IRL, this kind of personal attack isn't really likely to persuade anyone. Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:51, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

"Prefer primary official statements" is not policy, ignoring consensus is not policy, asking people to immediately start editing contrary to the outcome of a well publicized RfC is not policy, deciding what NPOV is first and working backwards to consider the sources is not policy. You have had ample opportunity to engage with discussion on this talk page for months, as an editor and not as Founder Of Wikipedia Jimbo Wales (signed 4 times over in case anyone forgets). It is not a personal attack to look at a big massive spade and call it a spade. REAL_MOUSE_IRL talk 20:01, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

He has not ignored consensus nor tried to overturn it he has come here to discuss it and try to reach a new consensus. And he is here as an editor he made crystal clear that he is here in a personal capacity. Calling a comment by Jimno appaling overeach and a transparent run around our processes is a personal attack and is certainly not a massive spade. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 20:04, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

WP:BLUDGEON REAL_MOUSE_IRL talk 20:10, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I disagree I am at that level yet indeed I have not responded too many replies on here that I disagree with. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 20:15, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Don't be discouraging from continuing. I consider it very unfortunate when people respond to considered discussion by attempting to bully people into silence. Jimbo Wales (talk) 22:00, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Thank you I sure won't I know where the bludgeoning line is. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 22:55, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

• Comment - While I agree with you on the issue of content and neutrality REAL_MOUSE_IRL, it's not reasonable or productive to accuse Jimbo Wales of WP:BLUDGEONing in this discussion. The core issues involved are scholarship, verifiability, and neutrality; bringing "bludgeoning" into the discussion only muddles these issues and like it or not, Jimbo is an outward facing voice and persona of Wikipedia. We need him to understand these core issues and that requires discussion. -Darouet (talk) 01:46, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

  I accused GothicGolem29 of bludgeoning, not Jimbo. REAL_MOUSE_IRL talk 08:39, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

He simply replied to your reply. There is no need to get all hissy with the accusations of WP:Bludgeon. I remind you to WP:Assume good faith. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:31, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for this message, Jimbo, and it is one I admittedly agree with wholeheartedly. Far too much, especially with contentious topics, can we see a degrading of some of the Wiki's most essential and important foundational elements. Unlike many mainstream critics of this article or the edits made to it, I do not believe these come out of a political or ideological purpose: rather, I feel it stems from an attempt to use this encyclopedia, one of the largest websites in the world, as a platform to establish a sense of justified morality, even if doing so bypasses established policies such as WP:NPOV, like you have mentioned in your message.

One of the great things about Wikipedia is that we do not exhibit biases on behalf of sources, sides, or values just because (at a minimum) fifty one percent of them exist, and thus are in the majority. There is no reason why this article, no matter how contentious, should be an exception. Cheers, atque supra! Fakescientist8000 22:12, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I think that it's sad to see that you try to use your position as the founder of Wikipedia to override the community consensus that was reached by a very lengthy and thorough discussion. But what should one expect. In your article, it clearly states:

Wales has visited Israel over ten times. He has said that he is "a strong supporter of Israel". In 2015, he was awarded one of the Dan David Prizes, an international award of $1 million given yearly at Tel Aviv University (10 percent of the prize goes to doctoral students). Wales was chosen for spearheading what the prize committee called the "information revolution".

I am pretty sure you have a major conflict of interest here given that you're a strong supporter of the accused entity. Laura240406 (talk) 01:09, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The same actually applies to a lot of academics and NGOs cited here when it came to deciding whether there's a consensus for genocide. It's extremely obvious that a lot of academics and people in human rights NGOs dislike Israel. Some of them have openly argued that the current legal threshold of genocide is too narrow and essentially argue it should be broadened. That ruined this article far more than Wales' personal opinions on Israel. People here citing academic consensus based on the writings of academics in in things like genocide studies essentially want us to treat these people the same way that we treat academics in actual hard sciences like physics and chemistry.

To add to that, read some of Ashley Rindsberg's investigations on Wikipedia. A lot of this consensus has likely been astroturfed. This has already been recognized with a few users topic-banned from Israel-Palestine discussions but we've probably only hit the tip of the iceberg. Wikipedia actually needs to investigate users who've potentially participated in offsite canvassing, in particular find out which users are members of Tech for Palestine's Discord. RM (Be my friend) 10:23, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

As I stated elsewhere on this page, I strongly think that the tip of the iceberg issue is far more applicable to many genuinely powerful intelligence agencies, governments, organisations, news agencies, and companies with strong personal interests in absolving Israel's government of any crimes against humanity, so only focusing on the grassroots movement pro-human rights side seems wildly disproportionate. David A (talk) 11:20, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

And as I stated elsewhere in reply to you, if you have evidence, feel free to present it. We have actual evidence that this canvassing is taking place and a few users have already been topic-banned for it. This feels like you're deflecting from something that is actually happening with your own assumptions regarding intel agencies doing the same. Could be happening and if evidence surfaces that it is then that will obviously have to be addressed, but regarding this particular topic we need to deal with the obvious pro-Palestine canvassing before deciding on what the community consensus actually is. RM (Be my friend) 11:39, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The point is that if only one side, the one without media and information technology resources, is investigated, it turns into an extremely onesided witchhunt. David A (talk) 12:49, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

dislike Israel yes, Israel is unassailable and any criticism whatsoever, is evidence of being "anti-Israel". By the way, listen to the writings of a non-specialist commentator who is an avowed Zionist, for completely unbiased facts about what's going on. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 11:50, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

If anyone thinks that was a long time ago, he publicly endorsed the UK Labour Party for the 2024 UK general election. That should tell you everything you need to know about his current politics. Oneequalsequalsone (talk | contribs) 15:36, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I think we can handle this dispute without extrapolating so dramatically on people's political persuasions. StereoFolic (talk) 16:19, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

What a ridiculous take. Who would you have him endorse? The Tories? I would have endorsed Labour, too, given the knowledge we had at the time. OmegaAOLtalk? 06:48, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The knowledge we had at the time is exactly consistent with the policies later implemented. Oneequalsequalsone (talk | contribs) 10:02, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Can we agree to disagree? OmegaAOLtalk? 16:23, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Is there really a need to link to Tel Aviv University behind the word entity as opposed to just saying "Tel Aviv University"? -- Cdjp1 (talk) 16:42, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

by "accused entity" I mean Israel, which is accused of doing the Gaza genocide

Israel isn't one person, that's why I called it the abstract name of "entity" Laura240406 (talk) 18:28, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

My apologies Laura, I replied to the wrong comment, striking my comment as irrelevant here. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 20:35, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

How editors decide what to write on this site is through the consensus opinions of independent and reliable sources. When subject matters are contentious, we rely on the independence and reliability of those sources' conclusions.

You've cited the positions of "major world governments", through other comments (Yes, the views of major world powers are not fringe views.), to support your position that Wikipedia should not plainly call it a genocide. My issue with this position is that it sets a poor precedent for future articles regarding encyclopedic tone.

The positions of major world governments (especially in contentious situations like this) should be attributed, because they are biased sources. Wikipedia reflects notability and yes, the statements of these governments have been reported on by many independent and reliable sources and should thus be covered in the article as attributed statements. However, they cannot under any circumstances give weight to what the subject matter of the article is or isn't. Note this means I am including governments who characterize the events in Gaza as a genocide.

If the inclusion of an article on Wikipedia is predicated on the article's multiple sources being independent and reliable, then we necessarily agree those sources are truthful accounts of the article in question. We cannot say the same for what world governments believe. In this sense, world governments cannot be "cited" as sources for what's happening in Gaza as much as they can be "quoted" for what they think is happening in Gaza. This only serves to strengthen the idea that our observational academic sources, which reflect with overwhelming consensus that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide, should determine what the name and lede of the article are— a.k.a, what the article is— as opposed to the necessarily biased voices of world governments. Cadenrock1 (talk) Cadenrock1 (talk) 03:23, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

It's reasonable to name governments and other organisations which deny that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. What we can't do is give undue weight to the views of media commentators, governments and political organisations (which have a clear conflict of interest) when compared to academic professionals such as legal scholars and genocide experts.

Taking the alternative approach would mean a complete re-write of articles like Climate change, to say things like "Many scientists and left-wing political organisations have claimed that greenhouse gases change the Earth's climate." This would not be a good outcome. Wikipedia should include all viewpoints as per WP:NPOV, but it cannot become untethered to reality.

As it stands, editor consensus is that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, according to the most reliable sources. If anybody would like to make a counterargument which is based on serious scholarship, rather than the views of political actors, then they are able to propose this on the talk page at any time. So I don't think there is a problem here. 20WattSphere (talk) 08:19, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I think this is crux of the disagreement (and policy debate Wikipedia should have). Two things can be true at once -- that there is an "editor consensus" and yet that there is not a real world "consensus" (and before folks jump on me for saying that, please read through my points below, especially the objection to some of the analogies that are being used in this talk page discussion). The latter is what @Jimbo Wales is pointing to, so to keep pointing to prior RFCs, as if those settle the matter (or at least settle it until another RFC comes along) is not engaging his NPOV argument. To dismiss the views of "political actors" (i.e. governmental leaders) because they are not sources of unvarnished truth is one thing, but at the same time there should be little doubt that in democratic governments elected leaders reflect the views of millions of their countries' residents -- not necessarily a majority, but at least a significant minority. So, when elected governmental leaders express their views, even if an editor thinks the leader is biased and their statements shouldn't be accepted as sources of facts, it is still the case that wholesale ignoring of those leaders and the decently large populations they represent is too much of a logical leap in an effort to assert (as Wikivoice does in this case) that the "editor consensus" is the same as a real world "consensus". An "editor consensus" can be established with an RfC vote of, say, 48 to 28. (And yes, I know we don't just count votes -- that's not my point). However, the mere fact that a bunch of elected officials in sizeable democracies have declined to conclude that a genocide has occurred in Gaza does, in the real world, mean that there is no consensus. Editors can bemoan that, point to this bunch being a minority among democratically elected officials, assert that these countries are biased or self-interested, but none of that changes that there isn't a real world consensus. We at Wikipedia indeed essentially acknowledge this, by designating the Gaza genocide article as being part of a contentious topic. We know, if we're being honest with ourselves, that the question of whether a genocide has occurred in Gaza is a contentious one, and it's hard to square that with the view that there is "consensus" on this. In other words, how can something be both contentious and a point of consensus? And yet that's what the Wikivoice expression of consensus does, as this comes across as conveying near unanimity (and pointing to dissenting views later in the article doesn't make the consensus statement at the beginning accurate). And so, when editors analogize this situation to, for example, those saying that the world is flat or that the moon landing was a hoax, that is a specious argument. No leader of a major country is saying those things, so this simply isn't an equivalent situation. (I also think that recognizing the role of elected officials in democracies is helpful for distinguishing the Gaza genocide article from some of the other situations editors have turned to in support of the existing framing of this article. For example, a number of editors have analogized this situation to the vaccine positions of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. That is an appointed office, not an elected one, so as a Wikipedia community we could decide to not inherently attribute those statements to millions of U.S. residents, and indeed the vast majority of U.S. residents still have their children vaccinated against, say, polio. [14]) Others have analogized this debate to the Armenian genocide, but it's still possible to object to incorporating in a lead sentence the views of the leader of Turkey because Turkey isn't much of a democracy while still saying that the democratic elected leader views relevant to this article should be acknowledged up front and not automatically dismissed.)

In addition, there is an important difference in the consensus used to produce Wikivoice statements and consensus in its full, real world meaning. For example, the International Court of Justice ruling cited in the opening section of this article and referred to often in RfCs on this topic, had a dissent. Therefore, there is no "consensus" view of the ICJ. There was a majority view, even a sizeable majority view, but not a consensus view. And yet that distinction is in essence entirely lost with the use of Wikivoice -- and, more glaringly, in the Wikipedia article on South Africa v. Israel, where the substance of the dissent isn't even mentioned, though there is apparently space in the article for the ICJ dissenting judge's home country's criticisms of her. It's that loss of describing the debate (not just of even allegedly biased sources, but even unbiased dissenting judges) that is presumably at the heart of @Jimbo Wales's concerns.

I don't know the full answer to all of this. Some of the difficulty is that "genocide" is in part a legal term, and legal questions are not subject to popular vote, "editor consensus", academic consensus, or a bunch of other things that in non-legal contexts are relevant. I do tend to think that the procedures for evaluating RfC discussions -- or even what questions should be subject to RfC decision-making -- within designated contentious topic areas should be examined. There is a disjuncture between "editor consensus" and the "consensus" that is expressed in this article, and it would be helpful if more editors, including editors that are part of that "editor consensus" acknowledged that. Coining (talk) 20:36, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

+1 Great comment. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 20:41, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

+1 BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:13, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Like. The distinction between editor consensus and real world consensus Coining makes has been lost to a Wikipedia controlled by activists and not by encyclopedists. This dovetails with the other founder's WP:NINETHESES necessary to save Wikipedia. XavierItzm (talk) 18:50, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

A large part of you argument here seems to hinge on the opinions of governments not being included in the article, which factually has never been the case. As to the notion of democratic governments representing the opinions of the larger populace, considering the mass protests and opinion polling conducted in all the "big democracies" that opine it is not a case of genocide, we see that a it ranges from a considerable minority to an outright majority of the populace disagree with their government's opinion. So it can't be said to be a direct representation of any of the countries as a whole. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 20:43, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Those governmental views aren't included in the lead section of the article at all at this very moment. Indeed, the Wikivoice statements in the lead section effectively deny those democratically elected governmental officials' views (or the existence of any other substantive person's views that deviate from the "editor consensus").

But more broadly, it would be wrong to say, despite the mass protests and opinion polling, that, for example, it is the consensus view in, for instance, the United States that Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza. That's simply not how "consensus" works. And if there isn't a consensus in a bunch of countries, then by that very fact there isn't a consensus in the world.

I'm not arguing that the democratically elected officials' views are necessarily representative of their countries as a whole. I'm arguing that they demonstrate that there isn't a consensus, and absent that consensus there is merit to @Jimbo Wales's NPOV concerns because the Wikivoice statements obfuscate a contentious debate that is actually occurring in the world. Coining (talk) Coining (talk) 21:08, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I said article, not lede. I chose article specifically, which is the fact of the matter. it would be wrong to say [...] the consensus view in, for instance, the United States that Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza yes it would be wrong to say that, we do not say that, and in fact we do say that the US government does not believe a genocide is occurring. We also do not say there is a consensus in the world. Beyond that, I'm not the one you should spend effort on convincing the lede should be changed, as I maintain the opinion I had during the last RFC, that what we previously had was fine and should be kept. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 21:15, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

@Cdjp1 I think the views of people like Stefan Talmon are significant scholarly minority views and should be mentioned in the lede. Possible source: [15]

The same goes for the fact that the topic has been hugely controversial politically and academically, even though the trend has been clear, with the number of scholars seeing a genocide increasing over time. That controversy in itself is part of the academic discourse (e.g. [16] etc.) and should be represented in the lede.

As it is, I find the lede has grown too one-sided over past months. Andreas JN466 12:59, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm not the one you need to convince @Jayen466:, as I did and do disagree with the changes made in the last RFC. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:20, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I mean hell, I still disagree with the name change of the article. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 13:27, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@Cdjp1 Noted. Will look for the RfC ... Andreas JN466 23:33, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

That article says Talmon has a conflict of interest, because he's representing Myanmar in a genocide case, and has an interest in minimizing the scope of the legal definition of genocide. Talmon is mentioned on Academic and legal responses to the Gaza genocide. -- Beland (talk) 20:16, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Well, the lede should note that some reputable scholars disagree. Jeffrey Herf is another. And many now lean yes, like Kai Ambos, without being entirely confident that the ICJ will see it that way.

I actually think briefly describing the controversy and the way it developed over time would strengthen the lede. It used to be one guy, Raz Segal, who spoke of genocide, and then gradually more and more heavyweights like Omer Bartov and William Schabas swung behind him. Andreas JN466 23:55, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Did you have a specific Herf source and article text to propose? You can make an edit request in another section so it's not lost, if you like. -- Beland (talk) 06:58, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

unbiased dissenting judges The judge that said "The Lord is counting on me to stand on the side of Israel" is hardly unbiased. EvansHallBear (talk) 20:56, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

In the United States at least, politicians are typically elected with between 51% and 66% of the vote. Turnout in competitive races is itself typically between 51% and 66%. Politicians can, by virtue of their election to public office alone, only be said to represent between 25% and 33% of the public's opinion in their district in normal cases. And this is ignoring the fact that, due to the limited political space for pro-Palestinian views in US politics, the vast majority of Americans who believe this is a genocide are forced to vote for politicians who don't, so as not to lose their domestic rights. Beyond that, politicians in governments that materially support Israel simply have a conflict of interest. In most cases they are breaking domestic law by sending weapons to a government using them to abuse human rights, and they have reason to believe that a genocide ruling would put them in violation of international law. No one who is saying and doing the kinds of things that got Nazis hanged at Nuremberg is ever going to take a hard, honest look at the facts and draw a conclusion based on them. They will defend and deny their actions and their children and their children's children will too, because their life and legacy is on the line. Recognizing this truth about genocide is what rightly led editors to seek a better criteria by which to define it. Defining genocide based on whether everyone agrees about it is simply unworkable. The mobilization of vast portions of society to dehumanize and harm the targeted group is an essential characteristic of genocide. Ignoring this reality gives far too much credibility to the self-interested perpetrators of injustice. This is why scholars instead define genocide based on an analysis of the facts about the situation. In the case of Gaza, a supermajority of scholars determined that a genocide has occurred based on an analysis of the facts. That should be all we need to call a genocide a genocide. Monk of Monk Hall (talk) 16:00, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I'll leave any serious technical debates to the more experienced editors since I still consider myself a newbie, but I took a look at other pages on Wikipedia about genocides, many people in the discussion brought up the Armenian genocide but I also looked at the Tamil genocide Darfur genocide and Yazidi genocide . The language in all these articles is assertive, no serios space is given to the denials, and no one askes about them in interviews. Even though some of these were not ruled genocide by the ICJ so it's not a legal designation. I do understand this is an ongoing genocide so its more sensitive and academic consensus will take time to become clear, but it seems to me remaining consistent is a good practice to protect Wikipedia's reputation of neutrality. Tashmetu (talk) 09:16, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Tamil genocide starts with a sentence saying the genocide is a "framing"; it precisely doesn't say a genocide has occurred. It says Sri Lanka has "been accused of" committing one. It is far less assertive than this article. Darfur and Yazidi, however, are more assertive than this article, because there is no meaningful dissent in those cases. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:19, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Fair enough. I suppose the more the pushback there is the more size it would be given in the discussion. But it does feel wrong, because US allies always get more space to tell their side in the mainstream media, I mean where would ISIS even publish their pushback on Yazidi genocide accusations? and would anyone for a second consider it creditable? no of course not. It is what it is I suppose, might makes right. Tashmetu (talk) 14:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I assume Jimbo is contributing in good faith. However, it's difficult to know what to do with the contribution because it doesn't engage on the substance of several of the main arguments featured in the RFC that led to the present lead. One important one is that the standard needs to be the same as applied to e.g. Armenian genocide, Bosnian genocide and Rohingya genocide. In all these cases, there are parties who vehemently deny that there was a genocide, consisting especially of a) the state accused, b) allies of that state, c) commentators and scholars aligned with those states in a sense wider than the individual debate in question. Whether or not we refer to the Gaza genocide in Wikivoice needs to reflect a general approach to whether/when we do so for genocides in general. Sonnyvalentino (talk) 10:48, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Are you sure that you are "neutral"? Then why are you siding with Israel?

• Wikipedia founder Wales appears to side with Israel against Gaza, suggests Corbyn is ‘antisemite’

https://mondoweiss.net/2018/08/wikipedia-suggests-antisemite/

Source: Mondoweiss

• Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales likes Israel but stays neutral

https://www.timesofisrael.com/wikipedia-founder-jimmy-wales-likes-israel-but-stays-neutral/

Source: The Times of Israel

• Wiki founder wins $1m Israeli prize

https://www.timesofisrael.com/wikipedia-founder-wins-1m-israeli-prize/

Source: The Times of Israel Qhairun (talk) 16:31, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

A neutral approach would begin with a formulation such as: “Multiple governments, NGOs, and legal bodies have described or rejected the characterization of Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.” Jimbo, I cannot stress enough how bad of an argument it is that we shouldn't be able to call the Gaza genocide a genocide because not enough governments have issued a formal statement describing it as such. Unless you think we should deny the Armenian genocide, too, because only 30 or so countries have formally recognized it. Roughly twice as many governments have recognized the Gaza genocide. It absolutely does not matter what governments say or don't say when we're trying to answer the question "is this a genocide?" The Gaza genocide is not any less of a genocide because the US government, for example, refuses to recognize it. No one in their right mind believes Donald Trump is a genocide studies expert with any informed opinions on the matter. What governments say is a matter of geostrategy, nothing more. I'm really tired of us pretending there are two equally acceptable "sides" to this. This is not "pro Palestine versus pro Israel." This is calling a spade a spade versus genocide denial. You cannot "both sides" a genocide. Credible sources are not divided on this in the slightest. I'm not calling Jimmy a genocide denier, but there is a very fine line between good-faith concerns about NPOV & your POV being genocide denial/defense, and I'm well past the point where I think we need to be sanctioning people who are on the wrong side of that line. We should not be rewriting our articles to cater to the pro-genocide/genocide-denying POV, we should be indef'ing pro-genocide editors under WP:NONAZIS. But instead we have ARBCOM pathetically TBANning all the most prolific editors on "both sides" and we have the website's founder saying we should ignore the consensus of reliable sources (and the consensus of editors).  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 18:50, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales

a)You’re using your position to push changes you personally prefer and asking editors to move from debate to make those changes.

b) You’re only doing this now under pressure from the media or the Israeli government — why didn’t you act on it before?

b) You really consider “Multiple governments, NGOs, and legal bodies have described or rejected the characterization of Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide” as neutral?

It has structural bias, framing bias, implied skepticism, contextual bias and temporal bias.

It is misleadingly neutral. Someone who is leading NPOV working group - must know this Cinaroot (talk) 19:35, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

A very disappointing post to see from someone who I thought would have known better. The current version has been made through extensive community collaboration and consensus. Neutrality does not demand WP:FALSEBALANCE. — EarthDude (Talk) 20:26, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

This part, "Move from debate to concrete improvements immediately" could not possibly be more clear, and frankly, there are many, many parts of this article where this should apply, as @Jimbo Wales says, "immediately"... Iljhgtn (talk) 20:29, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

And yet, such bullheadedness is what led to the article being locked. Believing you may be improving the article, when such edits in fact change content so it is the exact opposite of what a RS says, is no improvement. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 20:46, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I support Jimbo Wales' position here, though unfortunately I don't have time to expand on this topic now. EntropyReducingGuy(I talk, but can reply slowly)💧♾️➡❄️📚 21:47, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The editorial process is what it is. Anyone can comment in talk that they think the editors got it wrong and suggest a change. Nothing gets changed "immediately" without consensus. Brmull (talk) 22:56, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Let's deal with reality here. And I'll preface this by noting that I myself am Jewish. Every respected human rights NGO recognizes this genocide. The only entities that do not are Israel itself and pro-Israel organizations. The fact of the genocide is not subject to reasonable dispute.

Unless you are proposing that all articles with fringe or clearly biased sources undermining the premise should be rewritten to treat all perspectives equally (perhaps climate change denial is now a reasonable point of view?), it's very hard to understand where you are coming from. Skrelk (talk) 01:13, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I support Wales's position. It's very clear from the way sources are treated across the platform that Wikipedia-particularly on articles like this has a specific POV it is trying to push. You can see this as evidenced by the fact that Al Jazeera is green even though it is funded by the Qatari Royal family and there is evidence that Hamas fighters have been employed by them as journalists, but it is perfectly ok to cite them un-attributed by an opposing POV on the Gaza genocide article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/world/middleeast/al-jazeera-journalists-hamas-pij.html#:~:text=The%20journalists%20named%20by%20Israel,He%20is%20based%20in%20Jerusalem.

Whereas the ADL is relegated to levels from “marginally reliable” to “generally unreliable” based on the subject matters they cover the most, thwarting any effort to represent Israel neutrally. Agnieszka653 (talk) 03:25, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The cited source does not actually contain any evidence that either journalist were "Hamas fighters", merely accusations by Israel and a social media post of one of them praising Hamas. The owner of every privately owned news outlet has their own politics, from the New York Times to the Washington Post. That's something to look out for, but many outlets demonstrate that their newsrooms operate with editorial independence unconstrained by their owner's politics. Others newsrooms that do transparently support a particular point of view have demonstrated that despite this, the facts they report are reliable (even if, as everywhere, they are not the whole picture). -- Beland (talk) 03:41, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Al Jazeera is a "generally reliable" source but it's placement on the perennial sources list specifically states Most editors seem to agree that Al Jazeera English and especially Al Jazeera Arabic are biased sources on the Arab–Israeli conflict and on topics for which the Qatari government has a conflict of interest. I'm assuming that's why it has the "generally" disclaimer. Lots of sources have different strengths and weaknesses, like the ADL. That doesn't mean it's impossible to "defend" Israel and could hint at a battleground mentality. That source is good in a lot of contexts (like recognizing hate groups) and editors recognize that. But my understanding as someone who does not edit in this topic area at all is that genocide is the literal scholarly consensus here. I'm open to seeing good sourcing arguments because I'm generally against the idea of mortiatums and because I like to assume good faith as much as possible, but I don't think anyone defending Jimmy's position has given anything that would be a good counterargument in regards to actual sourcing. Seriously, I'm genuinely willing to be convinced on why we shouldn't listen to people who specialize in studying genocides on an academic level to be the authority per WP:SOURCETYPES, but exceptional claims require exceptional evidence. Bring better sources. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 03:48, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The "generally" disclaimer goes for all top tier reliable sources btw, not just AlJ. It has nothing to do with being biased/coi as it's based on reliability. Not all bias sources are unreliable. CNC (talk) 13:29, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

What a shameful thing to intervene in service of. The RFC that led to this version of the page conclusively demonstrated that this genocide is no more controversial than any other genocide called as such on Wikipedia. The only difference is that the deniers of this genocide are more powerful geopolitically and influential in English language media. Denial of the Gaza Genocide is threatening the very international order created in the wake of the Holocaust to prevent the repetition of such atrocities. A world in which Gaza cannot be called a genocide in spite of the overwhelming evidence and substantial expert opinion is a world in which every human being is less safe and human life is less valuable. Many governments, public figures and media organizations have disgraced themselves by contorting their perspective to justify or normalize this crisis of human civilization and punish those who call it what it is. Despite the tremendous pressure against them, academics, experts and human rights organizations have come out and said in overwhelming numbers what is obviously the case: this is a genocide.

I am proud of Wikipedia and its editors for recognizing this and putting in probably hundreds of combined hours of work and research to review the literature and justify turning the page into what it is today. I suppose this is not the most productive comment I can leave here -- it can easily be dismissed as biased and polemical. Fine. I am biased in favor of human rights. I am biased against genocide. I am biased in favor of the innocent and against the guns and bombs that kill and maim them. That is why I believe Wikipedia is important. It is an independent knowledge base that does not give the lunatics who rule us the world over any more weight than they are due. Jimmy, I find your suggestion that we should prioritize the statements of governments over those of independent scholars and observers preposterous. I can't think of a worse direction for Wikipedia in a time when governments the world over are descending into barbarism and betraying their supposed principles. Wikipedia must speak truth to power if it is to have any value at all. This page speaks truth to power as it stands today.

From what I can tell, this kind of interference in Wikipedia's affairs is unprecedented, at least on an issue so consequential. I hope that the community's consensus can overcome the push to pressure it into a change. Regardless, I want to thank everyone who has worked so hard on making this page into (as far as I'm concerned at least) the gold standard for understanding the events in Gaza, including editors against the page's current consensus who have sharpened the consensus case through their opposition. Monk of Monk Hall (talk) 03:39, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Allow me to add to the entire flood of people shutting you down, Jimmy. You know that de jure you have no power here editorially or administratively. But you are like the British Royal Family, in that while you have only symbolic power, you nonetheless have—for whatever reason and observed by whoever—very real influence in your positions and statements and whatever. Which is why while your words would insist this is a powerless attempt at facilitating change—you know just damn well that anything you write will regardless be put on a pedastal of importance and influence by whoever, such that it will cause a shitstorm among people who watch out and care for important people's two cents.

Beyond you knowing damn well that you aren't actually, really as unaffecting in your words as you'd say: What you are doing here is completely brashly regardless to, and outside of, any organized process of the community and is contrary to the very democratic nature of Wikipedia. It is nothing unlike the constant openings of new topics by random editors on Talk:Donald Trump where they boldly declare that Wikipedia is biased and that the article is bad. Except these are random editors and IPs: you are Jimbo Freakin' Wales. While we know that in the face of all this backlash you'll probably play things tame and safe as you usually do, you know that what you are doing here ain't right.

Jimmy, you deciding to weigh in here in the way you are is comprable to if the Monarch of England decided, after a conclusion to a lengthy policy decision amongst British Parliament, say "The UK must change the stance on this policy", (this being said without regard of Parliament's decision), "but keep in mind I am not saying this in my Royal capacity, and keep in mind that I am actually a powerless figurehead", (whose words nonetheless carry weight in the sphere of discussion and power) "and that regardless of my declarations, I would have you believe that this domain is a place where due process is valued and adhered to". BarntToust 06:58, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm very disappointed by this take from Jimbo Wales. This article is a demonstration of Wikipedia working at its best. There has been a huge amount of discussion, consensus building, and thoughtful analysis of independent sources to write this article. I am disappointed that the founder of Wikipedia himself is among the people undermining the work of the Wikipedia's community just because an article does not align with his views. Ita140188 (talk) 07:57, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I think you need to re-familiarize yourself with Wikipedia policy.

See WP:RSUW, WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE, WP:NPOVFAQ

"the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints … in proportion to the prominence of each."

"to give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute"

"to be neutral is to describe debates rather than engage in them."

The vast majority of reputable sources -- including genocide scholars, legal experts, academics, historians -- all characterize Israel's actions against the Palestinians of Gaza to be genocide.

There is some dissenting view, but it is a small minority. Therefore, as per Wikipedia Policy, the dissenting view should comprise a minority of the Lead and the Body. If you would like to engage in the Talk page, I think it's more appropriate for you to do it as a typical editor and not brandish your relationship to Wikipedia. The fact that you co-founded Wikipedia is irrelevant to the merits of what you bring here to this discussion. To intervene as a founder compromises the collaborative democratic spirit of this encyclopedia project. Please respect the community decisions or engage in the community as a normal editor, through the normal channels.Greensminded24 (talk) 15:23, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Hear hear, very well put. AlexJFox (talk) 19:12, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

What an egregious overstep this is. I wonder how many times Jimmy has intervened in a personal capacity in this way? Not many I'd wager. The mere fact that's he's not asking this in an official capacity is even more damning because it just makes him look like an individual compromised by lobbying. AlexJFox (talk) 19:10, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

• Talk:Gaza genocide/RfC on first sentence, 21 September 2025

Someone perhaps should protect that page. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 17:16, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

• Simply put, as the current opening paragraph came about due to RFC, feel free to start a new RFC to overturn the previous one. Until you do so, the previous RFC result stands. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 17:41, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

• If we apply Jimmy's proposal as a principle, rather than as special case to cater to the wishes of other interests, we will need to change the climate change article to give the same weight to press releases from ExxonMobil and SaudiAramco, and reports from the Heartland Institute, as we give to the content of Nature Climate Change, International Journal of Climatology, and the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambial — foliar❧ 18:18, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  Likening subjective classification to objective measurable science is not a strong argument. At best, it represents a misunderstanding of how WP:FALSEBALANCE works. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 20:18, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  My post doesn't do that, so your view of such a comparison is not relevant. My post is, I think quite obviously, a response to Jimmy's explicit claim above – also implicit in his OP – that academic experts are not...the most important parties in determining content. They are the most important parties for determining content, as per WP:SOURCETYPES and WP:SOURCE. Cambial — foliar❧ 17:34, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

  This got me thinking as to whether WP:NPOV should explicitly mention labels or categories as subjective. It already makes a fact/opinion distinction, but to what degree are labels or categories non-objective? It's possible to construct a definition of genocide and objectively measure whether or not it has been met. But looking at Genocide definitions, there is no one agreed-upon definition. That has not stopped us from making List of genocides, nor has it stopped us from carefully classifying people by ethnicity in a limited way, another attribute that may have multiple definitions. These categories are probably best described as fuzzy concepts, where the definition of the concept is disputed around the edges or not crisp, but the attributes everyone uses to classify entities are objectively verifiable. The way we deal with multiple overlapping definitions in articles like Deep South is to explain the overlapping definitions, then cover the subject broadly. The specific definition doesn't always matter in the article body, but where it does (like when presenting statistics), we just get specific about which definition an assertion applies to, following the sources.

  If we're describing why e.g. Gaza genocide counts as a "genocide", maybe the thing to do would be to say that it has attributes X, Y, and, Z, which meet the definitions of genocide adopted by organizations A, B, and C? XYZ would be objectively verifiable. Whether or not ABC are good definitions of "genocide" is left up to the reader to decide because we provide attribution. It would be difficult to discuss the topic in a coherent fashion if neutrality meant we couldn't use any definition of the concept. -- Beland (talk) 03:51, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

  Deciding ourselves whether something meets a definition based on criteria would be original research through WP:SYNTH, and applying definitions is in my opinion one of the most alarming types of original research. The list of genocides article, while not perfect, is better in this aspect because it at least demonstrates that other sources apply the term to a given situation without choosing a definition or setting its own criteria. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 06:05, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

  WP:OR applies to article space. It would have no bearing on the creation of a policy around how to state asserions User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 06:11, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

  Sure, but probably organizations A and C will have cited examples of XYZ in context of a specific conflict. We could then check to see whether other reliable sources agree that X, Y, and Z are factual. If they are not, our wording would need to be more complicate to indicate all the disputed elements, and we wouldn't say "_ is a genocide according to definition _". I mean, there's no agreed-upon definition of "sandwich", but our Sandwich article says in wikivoice what a sandwich is, covering multiple definitions. Croque monsieur says unambiguously that this is a type of sandwich, notwithstanding the subjective overlapping definitions and fuzzy classifications, because it objectively fits the narrower common definition. -- Beland (talk) 08:22, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

• It seems today is the day the WMF learns that this topic area is occupied by a handful of entrenched WP:CPUSHers who should have been tbanned at AE years ago. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 18:30, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  I mean, if this topic area was occupied by a handful of entrenched WP:CPUSHers who were the only reason that the "genocide" claim was in wikivoice, then the widely attended genocide RfC recently should have overwhelmed their local consensus. Obviously, that didn't happen. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:39, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  If you are accusing editors here of sanctionable behaviour, you are familiar enough with AE processes to file cases in the requisite areas. Otherwise, standard reminder of casting aspersions. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 18:41, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  Taking an opportunity to attempt to get anybody who disagrees with you automatically permanently silenced from on high regardless how fact-based and well-referenced their editing has been, does not exactly seem like democratic and ideal wikipedian behaviour. David A (talk) 18:57, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  Also noting that Prefer primary official statements and major secondary coverage. Avoid synthesis (WP:SYN / WP:NOR). is arguably contradictory. Picking and choosing primary official statements is conducting our own analysis and constructing a narrative based off of it. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 20:33, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  "We need to sanction people for not being genocide deniers" is one hell of an opinion  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 16:39, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

• Hi Jimbo, I’m someone who 1) respects you a great deal, and 2) hasn’t participated much in this topic area. I did not, for instance, participate in the recent RfC. I was quite surprised to see this post, and must say that I agree prima facie with the critical points made above by e.g. Very Polite Person [17][18], Cambial Yellowing [19] , Hemiauchenia [20], and Aquillion [21]. I have spent some time just now looking over the recent RfC and can’t imagine a reasonable closer concluding in any other way than Beland did. The community consensus appears to be robust here, and its interpretation of WP:NPOV squarely in line with written policy. So here’s my question to you: how would you persuade someone like me –– without a horse in this race –– to adopt your view? Generalrelative (talk) 19:59, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  As someone mostly inactive now who has never participated in this subject, and saw an article about Jimbo's post here and came over to read it, this comment summarizes my position extremely well. VegaDark (talk) 01:59, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

• Jimbo Wales, this is an unhelpful comment that at best, fundamentally misunderstands how to handle NPOV in contentious topics & at worst, is an overly long expression of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. While you technically may "not [be] speaking on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation or anyone else!", you should well know how this looks like you're putting your thumb on the scale here. You have made no new arguments nor cited any new sources against the current state of the article, but advocate against the community consensus anyway. I ask you to think about the responsibility & influence your position carries & reflect on if this comment of yours was truly for the good of the community. - Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 20:18, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  @Jimbo Wales, I'm afraid that the current sorry state of the article stems directly from the formal policies and informal practices of Wikipedia, specifically what counts as reliable sources and how their weight is assessed. See the list at Template:Expert opinions in the Gaza genocide debate, it includes such experts as "Pharmacist", "Professor of Literature;Associate professor of translation studies", "Post-doctoral researcher in Political Ecology," etc., etc. This list was actually used as an argument in the RfC that led to the current title.

  Add to this the well-known bias of organisations like Doctors without borders and Amnesty International which hasn't even released a full report on the October 7 attacks. In the sane world we'd wait for serious scholarship to examine this question and only then would decide on the title and on the content. Alaexis_¿question? 21:18, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  That's a rather inaccurate & misleading framing of how the expert opinions list was used. The list contains a purposefully broad array of experts with varying degrees of relation to the topic, both for & against. Proper weight is then given to those with pertinent credentials, as you can see by the fact that none of the experts you listed are used in the article.

  That your proof for the "well-known bias" of reliable organizations you disagree with is an opinion piece from The Atlantic is rather telling.

  We've waited for serious scholarship, they've examined the question, & our article reflects their answer, even if you don't like it. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 21:59, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

  fundamentally misunderstands how to handle NPOV in contentious topics You are replying to the guy who introduced and enshrined the NPOV principle into Wikipedia. OmegaAOLtalk? 06:51, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

• I'm confused by the reference to the NPOV working group (found at meta:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2025-2026/Global Trends/Common global standards for NPOV policies). So far I've seen that they've made an analysis of NPOV policies across languages and published a draft whitepaper about how external researchers can conduct research on NPOV policies. I'm not sure what that has to do with the current situation, as those seem to be very general analyses. If the NPOV working group is shifting its focus to weighing in on individual disputes such as this one, I think it would be a serious mistake. Pinguinn 🐧 00:29, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

  I would expect any report they produce to provide some specific examples to illustrate their concerns. Would you consider that (ordinary use of examples) to be "weighing in on individual disputes such as this one"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:37, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

  Probably not. The reports are being posted on Meta and I would guess that until yesterday very few people had seen them. I would be more concerned about the NPOV group reaching out to the actual talk pages of articles on this wiki as has happened here. I don't think it would be right for them to post on any Talk page, even if it's just to post a link to their report and leave. Talk pages are meant to be strictly for discussing article content, so I would consider any talk page posting to be "weighing in". Pinguinn 🐧 18:01, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

  I very much doubt that would happen. There are a lot of talk pages, and only a few folks in that group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:00, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  It seems like they are more concerned with Wikipedias in other languages that don't have their own NPOV policies, or have policies that are drifting away from what would be acceptable here on the English Wikipedia. For example, some Wikipedias change their logo to highlight certain external political causes that aren't related to encyclopedia-writing. That also raises questions for the Foundation's non-profit status. -- Beland (talk) 07:54, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

A neutral approach would begin with a formulation such as: “Multiple governments, NGOs, and legal bodies have described or rejected the characterization of Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.” This would be to place WP:UNDUE weight on sources that reject the genocide label. There have been surveys in here on what the academic literature says, and from what I recall the overwhelming majority of genocide scholars agree that this is indeed a genocide. Claiming that "multiple" such-and-such have "rejected" this is to sow doubt in the reader's mind as to what the growing academic consensus is. I assume good faith of everyone who has worked on this Gaza “genocide” article Using quote marks here is genocide denial. KetchupSalt (talk) 00:52, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

• I have to admit I feel like I've wasted enough time reading this section and others. The request here has been adequately disputed, but more than anything this request does feel patronising from such an editor as I've never even seen an admin write like this before. Editors don't usually come to this page and state their requests, unless in edit request format (change X to Y) which this is not. This is merely an attempt to re-litigate the recent RfC, among other things, which shockingly wasn't even referenced in the OP alongside "Be bold and start editing" which is reckless advise here. There have been so many discussions on this page, from RfCs to splits/merges, to summarising content and providing due weight, as documented in the disucssion. So the recommendation to "Use the best sources" and "Prefer primary official statements and major secondary coverage. " (emphasis included) is is a complete contradiction of WP:BESTSOURCES and a misunderstanding of WP:PRIMARY usage. The continued arguing over this becomes disruptive when not countering the vast sourcing on the topic or even seemingly reading the article. Respectfully, a higher level of understanding policy/guidelines is expected from such an experienced editor, especially in such a topic area. CNC (talk) 15:47, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

• I thank you for bringing up this issue Jimbo. It is incredibly important for this highly seen and important article to be compliant with WP:NPOV. From reading over this talk page on and off for a while it will be difficult. Unfortunately, those RSs who agree with the classification of genocide get highlighted whereas those of the opposing view tend to get more dismissed, which frequently occurs in other topics.  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 18:27, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

• I have given up on Wikipedia, ceasing my contributions about a month ago. The debacle on this page was the last straw. The RfC was determined by a "more than a 2:1 ratio" of votes, meaning that the WP:NOTVOTE was—a vote. And thus we are tossed by the wind. My deepest respect to Jimmy Wales for sticking his neck out on this. Personally, I'd be happy to try to believe in this project again. —St.Nerol (talk, contribs) 14:14, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  Can you suggest an alternative procedure that would be more satisfying? If I had formed my own opinion by looking source by source to see whether academic consensus has been achieved, and based the close only on that, I would have been accused of supervoting. That's the task all the participants were asked to perform, and many demonstrated that they did so thoughtfully. If the problem is that the participant pool is biased, then we'd need some way to determine eligibility in a fair way? -- Beland (talk) 08:03, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

• Thank you Jimbo. I have been editing Wikipedia for over 18 years, and I have noticed over the past 10 or so an increasing desire of editors to move away from a true NPOV/unbiased approach to try to get their view about current events put in Wikivoice despite serious disagreements about the actual state of affairs. That is not just an issue with this article but with many articles involving current events that have political implications. We need to get back to our older approach where we did used to state things similarly to how you put it in your statement. Although there may be biases reflected in using Wikivoice for articles about older events, that seems to be less problematic as (1) over time a genuine consensus reflecting all the facts and less emotion can evolve and (2) for historical events (say at least 20+ years old) there is less incentive (even unintentional incentive from editors working in good faith) to try to influence events. Rlendog (talk) 19:14, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

• Thank you for your support here Jimbo. I have been making an effort to try to keep this page neutral over the past several months but have faced strong opposition from several older, powerful accounts on here, who, in many instances, are ignoring many of Wikipedia's basic rules and norms. For example, here is an edit that I recently made over disputed material and cited WP:ONUS verbatim which states, "The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." I was reverted, despite the fact that no one has made a single attempt to respond to what I said on the talkpage on this matter. In addition, in June, I made an edit which attempted to make the lead more balanced by having it state, "However, the characterization of Israel's actions as a genocide is contested. Some legal scholars and genocide experts argue that there is insufficient evidence of the specific "intent to destroy" required under the Genocide Convention. They also argue that Israel is engaging in acts of self-defense against Hamas, rather than an attempt to eliminate the Palestinian people." Everything was properly cited and it provided context to the opposite side of the debate. Unfortunately, everything that was written has been systematically eliminated from the lead. This page, and many others in PIA have become very hostile to those who wish to see the issue covered with balance and I would appreciate your continued involvement in this area. As it currently stands, this page is the poster child of WP:NPOV violations and several other policies violations in favor of an unspoken WP:IAR. Gjb0zWxOb (talk)

• Agree with Jimbo This article is yet another example where Wikipedia failed to follow the part of NPOV where it says we explain the controversy, we don't pick sides. This is a long term issue over many articles but this certainly is one of the most visible. This isn't a case of including/excluding facts. Rather, this is exactly the sort of article where the typical Wikipedia system breaks down because we often end up going with weight of numbers when making a call such as this. Yes, there was a RfC on the topic and a large number of editors said they didn't support putting the claim in Wiki voice. Typically I and many other editors would view a 2/3rds majority as a rough consensus. That can often work well for something that isn't overly political and editor's gut feel is sufficient. This isn't one of those cases. This is one where the topic is extremely contentious. In such a case it is clearly better to be cautions and, "not take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without editorial bias." This article fails in that regard since it has clearly taken a side in the introduction (even when the title was changed). Springee (talk) 01:03, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

  The only "side" we picked was following reliable sources. That is what we are supposed to do. We do not explain that maybe the Earth is flat on the flat Earth article. We do not suggest that serial murders might have some positive rationale on articles about them. We document according to our policies. O3000, Ret. (talk) 01:39, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

  You are repeating an argument that has already been made. Clearly a number of editors didn't agree in the RfC and don't agree now. Springee (talk) 01:48, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

  Those editors gotta WP:DROPTHESTICK — 🧀Cheesedealer ^!!!⚟ 08:17, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales, you are wrong here. High-quality academic sources and international humanitarian organizations are largely in agreement that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This is also the determination of human rights organizations inside Israel itself, and senior members of Israel's security establishment have raised alarm over the government's actions. Voluminous talk page discussions and sourcing on this page attest to this.

I am disheartened that you frankly describe yourself coming to us under political pressure and asking us to betray scholarship and WP:NPOV. We cannot do that. This is all the more alarming in the context of an effort by the Trump Administration to threaten and bully Wikipedia. -Darouet (talk) 17:49, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

He did not say he came here under political pressure whatsoever he stated he disagrees with the article and set out his view. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 19:19, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

And I have said repeatedly: outside pressure is irrelevant - and I should say that's true in either direction. The neutrality of this article is disputed, and there are very good reasons for that - it inappropriately, and contrary to our policy and traditions, takes sides in an ongoing controversy when it ought to accurately and fairly summarize all relevant views. That's true no matter what.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 19:58, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes that is true you have completely denied it not just not said it was due to outside preassure. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 20:00, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

There's also an "ongoing controversy" over whether mRNA vaccines cause "turbo cancer" and whether Trump actually won the 2020 Presidential election. Do you want us to be WP:BOLD and go edit those articles as well? -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:24, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I have been editing in the IP-area for just over 20 years, and AFAIK; there has never been as much out-side focus on wikipedia's cover of the area as now. Much of it negative, from pro-Israeli opinionators, X.com, blogs, you name it. Some of this is clearly an effect of Israel using 150 mil. $ on Hasbara, just in 2025. (many doubled its normal amount). User:Jimbo Wales writes: "The neutrality of this article is disputed, and there are very good reasons for that". Could you please tell us one or two of those "good reasons"? Huldra (talk) 22:56, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

There are quite a few good reasons. Starting with the fact that much of this allegedly holy unassailable scholarship in fact looks quite partisan when you take a close look. Sure we can include it but we should treat it with skepticism, just like any government statement would be treated as such. At the very least any such decision should be deferred until the ICJ rules. That and then there's Ashley Rindsberg's revelations in the Pirate Wire regarding off-wiki coordination to push certain viewpoints in this topic area. A few have received indefinite topic bans for that but likely not enough. We've gone beyond the need for a mere relitigation of consensus, what's actually needed is a much deeper investigation into off-wiki canvassing and participation of users in things like the "Tech for Palestine" program. RM (Be my friend) 07:11, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The "Ashley Rindsberg's "revelations" in the Pirate Wire" showed "Tech for Palestine" did a total of 260 edits on wp, (link, I can do more in a day.) And most of the edits (that I have seen), were that I would call "pure fluff"; celebrity A, B, or C supporting/condemming Palestine/Israel. A tempest in a teacup, if there ever was any. It was obviously wrong, but there ia a difference between a thief stealing a lollipop from a shop-counter, to thieves breaking in to the Louvre stealing hundred of millions worth of jewellery, Huldra (talk) 22:06, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Would you also support indepth investigations of off-wiki canvassing by Mossad, the CIA, AIPAC, and The Heritage Foundation, among others, in order to absolve the Israeli government of all guilt for murdering tens of thousands of children? David A (talk) 07:25, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

If you have any evidence of it I'll be glad to see it. RM (Be my friend) 08:52, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The point is that you are only advocating for investigation of anybody who disagree with you, not of your own side of this argument, no matter that your side has the backing of far more influential actors, and that the Israeli government is spending 150 million USD on Hasbara this year alone. David A (talk) 09:07, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

and that pales in comparison to how much Qatar spends and spent, especially to US univiersities. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:42, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

User:Sir Joseph certain "twitterati" have accused me of bring paid by Qatar, LOL! I can assure you that I am not. My impression is that the Qataris are only concerned with Qatar (and especially the Al Thanis): they don't give a damn about the Palestinians, Huldra (talk) 22:06, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

That turned out to be basically fake news. Qatar spends money on university campuses in Qatar, which are run by US universities. Besides this, Qatar isn't even really particularly anti-Israel. Direct lobbying by pro-Israeli groups has much more influence on the political debate about Israel in the US than lobbying by Qatar, for which Israel is at best a tangential issue. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:23, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I think what's needed is for people with an elevated susceptibility to misinformation and manipulation to strengthen their defenses so that they do not find themselves being exploited by people like Rindsberg and the many others out there who construct simple antisemitic-like conspiracy theories to explain complex systems like Wikipedia with thousands of moving parts. It is very hard for me to believe that the kinds of glaring inference errors made in articles like Rindsberg's are made in good faith. The fact that many people are susceptible to these kinds of dramatic stories is not surprising at all, unfortunately. I understand the need for many people to dissociate from what is happening in Gaza, to look away, to distract, to focus on language, a legal word like 'genocide' rather than the gory details etc., but I think it would be much better if the people who think Wikipedia could do better would invest the time in learning how it works and try to become productive editors. There are 7 million articles. The focus on the lead of this one is bizarre in my view. Wikipedia is a work in progress. It's always wrong. Statements like 'We've gone beyond the need for a mere relitigation of consensus' are disturbing. Let's not storm the capital and try to overturn the election because of some noisy people are unhappy. Let's just keep following process and incrementally improve articles. Sean.hoyland (talk) 07:59, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Sorry but you don't just get to dismiss something like this as "misinformation and manipulation". When you have actual evidence in front of you, it's better to deal with it rather than dismiss it. Wikipedia has been the target of efforts like this in the past. We already know for a fact that it happened here because some users got topic-banned over it. From what it looks like, we need a closer look. We need to know how much of the consensus was astroturfed. Articles can't be incrementally improved unless this stuff is dealt with. And it's not bizarre that there's so much focus on this article out of 7 million. This is a major world event, it's current, and it's the subject of a lot of scrutiny. There are good reasons to pay attention to it.

Over time more stuff about Gaza will become clear, after which it will be more appropriate to make such a decision. As of now "incremental improvements" which rush to conclusions might backfire. Imagine if a few years from now the ICJ rules that there's insufficient evidence that this was genocide and Wikipedia ends up with an egg on its face. RM (Be my friend) 08:55, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

• I do have the evidence. According to the article I am pro-Hamas and part of a powerful group of 40 editors that have hijacked Wikipedia narrative. I know this to be false. Imagine it had been you, not me. What would you think? There are all sorts of inference errors like this in his work. It seems willful. I wonder if he has ever had a job where making errors has real world consequences like wasting a lot of money or putting people at risk because you missed something important.
• Wikipedia has been the target of efforts like this... - this I agree with. There have been efforts by both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine groups in the past, probably in the present, and they will no doubt continue into the future. My question is what is their impact? Can we see it? I've probably spent more time than most actually looking at the topic area data, trying to understand the dynamics, and I think that anyone who claims they have figured it out is talking nonsense. It is vastly more complicated than the stories you see in the media and social media. I have not seen evidence of a coordinated attempt to subvert our processes that actually worked and had a significant impact on content. But I'm not sure we are in a position to recognize it even if it were there. What I have seen is a) many, many very successful partisan ban evading actors having an impact on content, but there is very little we can do about that in practice and b) very successful (in my view) efforts to shape the way people who do not edit Wikipedia think about Wikipedia.
• Articles can't be incrementally improved unless this stuff is dealt with. - the same argument could be made for ban evasion, which creates 2 classes of editors, one of which has immunity when it comes to sanctions and an infinite number of lives via disposable accounts. We can see (some of the impact) of ban evasion, but most editors have continued to try follow the rules and incrementally improve articles despite the constant presence of accounts that do not think specific rules apply to them. So, we can presumably do the same for other types of accounts that do not think specific rules apply to them, like off-site coordination. Actually, for Tech for Palestine, apart from the gaming extendedconfirmed grants part, for me it resembled a WikiProject that was in the wrong place, on Discord rather than here.
• Wikipedia ends up with an egg on its face - that's fine by me. I don't have any opinion on the extent to which the lead of this article does or does not comply with NPOV. Either way, as a statement of fact or as a more descriptive statement it's pretty close to maximizing NPOV compliance, and it will change over time. NPOV has always struck me as a bit fuzzy on close calls. I trust the process because all of the alternatives seem worse. The editor pool for a decision is never going to be as large as it should be, but it was pretty large in this case. Whether what is happening can have a label that says 'genocide' on it makes no difference to me. It's not an interesting question for me personally, hence my lack of involvement with this article. The facts on the ground are the same either way and articles record those. Sometimes I wonder whether it would be better if leads were generated by machines, not people, from the article body, strictly implementing all of our policies and guidelines. But it seems that is many years away. Sean.hoyland (talk) 11:11, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Reminder to everyone commenting here of Wikipedia's talk page guidelines.

The purpose of a page's associated talk page is to provide space for editors to discuss editing that page. Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject. While talk pages in other namespaces (such as user talk pages) may be used for discussion and communication between editors, article talk pages should be used solely for discussing the improvement of that article.

-IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 18:44, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't like that I needed to write the subject line, but there it is.

Maybe it's time for a specific guideline-level thing for what, if N standard is met as a Wikipedia rule, we can safely in "our voice" call an event a genocide.

No one article or incident should have a unique carve out or local factors and editors deciding. For something this sensitive, there should be a working definition. If the threshold is crossed, based on WP:V and WP:RS, we can then call the event a genocide, and the matter on that event for us is editorially 'closed' pending new data coming to light.

I would defer to smarter people on what such a thing would look like if it's a good idea. WP:GENOCIDE should be the standard that would apply to anything from the current Gaza genocide article, to things like List of genocides and anything listed there. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 19:59, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I've supported some guideline to this effect for a while (which would also apply to massacre, murder, and similar terms), and if I recall correctly this was brought up in WP:ARBPIA5. The standard I support is overwhelming academic consensus or similar, meaning there are no major voices in the literature that don't use the label. To use the Armenian genocide example, that's the WP:COMMONNAME in virtually all academic literature on the subject. I'm generally skeptical of editors who opt for the more loaded label by default. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 20:10, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

The recent Charlie Kirk-related RMs are another example of how contentious it gets to label violent events in general. We have WP:MURDEROF and WP:KILLINGS, but those are only essays. In general, it would probably be good to have policy standards for how we describe violent events (maybe widening the scope from WP:GENOCIDE to WP:VIOLENTEVENT?). Given that these words often carry heavy weight and connotations, as well as the fact that sources covering these events (even reliable ones) often have their own set of biases, it's an area where WP:DUE can become difficult to parse or can even break down. 🌸⁠wasianpower⁠🌸 (talk • contribs) 21:14, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

What is "overwhelming"? I think the Armenian genocide article may meet this now. But I don't think it did in 2005, and or even in 2015. Some of the deniers changed their minds, others have died or fallen off the radar. You can still find most articles in Turkish scholarly journals denying it. I would have to disagree because IMO this is putting a different standard for "genocide" than anything else, which is contrary to NPOV. (t · c) buidhe 02:29, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Just the opposite. Different standards for different terms are expected per MOS:WTW (and especially MOS:LABEL), which is part of the NPOV policy. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 05:54, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

It's not a "label" assigned to criticize something, except for the kinds of sources that we should not be using anyway. It's a phenomenon variously defined in social sciences and the law. (t · c) buidhe 19:41, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

In general I think policies and guidelines are better than local discussions, as they always reflect a broader consensus. However I don't think the consensus would be much broader in this case. I strongly suspect that trying to make such a policy in the heat of the current moment would just lead to a direct re-litigation of the previous RFC here and the policy would therefore end up very tailored to the realities of this case. Pinguinn 🐧 00:48, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

What else would we use as a basis for any metrics or conditions of a WP:GENOCIDE policy, than data associated with actual defined genocides?

For example: If we find that basically every identified genocide contains the same repeating w, x, y, and z criteria being met, and anything that fails to reach 4/4 is almost never called a genocide, we could infer that any mass casualty or mass death event that meets wxyz is indeed a genocide based on historic precedent. If we then have suitable WP:RS that say, "This situation was a genocide," then we could fully call that event a genocide in "our voice."

How to qualify those metrics and conditions would be the hard part. Then you have the formula/test to judge all other usages. The good thing then is that we now would have a policy to keep things straight and less subjective. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 03:57, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't doubt that there are metrics out there that would make up a good definition of WP:GENOCIDE. The path you're suggesting sounds like a good one, and if we were having this discussion 5-10 years ago we could probably workshop a good definition. My concern is that the discussion itself will in all likelihood be a referendum on this specific case. Proponents of the term "Gaza genocide" will support a definition that allows Wikipedia to call it a genocide and opponents will support a definition that forbids Wikipedia from calling it a genocide. In other words, hard cases make bad law. Pinguinn 🐧 08:38, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The problem is that scholars have very reasonable disagreement about the extension of genocides. For example for the Holodomor genocide question, scholars nowadays (barring a few WP:FRINGE sources) generally all agree about the facts of the case, but there is a disagreement about whether or not it constitutes a genocide. How would we analyze an event like this? Katzrockso (talk) 17:39, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

In this case, there doesn't seem to be a substantial discussion akin to Holodomor genocide question. Instead, the disagreement with the genocide characterization is more similar to Holodomor denial. JasonMacker (talk) 23:31, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The question I asked isn't about this particular case, but the proposed idea of a way to identify a genocide by listing out a set of criteria that qualify or disqualify an event or set of events as genocide. Katzrockso (talk) 04:28, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

This is definitely a good idea. Personisinsterest (talk) 00:48, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

This is a good idea. Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:00, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea, although I agree that it is likely that the process of drafting guidelines will be overdetermined by the context of the discussion (i.e. there will be arguments tailoring the definition to clearly fit Gaza or not to do so) but it is still worth the effort. Overwhelming scholarly consensus (and perhaps legal consensus) would clearly be a foundation for a definition, but what counts as overwhelming isn't clear and this is not something that can be quantified in percentage terms, but no major opposition would be a good start. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:23, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

If you look at genocide studies research, you would find that virtually all genocides are denied or justified by their perpetrators and those who are complicit. A fair number are denied by sections of academia (motivated either by sympathy for the perpetrators or more outright bribery). Overwhelming consensus can only exist if the perpetrators and their ideological descendants no longer hold any power (arguably the case for the Nazis, but hardly anyone else). (t · c) buidhe 19:49, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

This. I'd argue that the Gaza genocide can be as decidedly categorized as a genocide basically as well as any ongoing genocide reasonably can. It is up to the future to have everyone say "we were always against this", for us in the present it matters simply that we find what the majority of scholars, experts, and qualified NGOs think, even if there's still significant pushback from various groups. It as as close to a consensus as we can get here. CherrySoda (talk) 23:32, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Truthfully I felt we are really too close to this conflict and that everyone has their own biases in determining whether or not the Gaza War is a genocide. While the discussion here has raised examples of sources pushing back terms to describe the Armenian genocide and similar massacres/genocides, other scholarly content accessing these events are also made decades after the event, and with sufficient distance to discuss the event objectively. Right now, I felt there's really too much emotions across all parties (and potentially some antisemitic/anti-Israel/Islamophobic bias) to really properly access the conflict, especially since this is part of a broader contentious topic.--ZKang123 (talk · contribs) 04:03, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I support the creation of a WP:GENOCIDE standard, and I nominate @CherrySoda's criteria as the framework that should be used. A framework that is able to call an ongoing or recent genocide a genocide when majority expert opinion is well established is essential to the ongoing reliability of Wikipedia on the issue of genocide. Monk of Monk Hall (talk) 21:06, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure what this is referring to, but it you want to advocate for it, WP:GENOCIDE is now the place. -- Beland (talk) 07:05, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Write a WP:Essay and short-link WP:GENOCIDE to it, and if it has the community's support it can become policy. As with everything, we ourselves take the first steps towards making Wikipedia be what we want it to be. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:13, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Agree This was also discussed here: Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#c-Beland-20251104014300-Neutrality policy for genocide LDW5432 (talk) 05:18, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

I want to add that the page Persecution of Uyghurs in China used to be called "Uyghur genocide" until last year when there was a page move: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&logid=160170052

Overall, the use of the word "genocide" is controversial in a range of conflict zones. LDW5432 (talk) 05:27, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

I have started a thread at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Neutrality policy for genocide so interested editors can continue exploring this idea. -- Beland (talk) 01:45, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Genocide is draft live with my notes inspired from this talk page. Any of you are free to adopt and edit as needed. cc User:Jimbo Wales. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 16:53, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Hello everybody. I apologise if I am being a bother, but I do not think that anybody will be able to convince Jimmy of anything by simply spamming berating upset statements of disappointment and disillusionment, rather than reasoning with him in a fact-based polite manner, especially given that I have read that the United States government is exerting serious political pressure on Wikipedia as a whole to reveal the real life identities of many editors here who disagree with the current military actions of the government of Israel.

To start with, perhaps somebody could list and explain our arguments and concerns thus far here for Jimmy to more easily be overviewed and responded to? For example, I thought that Cdjp1 made a good valid point about that we already list the views of many governments who officially stated that they do not believe that the government of Israel is committing genocide, but that section in question had to be split off to a connected page due to page size restrictions.

It is just a suggestion, but I think that approach seems much more constructive than disorganised uproar. David A (talk) 20:04, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

If the goal is to explain the arguments and concerns to Jimbo, it would be helpful to have him clarify exactly what changes he thinks are warranted here. In the opening statement, it seems like he wants us to reverse the RFC to not state that it is a genocide in Wikivoice, but he follows that up with A neutral approach would begin with a formulation such as: “Multiple governments, NGOs, and legal bodies have described or rejected the characterization of Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide.”, which does not appear to contradict what we currently have (unless he thinks that's how the article should open? Which would be bizarre for a number of reasons, a middle ground interpretation is that he thinks that should be part of the opening paragraph?). Elsewhere in the discussion it also seems like he believes the issue is that we are not featuring opposing viewpoints prominently enough, and maybe it's both. I'd like to ask Jimbo to make his requested change more specific, so that it can be accurately argued for or against, otherwise we are just re-litigating the RFC but on terms much more vague. 🌸⁠wasianpower⁠🌸 (talk • contribs) 20:45, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I think those are very good points. David A (talk) 20:49, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure Jimbo's plea needs to be entertained much beyond demonstrating that current consensus is something different than what he thinks it should be. per WP:JIMBO, his advice is appreciated, and if there is another RFC to iterate on this, so be it. But if community consensus and uninvolved closing admins working on this all decide one way, and Jimbo doesn't like it, we aren't really under any pressure to "improve" it according to his interpretation of policy. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 20:49, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I have been quite upset since the beginning of the war in Gaza since I could see from the very beginning that Israel was headed this way. Netenyahu talking about Amalek, children broadcast singing about we shall annihilate them all, the lies and propaganda, the attacks on the statistics that could get out and the refusal to understand what they meant. I found it very distressing with the amount my family has been involved with Jewish schools. I tried to argue here that Genocide was some official designation which couldn't be arrived at for years, but I knew that was not really right. Now that so many groups have asserted it is genocide I have to agree though I did not give my !vote in the RfC. And for Jimbo Wales, are you trying to emulate Elon Musk with his grody version of Wikipedia? ANd may I say how sorry I am for Jews around the world that this has happened. NadVolum (talk) 22:29, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

If someone already said this, my apologies, a lot to read there...but my own reason for bringing this up was that the top-level page for Wikipedia, in the "In The News" section has a handy link to a page identified as "genocide" listed after "Gaza War", but no such links exist after Russo-Ukrainian War or Sudanese Civil War, implying that there have been no similar allegations of genocide in those conflicts, when of course, there have been. That was the whole of the point I raised. I do not understand why Wikipedia was so quick to slap a "genocide" link on only one of those three conflicts, and most comments I received back indicate no one is in a hurry add similar links for the other two conflicts anytime soon. Zachary Klaas (talk) 23:51, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

They're very bad - but why would Wikipedia say they were genocides? Have you read a dictionary definition of genocide or the lead of the article genocide? NadVolum (talk) 00:06, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I will let your comment stand for itself. Hope you won't have to apologise for it in light of what's happening in those places. Zachary Klaas (talk) 00:12, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

There is a current situation in the Sudanese civil war which may well be classed as genocide like the one twenty years ago. Wikipedia is not a newspaper though and immediately calling it genocide is pushing things. For instance did the leaders of the RSF say they wanted to kill or remove all those people? It looked to me like they did it for terrorism purposes. It may be that genocide is the eventual consensus but civil wars can be extremely nasty without anyone having an intention like that. Genocide does not mean the same as lots of people killed. NadVolum (talk) 00:28, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Again, I will let those comments stand, and hope you won't have to apologise for them later. Zachary Klaas (talk) 00:37, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Some actual reasoning for what you say would be much more productive than anodyne wishes for me. NadVolum (talk) 01:03, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The Al-Fashir massacre is already listed in the "In the news" section; otherwise I would have added a "massacre" link to that or the parent summary article. BTW, there is a discussion at Talk:Masalit massacres (2023–present)#Requested move 28 October 2025 to move that parent summary article to "Masalit genocide".

For Ukraine, that article is currently titled Allegations of genocide of Ukrainians in the Russo-Ukrainian war, which seems more uncertain, and that may be a reason not to link it from the main page. -- Beland (talk) 02:44, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't really edit the RUSUKR topic area much (I think the two main things I did are an RM of a related page and requesting the split of Confiscation of Russian central bank funds, which was done by the author of that subsection) so I can't say I'm familiar with the specifics, but it may be worthwhile posting a survey of the most recent scholarly sources on the topic on the talk page of that article. Zachary Klaas, would you have the time to do that? Alpha3031 (t • c) 03:00, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

You can also do it, as can others. As I've noted in previous exchanges, I am not volunteering by myself for the role of "troublemaker" so people can make a show of me and then claim they've considered alternatives. I want those who have created the current situation to resolve it. The article cited by Beland does have a section called "Evidence of genocidal intent", so there is already something in the article on that topic. If you don't consider that evidence enough that there should be a handy "genocide" link like the Gaza War seems to merit, then that's your thing. I've noted my issue with the current coverage, people can do what they will. Zachary Klaas (talk) 03:38, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I have made a previous RM in the RUSUKR topic area and made that offer in good faith. I do not appreciate your accusations. Alpha3031 (t • c) 03:42, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The offer of giving me something to do instead of doing it yourself? Zachary Klaas (talk) 00:55, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Let's keep the focus on article content and not other editors. I see that the question of moving this article to "Ukrainian Genocide" has already been opened at Talk:Allegations of genocide of Ukrainians in the Russo-Ukrainian war#Requested move 26 April 2025, including a list of sources. Perhaps the next step would be to get that conversation closed by an uninvolved editor (which can be filed at Wikipedia:Closure requests), or to participate in that discussion if there's more to be said or researched. If you want to continue to try to recruit an expert on the topic to update the source list, you might try a related WikiProject, but in general these things tend to happen when the person who wants them done does them. -- Beland (talk) 01:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The current War crimes in the Russo-Ukrainian war (2022-present) article already contains this sentence: "A report by 30 scholars concluded that Russia is guilty of inciting genocide in Ukraine by committing acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention. The report further stated that a serious risk of more genocide exists, triggering an obligation for foreign parties to take action." So we're "recruiting experts" after we already have that statement? This is why people think having a handy link to this "Gaza genocide" article on Wikipedia's front page demonstrates bias, because an article on genocide in Ukraine still has editors looking for sufficient evidence from experts after our present article already has these experts represented. I hope people aren't accepting that the genocide in Ukraine is going to be "studied to death" while they pat themselves on the back for their "consensus" on Gaza. Zachary Klaas (talk) 07:47, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for adding a note about that to the move discussion. It's probably not appropriate for us to comment on how other editors feel about themselves, as that's not related to article content. -- Beland (talk) 08:38, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

It would be much more helpful to provide information about what is happening and why you think it's obviously a genocide. Not everyone has accessed the same information sources as you, and simply not knowing the latest information is not an unethical act. For example, one of the reasons this seems like a genocide and not just a lot of killing is that I'm reading RSF forces are being accused of killing all civilians they can find who belong to the Zaghawa ethnic groupu, and posting videos openly documenting their actions. It's reportedly already being called a genocide by the US government. -- Beland (talk) 04:19, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

It's not my role to "think it's obviously a genocide", it's my role to note others who do. Wikipedia usually starts by identifying reliable sources. I was moved to make my comment about the "In The News" page the other day because I noticed that France24 put out this article: https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20251029-genocide-warnings-flashing-red-after-rsf-takeover-of-sudan-s-el-fasher .

When I see a source generally conceded to be reliable putting out a headline like "Genocide warnings 'flashing red' after RSF takeover of Sudan's El-Fasher", I tend to think that maybe something credibly assessed to be genocide might be going on.

Another generally conceded to be credible source, The Guardian, had this article, noting that blood from the El Fasher massacre was visible to satellite imagery...in other words, there was so much blood it could be seen from space: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/03/blood-spilled-sudan-el-fasher-space-rsf-uae-darfur

Again, when I see reliable sources saying things like that, it occurs to me charges of genocide may be credible. I don't have to make a full judgment that it is, perhaps people can make some kind of legal argument that it's "only" a mass killing and hasn't met the Genocide Convention's full set of requirements. But I would think there is more than enough credibility to the charges at this point.

Anyway, it is not my job alone to list out all the experts who think that's what's happening. But I must admit it is shocking to see people acting like "What? Convince me there's even a reason to suspect that a genocide is going on there." I want to see people actually thinking about this, not just zeroing in on others to carry the weight of everything on their shoulders.

So there, that's my take about that. Do with it what you will. Zachary Klaas (talk) 01:05, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, that was much more informative. -- Beland (talk) 01:59, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@NadVolum, I have been quite upset since the beginning of the war as well, and I know that my own feelings should be set aside to the maximum extent possible when we are talking about the job of Wikipedia to be neutral. NPOV is non-negotiable. It's a very odd question to ask if I think we should emulate Elon Musk's project, because I very obviously do not think that. I can't think of a single thing I've said which would suggest that. To restate it: we have a very strong neutrality policy and the current version of this article is not consistent with it. It takes side in a live global debate in a way that is not appropriate. Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:09, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Unfortunately what you are trying to ask fits squarely within the middle ground fallacy. Your suggestion of the very first sentence in the lede is a blatant attempt to normalize the weight of expert opinions (there is an ongoing genocide in Gaza) with partisan arguments (there's nothing to see in Gaza). That request itself is a violation of our neutrality policy. That gives me a strong feeling that you haven't read any recent RfCs about the lede, or pretend that they were concluded with ill-intents. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 03:13, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Nobody disagrees that neutrality is important. The disagreement here is how neutrality requires we weigh our sources when evaluating whether the genocide classification is "objectively" correct, all of which was extensively discussed in previous RfCs. It would be very helpful if you could point to what exactly in the RfCs conclusions you disagree with (this one is especially relevant), and how you think we should go about resolving this disagreement.

Your request that we "Move from debate to concrete improvements immediately" appears incompatible with our practice of discussing controversial topics to arrive at consensus before making those changes. These "improvements" are not being made because we already reached consensus that they are not "improvements" at all. It would be helpful if you could articulate what concrete changes you'd like to see in the consensus process which you seem to believe has broken down here, since I really can't imagine you want us to just edit war this article to pieces. StereoFolic (talk) 04:33, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

David A, I very much endorse your call for civility. I'd like to repeat again that pressure from the US Government is not something that I care about at all in this context. To answer your specific points, it is good to list various perspectives, and they should be placed on appropriate footing and none of the perspectives should be stated in WikiVoice. There is no consensus in the great wide world about this, and a narrow consensus of some academics should be noted, for sure, but it is hardly the end of the issue. The best arguments I have seen against this are really not very good arguments at all, comparing the position to that of crackpot theories about the earth being flat. No, we should not include fringe views. Yes, the views of major world powers are not fringe views. Jimbo Wales (talk) 02:06, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE states If discussed in an article about a mainstream idea, a theory that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight, which is a content guideline. I'd also encourage you to look at WP:UNDUE in its current form because it goes against some of what you've stated above. If you'd wish to make larger structural changes to how Wikipedia functions, Wikipedia:Village Pump is probably the better venue.

As for there is no consensus in the great wide world about this, there are plenty of things people believe that go against mainstream academic consensus, such as 37% of Americans believing in Young Earth creationism. [22] That does not mean that wide swaths of academic consensus about geology, biology, etc are incorrect. I believe this is why people are making flat earth comparisons, even if you don't think it's an apples to apples situation. I don't edit in ARBPIA, by the way. I prefer focusing on other subjects. I do worry that you don't seem to realize that coming here and trying to pull an authority-based argument while promoting a book IRL is not something that promotes a sense of trust amongst the community. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 02:23, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Given that we have followed established procedures to implement established policies, if the resulting opening of this article is not up to your desired standard, then what proposal would you have to change our policies or procedures to reach the desired standard? It seems like some of the asks above represent major changes, and if proposed by an individual editor would need to be affirmed through an RFC.

Procedurally, people have already boldly edited this article, discussed conflicting edits, were unable to agree on wording, and called an RFC on the first sentence. The RFC answered the question of whether assertion of a Gaza genocide in wikivoice would violate WP:NPOV, strongly but not unanimously "no". The extensive argument over which sources were reliable enough to determine facts seems to be exactly what the "seriously contested" by "reliable sources" clause of WP:WIKIVOICE requires. Is there a different procedure through which a "non-negotiable" policy should be interpreted to see how it applies in a given case? Editors were at least on the face of it not arguing that NPOV should be ignored, but rather how to best implement it.

If the argument is that no changes are needed but simply that the RFC came to the wrong conclusion based on the sources presented, that sounds like a repeat of the many arguments made for Option 2, which did not get consensus. I'm not sure that complaint would be actionable unless you wanted to file a closure review or wait 6-12 months and call another RFC in which you present more reliable sources or more convincing arguments supporting Option 2?

If the "non-negotiable" policy needs admins to defend a higher standard which the community is not allowed to override, it would be helpful to articulate that more clearly. I see three nascent policy change ideas in your comments so far (I'm not expressing an opinion on any of this, just trying to clarify what is being asked for):

• With regard to "Separate factual reporting on conduct and casualties from legal characterization" and "The lead and body must not declare a legal conclusion": We already have an explicit standard which relates to the legal system for living people (WP:BLPCRIME), but not governments. Adding such a standard for governments under international law would imply to me that Armenian genocide should not say or imply in wikivoice that the Ottoman Empire is guilty of crimes against humanity. Is that an acceptable outcome, or is there some policy wording that would result in us applying this "legal conclusion" standard to "Gaza genocide" but not "Armenian genocide"?
• Your pointing out the fact that we have "major governments, analysts, NGOs etc, debating the issue" seems to relate to the question of how to interpret the "seriously contested" by "reliable sources" clause of WP:WIKIVOICE. There seems to be a desire to take into account "the considered statements of multiple national governments, well-known political analysts and others" on "an issue of global political importance". Multiple national governments - Turkey and Azerbaijan - object to the characterization of the Armenian genocide as such, while 34 countries recognize it and most have apparently not opined. Is there desire to change the NPOV standard to recognize that debates of fact in non-reliable sources, such as the politically-motivated statements of national governments and partisan think tanks, should trigger neutrality? That might mean Wikipedia takes a neutral stand on climate change, given that the leader of the US government has declared it a "hoax" and taken substantive domestic and international policy and spending actions based on this assertion of fact. (According to Climate change denial#Europe, significant political parties there are on the same side of that factual debate.) Or is there some threshold that can be more clearly articulated (whether or not scoping to reliable sources only) that would put Gaza genocide on the "neutrality in wikivoice" side but Armenian genocide and climate change on the "assert as fact in wikivoice while noting dissenting views"?
• A new WP:GENOCIDE has also been proposed; if that happens, would that solve the problem, or do you see fundamental NPOV problems in important non-genocide articles? -- Beland (talk) 02:51, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

If I'm understanding his arguments correctly, I think what Jimmy is trying to say is that scholars in an area are not the only people who should count as experts. Given the confidence in which he is speaking, I think he does genuinely believe this is an NPOV issue and would likely be surprised what the status quo is in other subject areas. I'm not sure he's familiar with how WP:SOURCETYPES and WP:FRINGE are used in practice. Scholarly sources are considered more reliable than other types of sources under current Wikipedia norms, and editors do not like giving a WP:FALSEBALANCE to other perspectives. This goes beyond scientific consensus to academic consensus in other respective fields. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 03:09, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Well, Chomsky is a scholar of linguistics. Why is he considered a scholar on the IP conflict, merely for his pro-(one side) views? Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:45, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

@Sir Joseph: My answer to that is that of course they're not an expert outside their field and shouldn't be represented as such. But my understanding is that the article right now is based on the academic consensus of people actually in the field. You can try to prove me wrong if you'd like. I value seeing new information and re-adjust my perspective if nessecary. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 04:38, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

There is a table used that lists all the sources used. Many of the people listed aren't scholars in the area. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 05:04, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

"Many of the people listed aren't scholars in the area" & as such, are not cited in the article, as clearly specified by said list - Expert opinions in the Gaza genocide debate. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 05:17, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States has repeatedly stated there is not even a single safe and effective vaccine in existence. He does not even believe the Polio vaccines are safe and effective. This is the view expressed by the highest US government health official. It is most definitely a fringe view. Should we "teach the controversy," avoid making our own determination about vaccines, and just state that the US government believes they're all dangerous, but a "narrow consensus" of egghead academics disagrees? Thucydides411 (talk) 06:57, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Jimbo has one particular power that almost no other editor wields: the ability to start a discussion and have everyone pay attention to it. This particular topic has been litigated thousands of times already, but in this one highly contentious area he's jumping in to make sure things are set straight.

I'm assuming bad faith on the part of Jimmy Wales to use his considerable and unique clout to move the discussion in the direction of his own bias. We should be free to call him out on it. We should be free to be suspicious when he calls on the better angels of our WP-nature as though we don't already have them; as though we aren't focusing on policy strongly enough; as though we lack the understanding of its nuances and applicability.

We should be free to call this an abuse of power. Xavexgoem (talk) 06:10, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

All that I tried to say was that we are likely not going to convince Jimmy of anything through disorganised uproar while a few pro-government of Israel editors are taking the opportunity to actively encourage him to ban everybody who disagree with the military actions of the government of Israel. Our arguments likely need to be properly organised and presented to him in order to have an effect, as it is hard for him to overview borderline chaos if he is not indepth familiar with the topic.

For example, much of what Jimmy demanded is probably already listed in the spinoff pages linked to in section headings, due to previous demands to maintain a briefer page length here making it necessary.

However, I do agree about an earlier point that the uproar would likely lessen and the organisation likely increase if it was better clarified what exactly that he wants us to do, more specifically. David A (talk) 07:35, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I mean, WP:SATISFY applies, or ought to. If Wales is just weighing in as another editor, then at the end of the day his opinion carries no more weight than anyone else's, and we have already had a lot of people weigh in on this. Sometimes people dislike the outcome of an RFC, disagree with a consensus, think the way we're reading or weighing sources are wrong, and so forth; that's a normal part of editing. We have methods to deal with such disputes and "everyone must convince Jimbo Wales" is not one of them. Just looking at the discussion here makes it fairly obvious that the consensus we reached in the RFC hasn't changed and that Wales' arguments are not convincing people. So to me the main question (which I think is what @Xavexgoem: is getting at) is whether the way Wales went about this is enough of a problem to be a conduct issue, or something that we should make policies to prevent going forwards. That's not really an appropriate topic for this page - it would probably be better-handled at WP:VPWMF or WP:VP/PR or WP:AN. (As I implied above, my main concern is that... my perception is that by bringing up the NPOV Working Group, he indirectly invoked his role with the WMF in a content dispute. Whether he intended to or not, that causes problems.) --Aquillion (talk) 16:35, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Well said. The combination of Wales advocating "be bold" on a page that has more restrictions than you can swing a dead cat at, combined with his naive (that's the kind framing) assertion about the importance of official, government POVs makes me wonder who is the actual target audience for his statement. That there is so much in this intervention that is at odds with the norms and practices of editors leads me to think that we are not its target audieance. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 09:36, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't understand. Who but the editors could be the target audience? I do believe this is an earnest attempt on his part, and his bias on this matter is well known.

It is absolutely sufficient to state: This is bad and shouldn't be happening. Xavexgoem (talk) 09:49, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The presumed alternative target audience is the general public who have been alerted to this article as a putative example of an anti-Israel bias on wikipedia, with the intention of restoring credibility to the project in the eyes of those who are persuaded by such reporting.[23][24][25][26][27][28][29] BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:54, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Do you really think Wikipedia articles are neutral on the IP conflict? Sir Joseph ^(talk) 20:46, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

It is true that any topic Jimmy starts will immediately be the most prominent topic on the site, but short of him never discussing topics, there's not really much that can be done about that. He should be free to start a topic just the same as the rest of us - if the end result is that the topic has more eyes on it, I do not think that is a bad thing. Either the arguments stating there is a genocide in Wikivoice will stand up to greater scrutiny, which ends the debate rather conclusively, or the wording changes, which is how consensus works. Either way I do not consider him merely opening the discussion (no matter the validity of his arguments) to be an abuse of power, which is a heavy accusation to level at someone. — Czello ^(music) 10:23, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

That is the accusation I am leveling, yes. To say that this incident is in any way "mere" is absurd. Xavexgoem (talk) 10:37, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Is that not what he has done? Opened the discussion, and indeed made his arguments, the same as would be expected of any of the rest of us? — Czello ^(music) 10:50, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Naming the post "A statement from [username]", is not something a normal user would ever do, but his username is well-known and respected. The hatnote additionally is strange, even if you have a Wikipedia article, you would not normally link it at the top of your message. In my opinion, he is not just acting like a normal editor. TheSilksongPikmin (talk | contribs) 21:42, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I would also note WP:COIEDIT:

"Editors with a COI should follow Wikipedia policies and best practices scrupulously:

• you should disclose your COI when involved with affected articles; ...
• you may propose changes on talk pages (by using the {{edit COI}} template), so that they can be peer-reviewed...."

In this case, we have an editor who may have a COI, but who has not disclosed it. That is an issue. WillowCity^(talk) 13:54, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Can you spell out what the conflict of interest is? A conflict of interest (COI) occurs when editors use Wikipedia to advance the interests of their external roles or relationships. What external role or relationship do you believe he is advancing here? BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:59, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

In addition to publicly-expressed ideological commitments, there have been direct financial contributions by an entity linked directly to the Israeli state. Per the Times of Israel: After this trip [to Israel, including to the Israeli Presidential Conference to accept a a one-million-dollar prize] Wales, whose work has largely been not-for-profit, will return $900,000 richer (10 percent of the prize goes to doctoral students). Tel Aviv University, which gave the prize, is funded in significant part by the Israeli state; it is "government-run" in a broad sense. As noted, a conflict of interest is not a value-based statement; it is a factual description. I'm not stating that there is corruption or malfeasance here. I am pointing out the fact that there is an external ... relationship to Israeli institutions, and specifically and that the editor in question is promoting a position that advances the interests of said institutions. In that context, I would like (and I believe we are entitled to receive) disclosure of whether there have been other contributions or relationships that have informed the editor's position. WillowCity^(talk) 15:18, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

From what I can gather Tel Aviv University didn't sponsor the prize, it just provided a venue for a ceremony. The actual benefactor seems to be Dan David himself, and the selection committee seems very global.

This doesn't seem to establish any meaningful relationship to the entities being accused of genocide. Maybe something very indirect, but then we all have very indirect relationships with Israel, by using devices with Israeli IP or what not. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 18:40, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

One of the conditions of the prize was that 10% ($100,000) be donated to fund postdoctoral studies at Tel Aviv University. This is not simply a case of someone owning a SodaStream; it is an individual who received money from an organization and on whose behalf a portion of that money went to fund and support an Israeli state institution. WillowCity^(talk) 18:58, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

It's not Jimbo donating to the university though, they're just a separate beneficiary. So the chain seems to go "Jimbo was awarded funds by a committee administering a prize, which was funded Dan David, who also funded TAU, which also received funds from the Israeli government, which also funds the IDF, which is being accused of genocide". That's quite a few layers of indirection. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 19:47, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Firstly, there doesn't need to be an exchange of consideration or a quid pro quo to raise a COI under our policy. The question, as stated above, is whether the editor is using Wikipedia to advance the interests of their external roles or relationships.

Secondly, this line of argument misses the forest for the trees. We can't properly litigate this because, as noted at the outset, the individual involved has not or will not disclose any COI.

Finally, the relationship is much simpler than you suggest. If the 2015 prize had not been given to him, it would have been given to someone else, and the donation to the university would have been made on behalf of that individual: there would be no COI. But the donation was not made on behalf of someone else, it was made on behalf of the recipient, Wales, who voluntarily made himself a part of that chain by accepting. In other words, an organization gave money to an individual. As a condition of accepting that money, the individual authorized a donation of $100,000 to be made, on his behalf, to or in support of an Israeli public institution. The institution in question shares resources with firms accused of aiding and abetting the genocide (such as Elbit Systems: see here) and is tied to the Institute for National Security Studies (Israel), which directly weighs in with positions in support of Israeli military practices (see, e.g., this post from 2008, opining that “the IDF will need to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate to the enemy's actions and the threat it poses. Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes.”) WillowCity^(talk) 21:31, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes hypothetically there could be other sorts of relationships at play, but why would we assume that? Not having complete information isn't a reason to assume a COI violation. COI only requires editors to disclose information about relevant relationships that actually exist, not about non-existent ones, regardless of any speculation.

I think a more precise way to frame the donations to TAU would be "in honor of" the laureates. For all practical purposes (besides marketing), the donation is made by the foundation in accordance with its charter, not by laureates.

Any student who pays tuition at a public school would have a much more direct relationship with their government, yet we don't expect disclosures from students just to discuss articles about the politics of their country. Why should we apply a standard here that we don't apply anywhere else?

Companies like Elbit Systems don't really make the connection stronger - it's still an intermediary between TAU and the IDF, and we have as many layers of indirection as before. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 23:59, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Is there really a need to link to Tel Aviv University behind the word entity as opposed to just saying "Tel Aviv University"? -- Cdjp1 (talk) 20:36, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Well, the sentence "direct financial contributions by a Tel Aviv University linked directly to the Israeli state" doesn't make any grammatical sense. WillowCity^(talk) 21:37, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Which isn't an argument as you can easily have written a grammatically correct sentence while saying "Tel Aviv University". -- Cdjp1 (talk) 21:48, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The issues of which you are aware, WillowCity, are described in a whole section of Jimmy Wales' BLP, which he linked to (as some editors here have noted in a negative way) at the start of his comment, which seems like full disclosure to me. You suspect there are other "external roles or relationships" which he hasn't disclosed, but seem to have absolutely no grounds for thinking that, so are going beyond any normal assumption of good faith. But the prize is nothing close to a conflict of interest. By your logic, anybody who has received any honour from a US public university would have a conflict of interest in editing any article relating to the US, which is just bizarre. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:39, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Or, expressed another way: if I received a $900,000 "prize" from al-Quds University, would you be comfortable with me editing in this topic area without disclosing that fact? WillowCity^(talk) 15:28, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

It would be absolutely fine for someone who had received a prize from a Palestinian university to edit this article or any article on the I/P topic. I don't think they'd need to disclose that fact. And if they were a non-anonymous editor with a public profile so this was public knowledge, even less. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:33, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

You can;t call this an abuse of power, can you? What is the power he is abusing? People are replying to his statement en masse because he is popular. He has the complete right to use that popularity to state his opinion, however biased it may be. And for the record, I don't think Wales's opinion is biased. It is an effective statement on how some articles drift away from WP:NPOV. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:16, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Mr Wales to a degree. The article should not say that there is a genocide in Gaza. Rather it should say that there is a consensus among [named categories of expert] that there is a genocide. Then it should say that some governments and scholars dispute the characterisation. In focussing on NPOV as the applicable policy, Mr Wales devalues RS which is also a key policy. We are not only permitted but required to assess the reliability of sources, and indeed one of the marks of a good editor is one who seeks the best sources and bases their editing on them to the exclusion of weak sources. When it comes to disputes in the political, military or human rights sphere, there is no similarity in reliability between independent scholars and involved governments and juxtaposing them as if they have equal weight is not a requirement of NPOV but a violation of it. Zero^talk 08:35, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

"experts agree that the grass is green and experts have a consensus that the sky is blue". And we say that in a conceeding way with no regard to delusional people or liars or conspiracy theorists or whatever who would have you think otherwise. BarntToust 07:09, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@David A: Sorry, but can you also link the news article claiming US' pressure on people criticising Israel's military actions?--ZKang123 (talk · contribs) 04:07, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I remember reading it a few months ago in Wikipedia's news service section, but could not find it when I Googled. The information seems to be more summarised here though: [30] David A (talk) 06:29, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@ZKang123: I found some more information, but do not think that it was the exact same Signpost article that I read before: [31] [32] David A (talk) 15:58, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the information.--ZKang123 (talk · contribs) 00:09, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Jimmy has mentioned the NPOV working group in his first post to this section, and it may be helpful for people reviewing this thread to have a bit more detail on the focuses of the NPOV working group. First off, the working group has five members (Jimmy, current WMF Board of Trustees chair Nat Tymkiv (also a very active editor), Board chair-elect Lorenzo Losa (also an active editor), myself (as an experienced editor and user with extended permissions) and steward Albertoleoncio, and we are all focused on slightly different aspects of NPOV. There are multiple WMF staff and others providing support. It was discussed as part of the WMF's 2025-26 annual plan back in March 2025, both on Meta and in a Diff blog post.

The key focuses of the working group are:

• to carry out research and provide guidance to other researchers specific to the topic of NPOV
• to develop a baseline standard applicable to all Wikipedias specific to NPOV (Note: this is my primary focus on the working group)
• to actively communicate about and encourage discussion amongst contributors about Wikipedia's core pillar of NPOV
• to provide support to users with extended rights (administrators, stewards, and others) in promoting NPOV on their projects
• for Jimmy Wales specifically, to reflect on the development of NPOV over the past 25 years, and offer perspectives on what the world needs of Wikipedia in the future in this respect.

I do not expect the average English Wikipedian to be aware of challenges faced by other Wikipedias. Our policies are well-developed to the point that some smaller projects simply redirect their "policy page" to one or more English Wikipedia policies. This is not the case for many other Wikipedias; research shows that about 57% of the 342 Wikipedias have little or no guidance on neutral point of view, and 78% do not have all of the main neutrality-related content policies. While most of the largest Wikipedias involve languages used in diverse geographic regions (e.g., Spanish, French, Arabic), most of the smaller Wikipedias involve languages used in a very narrow geographic region. Over 220 of the 342 Wikipedias have fewer than 100 active editors; an even larger number have fewer than 10 administrators. None of these factors is an issue for English Wikipedia; this project's policies far exceed anything that would be in a baseline standard, we have tens of thousands of active editors (who are distributed all over the globe) and hundreds of admins, and a surfeit of contributors interested and active in policy development.

I've linked a few of the work products of this group up above. A special pre-conference day at Wikimania Nairobi was dedicated to users with extended rights, and several regional conferences have included sessions for these users as well. Both at Wikimania and at regional conferences, members of the working group or its support team have been workshopping a draft for the baseline standard, as well as to discuss NPOV as it applies to the Wikipedias whose primary focus is languages of that region to gather insights on current status and what support those Wikipedias need.

There have been many instances going back more than a decade where questions have been raised with respect to how NPOV has (or in some cases, has not) been applied on various Wikipedias; this is not something that has come up suddenly in response to specific news stories, or particular governments. It is to some extent a reflection that the world around us is not the same as it was when the first NPOV policy was published in 2003, though. NPOV is the first really core content policy that was created on any Wikipedia; it is worthwhile to really give focus to it as we approach the 25th anniversary of Wikipedia. Risker (talk) 08:04, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I hope they stay away from AI for the moment instead of trying to use it to fill up entries. I just had a look at Grokipedia about the Gaza Health Ministry. The AI writes good Engliah but witters on and has hallucinated various bits wich only bear a vague resemblance to citations it gives! The post 2025 travails of the ministry are quite interesting! A lot of stuff on Grokipedia is a bit strange and seem likes articles based on random thoughts. Quite a bit doesn't seem to line up with Elon Musk's thoughts which I think is interesting, I wonder if he is giving it some freedom or hasn't yet consolidated control - or he just changes his mind? NadVolum (talk) 12:24, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

@Risker I'm not sure what you are planning to do here. If there's a smaller Wikipedia website for a given language community and the admin consensus at that Wikipedia doesn't value a neutral point of view, what is your working group hoping to accomplish? Does it think that WMF writing up a policy page and inserting it into that community will change their views?

Many of the smaller Wikis are quite nationalistic and when it comes to non-Western Wikis the culture of it's users frequently values NPOV less than Western intellectual culture used to. I would argue that over the last decade the Western intellectual culture also started to devalue NPOV including the banning of many right-wing sources to be used as reliable sources, so that current Wikipedia policy is different than it was a decade ago.

From a governance perspective, the working group reporting to the WMF and not the Global Council is pretty weird. The separation of concerns was always that the WMF is not setting policy for Wikipedia's and the Global Council was created to have an entity that has the legitimation to do so. Developing policy drafts offline instead of onwiki seems weird to me as well. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 16:31, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

ChristianKl, there is no global council. Even if there was, this was far outside of the scope of any serious global council proposals made in the last 15 years. Risker (talk) 16:38, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not ban sources based on their ideology, but on their reputation for reporting facts reliably. If you have an example which you think was wrongly decided, I'm open to pointers. -- Beland (talk) 08:53, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Oh no, not another "I spoke to someone and now we all must immediately jump to my ill-thought ideas and conclusions." We've had too many of these (and very few other mainspace or talk page edits really) over the last few years, including very ill-advised attempts to use AI to generate talk page comments and so on. I don't know why people still give so much weight to the ideas of either of the cofounders, when they have such a poor track record. Anyway, I removed the extremely silly hatnote from the starting post: between the title and the double signature, it is already quite clear that this was a message from JW, no idea why this would need an additional hatnote as if it would be condused with a message from another JW, or as if such a message would carry less weight. Fram (talk) 14:53, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

• Umm, no idea where the comments about AI are coming from. It has nothing at all to do with the NPOV working group. I certainly didn't use AI to generate what I wrote above, and personally would never promote the use of AI for article development or content creation. (On the other hand, I'm all for the type of AI that we use in our anti-vandalism bots, and I'm pretty sure almost everyone commenting on this page would feel the same.) Risker (talk) 16:46, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

  Regarding the AI use, I believe Fram is referring to this comment from Talk:Dana Klisanin § Bot analysis, which is listed as an example at Wikipedia:Signs of AI writing § Use of Markdown (WP:MARKDOWN). — Newslinger talk 17:27, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

  That, and e.g. also this. Prior to that were his attempts to give more weight to the lab leak theory in the Origin of SARS-CoV-2 article, because after Trump came to power again, the CIA suddenly revived that claim (see the article used by Jimmy Wales and its final line "The decision to release that assessment marks one of the first made by the CIA's new director John Ratcliffe, appointed by Donald Trump, who took over the agency on Thursday.") I have very little confidence in the NPOV and critical thinking shown in their enwiki edits, and it only seems to be getting worse. Not a surprise that they are part of some WMF NPOV group then... Fram (talk) 17:43, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Regardless of the stature of the user who has made this edit request, it should be seriously considered as it appears to be a genuine attempt to contribute to improving this article. Let's avoid the unnecessary commentary regarding the user who has made the edit request, and let's focus on the edit request itself. So, let's break it down:

>At present, the lede and the overall presentation state, in Wikipedia’s voice, that Israel is committing genocide, although that claim is highly contested The most important question to ask here is, "by who?" There are many articles discussing contentious issues. As many other users here have mentioned, there are a wide variety of topics where government officials or political organizations disagree with the consensus of academic scholars. Per WP:UNDUE, we should avoid couching statements of broad consensus in wording such as "According to various chemists and physicians, water contains two hydrogen molecules." So the critical question is, does this article's sourcing merit full attribution of any and all claims? Per the RfC, the answer is no. So it's unclear what the user is asking for here. Is this a call to relitigate the RfC? The user should clarify this.

>Be bold and start editing (WP:BOLD). Move from debate to concrete improvements immediately. This is an unactionable request. The main reason is that the article is currently fully protected, and so the vast majority of editors simply cannot edit the article. In addition, this already happened. As soon as the RfC concluded, the wording of the first sentence was changed, and there have been many BOLD tweaks of the first sentence since then.

>Assume good faith (WP:AGF). Avoid personalizing disagreements. Focus only on text and sources. I agree. Unfortunately, this edit request is not accompanied by any sources, so it seems like it didn't follow its own declaration.

>Attribute, don’t assert (WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV). The lead and body must not declare a legal conclusion. Present who says what, with attribution and dates. There is no legal conclusion in the lead or the body, so this is again unactionable. And who says what is already being presented. If the user has any suggestions as to what specifically needs to be added, then that can be discussed on this talk page.

>Balance by due weight (WP:UNDUE). Include significant, high-quality sources from all sides—governments, courts, NGOs, commentators. No side should speak in Wikipedia’s own voice. This is already provided in the article. As for the "no side should speak in Wikipedia's own voice," per WP:UNDUE, this is simply untrue. This article does not have extraordinary content compared to other articles that cover genocides. Government denials of the genocide are given the appropriate weight, and there is an entire separate article Gaza genocide denial that provides more coverage for this view, just like Armenian genocide denial.

>Use the best sources (WP:RS / WP:V). Prefer primary official statements and major secondary coverage. Avoid synthesis (WP:SYN / WP:NOR). Avoiding synthesis has been a longstanding focus on this article's talkpage. I recommend anyone curious to look at the archives. So again, unactionable as there is no specific edit request.

>Clarify scope. Separate factual reporting on conduct and casualties from legal characterization. Editors with strong, policy-compliant sources who have felt sidelined are welcome. Your participation is needed now. Editors are reminded this article falls under the Arab–Israeli conflict topic area; all participation must comply with the corresponding editing restrictions and civility expectations. The scope of this article is very clear. It is covering the events in Gaza from 7 October 2023 to present, and explaining that with the backdrop of the evaluations of scholars and human rights organizations. This request also has some tension with WP:BOLD. The restrictions on the Arab-Israeli conflict topic area exists precisely to slow down boldness and ensure that edits are made with consensus and community input.

In conclusion, merely saying that things need to be different is not an actionable edit request. Neither is broadly encouraging users to follow Wikipedia's policies. I encourage the requesting editor to review Wikipedia:Edit_requests#Planning_a_request. I encourage all editors here to focus on the main question of this talk page: How can we improve the accompanying article? Discussions of the motives of the requesting editor, the Wikipedia project at large, or personal views (WP:SOAPBOX), are simply not relevant for this talk page. It's unclear what specifically needs to change for this edit request, and therefore, the discussion is unlikely to yield results.--JasonMacker (talk) 15:11, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Check this out, someone says that I'm an LLM. I spent an hour writing this with no LLM assistance. JasonMacker (talk) 16:06, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Probably they put all of your text into an AI checker and not just what you wrote. You quoted Jimbo Wales significantly and his text was flagged for AI writing. --Super Goku V (talk) 18:27, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Agreed with your points that none of Jimbo's requests seem to actually be doable. It's a bit condescending to see him try and remind everyone here, most of whom are veteran editors, of basic Wikipedia principles that we are all following already. HadesTTW (he/him • talk) 18:21, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia row erupts as Jimmy Wales intervenes on 'Gaza genocide' page This thread got press. That was quick. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:40, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Surprised it's a reputable outlet who's covered it first and not a right-wing new media outlet, as they tend pump out articles on discussions in this area. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 16:36, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

PirateWires headline incoming… “pro-Hamas editors stage coup against wikipedia founder, attempt to control article despite appeals for neutrality “ User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 16:52, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

NY Post and JPost have already arrived on the scene. In predictable WP:NYPOST format of unrelaible reporting, SFR get's shafted of protection credit as apparently Jimbo locked the article. CNC (talk) 17:07, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I would make mention of Brandolini's law in them getting a few things wrong in their article with regards to the process of Wikipedia, but that would suggest I take any of their reporting to be good or authoritative. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 17:28, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

And the same for the Jerusalem Post article which cites the creation of this article to the date it was renamed from "Allegations". -- Cdjp1 (talk) 17:35, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

It's also just... wrong on another level; the protection is incidental and was applied due to unrelated edit-warring several days before Jimbo commented. --Aquillion (talk) 02:21, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

• I would like to expand this beyond AGF, for why I believe the comments by Jimbo shouldn't have been made or made in the way they were. I think Jimmy knows quite well that whether he comments in an unofficial capacity or not it doesn't matter, those remarks would get inordinate attention on-wiki and off-wiki [Wikipedia founder (JPOST)/Wikimedia chair emeritus (NYPOST)]. That the section is titled statement, that mentions of WMF are made, that the comments are declarative, that a single user thinks that the entire community consensus should be overturned wrong are all problematic.

Jimmy's role as the founder does come with undeclared influence but this was not the way/tenor to exercise them. It would appear that Larry (nine thesis) has a better grip on how to go about the wiki process than does Jimbo. Gotitbro (talk) 22:36, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

There is a strange custom established in Wikipedia that if someone from the Wikimedia Foundation enters a discussion and says, "I am not with the Wikimedia Foundation, I am a volunteer", then the Wikipedia community of editors is supposed to treat that request differently than if it were a request from the Wikimedia Foundation. I question whether this can actually happen. This request is not being treated as typical. In the many instances when Wikimedia Foundation people invoke a privilege to be treated as non-Foundation editors, their requests get particular, unusual, treatment. I feel that the Wikimedia Foundation has a heavy editorial hand which guides many content decisions in Wikipedia.

What are anyone's thoughts on establishing a guideline that recognizes declarations of being a volunteer as an established Wikimedia Foundation practice. Wikimedia community members could list and collect the times when a Wikimedia Foundation person has involved this privilege, and document what kind of response came of it.

I am not sure what to call this. We are in an editorial ecosystem with many conflicts of interest. As an example, there are some Wikimedia editorial communities which may wish to participate in this discussion, and could be biased one way or the other in believing that to support Wikimedia Foundation positions can curry favors that come from good standing with the Foundation, or to incur disadvantages that could follow crossing decision-makers at the Wikimedia Foundation.

In 2014 a Wikimedia Foundation staffer proposed this as a policy - meta:User:MarkTraceur/Essays/WMF usernames. It is humor, but it is also serious. He advises that when Wikimedia Foundation people want to be treated as typical volunteers, then they have to shout, "Volunteer!" when they join a discussion, then they get all the rights of typical volunteers and remove the restrictions of being a Wikimedia Foundation person. It is a perpetual issue that Wikimedia Foundation people intervene in Wikipedia in different degrees, sometimes directly in the name of the Wikimedia Foundation, and sometimes where everyone can plainly see that a power broker of special interest to this community is making a request, and it does not at all get treated in the normal editorial process. Bluerasberry (talk) 17:52, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

As a fairly new editor, I agree that it's pretty confusing for the founder of Wikipedia to purportedly act as just another senior editor. It's completely obvious that if any other editor made this same comment, it would be dismissed as relitigating a recently closed RfC without disputing any specific points in it, and apparently calling for an edit war bypassing contentious topic practices. I empathize with ultra-senior contributors at WMF who want to remain involved with the community and feel some sense of responsibility for the encylopedia's content, but it's simply not possible to act as just another editor voicing their opinions in this context. When you become as influential and powerful as Jimbo, you give up the right to be just another editor and must accept that your words are weighted by an enormous power imbalance. StereoFolic (talk) 18:13, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

As Xavexgoem put it, Jimbo's unique power is the power to garner attention. That's not really a power that can be abused. Certainly noone has any power to override consensus, aside from the narrow exceptions in WP:CONEXCEPT which don't apply here.

While I don't want to speculate too much on Jimbo's exact motives, this was probably intended as some type of symbolic vote, with no realistic expectation of triggering significant on-wiki changes. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 19:18, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

This is the part I don't get. If Jimbo is aware of this power inbalance (difficult to be oblivious surely), then why did he notify this discussion on his talk page as well as to NPOV noticeboard (before even discussing the problem)? Was this not to draw more editors to this article? Was it really because it's such a serious and pressing issue that needed 4K talk page stalkers notified and acting upon the problem? Regardless this isn't what a regular editor, senior or otherwise, ever does when raising an issue with any article, literally ever. You aren't supposed to rock up at a highly contentious article with a support base in toe by notifying your TP what your big plan is. At minimum it's disgraceful and at worst comes across as canvassing. Also why would one do this if one wanted to act as a regular editor and not within an WMF framework, as a founder, or both. This could have been a quieter discussion exhausting less editor resources but that is simply not the path Jimbo chose for this discussion., Assuming good faith that this is a naivety problem and not intentionally disruptive, self-awareness could be dramatically improved here. CNC (talk) 19:23, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I think the point of doing this is simple and obvious: to point out what the poster perceived as a violation of NPOV and recruit volunteers to get it fixed for the benefit of readers and the long-term reputation of Wikipedia for neutrality, preferably before the high-profile media interview goes public. Perhaps this was done simply not knowing about the debate that had already happened and the amount of support for the current wording as the best implementation of NPOV and due weight, or in the expectation that having more eyes on this question would shift things toward what seemed like an obviously correct answer to the poster. Hence simply reminding people of the importance of the neutrality policy. -- Beland (talk) 19:33, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

before the high-profile media interview goes public horses and barn doors. Wales has already done multiple interviews over the past week with various outlets, with other outlets then reporting on those issues. It was after these interviews were published that he started this talk page discussion. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 20:50, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Sure, but checking the list of media mentions on the talk page banner here, it doesn't appear any of them mentioned this article specifically? I'm not sure what the alternative not-closing-the-barn-door after letting the horse out action would be...checking all the controversial articles on Wikipedia and make sure they are personally acceptable to you before you do any media interviews? Is that what you would have preferred to have happen, even though in this case it appears that would not have changed the intro of the article? -- Beland (talk) 22:15, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

checking all the controversial articles is not what I think he should have done, and I really have no thought as to what I think he should have done, because I simply do not care. My comment is more to "correct" the order of events that have occurred leading to this post. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 22:21, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The sequence of events described above was correct; the high-profile media interview I was referring to - that specifically mentions this article - has as far as I know still not gone live. You are correct to point out that there were other media interviews. Israel/Palestine didn't come up at all with the BBC or the Guardian. The NY Times interviewer mentioned the Arab/Israeli conflict in a list of controversial topics, asking about why some pages are protected, and also incidentally when asking how about query from the US Congress concerning foreign influence and bias. Lulu did ask about the Charlie Kirk article, which had been neutralized before the interview after a brief dispute. I don't see how any of those other interviews relates in a horse-barn door way to the warning that started this conversation. -- Beland (talk) 01:15, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Not sure it’s the piece to which he alluded, but I just saw him interviewed on PBS News Hour and this article (including a screenshot of the lead) was the subject of a question there.—Odysseus1479 11:38, 4 November 2025 (UTC) Correction: it was on Amanpour & Co. (they’re broadcast consecutively where I am), speaking to Walter Isaacson, as quoted by Cinaroot below.—23:33, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

It's not canvassing since there was no opinion-based targeting. If Jimbo was attempting to fix an area with NPOV issues by drawing in a broader swathe of less-involved Wikipedians, that seems valid. In the case of WP:NPOVN, that's more or less what the board is for. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 19:34, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

What part of "helping to fix the page to resolve the NPOV issues"[33] is neutral here and not just a biased opinion? I'm not seeing "notify your talk page stalkers of your discussion" in WP:APPNOTE either. Hence others agree with the assessment of comes across as canvassing. CNC (talk) 20:03, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Are you saying it's WP:CAMPAIGNING because of language like the NPOV issues, hinting at Jimbo's opinion that NPOV issues exist? I suppose it could have been even more neutral (like his NPOV post), but I think campaigning is more about presenting the substance of a debate in a biased manner, not about whether the poster concealed their personal opinions perfectly. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 20:47, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

No, only that it comes across as POV canvassing. Campaigns take time to build, I'm not seeing that here as it's too early for that. CNC (talk) 21:02, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

A guideline would not affect the fact that messages from the "founder" or WMF staff are going to receive unordinary attention regardless of the fact of them acting solely as editors. The only thing that would mitigate this would be posts from alt accounts but even then, if we are talking about Jimbo or Larry, the attention would be out of the ordinary. Gotitbro (talk) 04:12, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Regardless of the merits of this idea, this isn't the ideal place to discuss it. The village pump is the best place to decide our approach to site-wide issues so we can get a wider variety of voices. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 20:55, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

do we need another RFC for the first sentence? i've been tempted to boldly start one reading through this. what exactly is the way forward in concrete terms? User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 19:01, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

The Wikivoice issue in the first sentence was addressed in that RfC. Instead of wasting time focused on that, we can discuss other ways we might more clearly frame the significant minority's objections to address the NPOV concern Placeholderer (talk) 19:10, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

discuss other ways will end up in a debate, as will any and all discussions here, as shown by the last three years of talkpage archives. Wales, and others, on this page have said they are ardently against debate and just want the article "improving", see Move from debate. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 20:54, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

There is no NPOV issue. Consensus has determined that. Editors should WP:DROPTHESTICK with objections about "NPOV concerns". TarnishedPath^talk 07:46, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

No not yet at least, based on the discussion above that generally refutes the argument that Jimbo and the minority of editors are arguing, based on policy and guidelines. Jimbo's original point of "better sources" while pointing to primaries would never stand up to any serious scrutiny for a decent closer weighing up the arguments anyway. A neutral closer could theoretically close this entire section affirming the consensus that lies within, maybe even highlighting the issues with the discussion overall, but for now we can probably just let it play out until there is something to actually discuss other than exahsuting even more time with an RfC over the first sentence, again. CNC (talk) 19:13, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

No action should be taken. One user making a vague edit request that has received overwhelmingly negative responses does not warrant an RfC (that will likely be snowballed anyways). JasonMacker (talk) 19:17, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree no new RfC should be started, but it's not like the article is perfect wrt NPOV and needs no changes ever again Placeholderer (talk) 19:21, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Of course no article is perfect. But with the way the consensus of reliable sources currently stands, this article would need a catastrophic shift in the opinions of scholars and other reliable sources to warrant the changes that User Jimbo Wales is suggesting. JasonMacker (talk) 19:26, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I haven't entirely followed the suggested changes, but there are some specific, small, actionable improvements that can be done, like in the intro moving Israel's objection to the characterization of genocide so that it isn't buried in the middle of the paragraph about the ICJ case.

I might end up making a separate edit request for that example... Placeholderer (talk) 19:32, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

That seems like a reasonable proposal, but the problem is that this discussion section is way too volatile for people to be able to weigh in. There are too many loose threads and a constant barrage of new comments and replies that can appear anywhere in this huge discussion section. Feel free to make a new section (a brand new section and not a subsection of this section) with your specific proposal. JasonMacker (talk) 19:37, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

No, there has been no demonstration that consensus has changed among reliable sources, in fact, no sources have been cited at all.

As Jimbo Wales wrote, they are "not speaking on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation or anyone else!" & as such, their opinion holds no greater weight then any other editor. To relitigate an incredibly well-attended RfC because a handful of editors disagree with it's findings would be highly disruptive & go against proper procedure.

If this statement was made by any other editor other then Jimbo Wales, it would've have been closed by now as disruptive & the user potentially being taken to WP:AE for not WP:DROPPINGTHESTICK. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 19:20, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree; another RFC on the same question so soon after an outcome with such a strong consensus would be a waste of time unless there is a change to policy in the meantime. Especially as no new evidence or arguments have been presented, other than that one person disagrees with the outcome, and it will be getting press attention. The proposal above that has gotten the most traction is to create WP:GENOCIDE which would presumably give advice on how to apply WP:NPOV to Gaza genocide, Armenian genocide, Bosnian genocide, Rohingya genocide, etc. I don't think that's really an angle that has been explored so far. -- Beland (talk) 19:25, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Since this idea seems to be getting lost in this discussion, I have started Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Neutrality policy for genocide so interested editors can continue exploring it. -- Beland (talk) 01:46, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Strong oppose a new RfC on the first sentence without any new sources being provided to justify one. EvansHallBear (talk) 21:08, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Oppose, nothing has materially changed in terms of scholarly agreement - there is still wide support by the majority of scholars of genocide that Israel's actions constitute a genocide. Endlessly relitigating a settled RfC won't do anything without new updates on what's happening in the real world. CherrySoda 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ (talk) 22:16, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

No. The RfC on the first sentence lasted approximately two months (Aug+Sep 2025). There has been no sudden surge in radically changed researchers' summaries and analysis of evidence this topic during October 2025 to justify re-opening the RfC so soon. Boud (talk) 01:07, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Oppose - there is no need to change it because one user is upset that he is facing public pressure to oppose scholarly sources. A flagrant and disappointing abuse of power. LegalSmeagolian (talk) 01:28, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

• Yes, consensus is not permanent, and moratoriums are not necessarily community wide. We should get a much broader consensus and should follow the bold proposal that user:Jimbo Wales outlined. It is prudent and policy based and not merely majoritarian, in fact it embodies the spirit of the WP:WWIN culture of Wikipedia. Iljhgtn (talk) 01:33, 4 November 2025 (UTC)
• Strong oppose it took us nearly two months of discussion and countless hours of painstaking research to achieve consensus, so we're not going to ignore all of that simply because an editor disagrees with it. M.Bitton (talk) 01:36, 4 November 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose. While consensus can change, the RFC was closed less than two months ago; nobody has suggested that anything has changed since then. Immediately revisiting it simply because Jimbo Wales objects to the result would set a terrible precedent. And more importantly, even just a casual glance at this discussion makes it obvious that consensus has not changed - his argument has not convinced anyone; some people disagree with the consensus but WP:NOTUNANIMOUS applies. It's simply not plausible that rerunning the RFC right now could produce a different result. If anyone believes there were irregularities or that it was wrongly decided, WP:CLOSECHALLENGE exists, although I haven't really seen any arguments that would support that outside of disagreeing with the conclusion. People who dislike the current state of the article would be better-off putting their energy towards compromises and proposals that don't contradict the conclusion reached in the recent RFC; there is eg. room to give more focus on the opinions of Israel and its allies. But the argument that "we cannot describe anything as fact in the article voice as long as any of the nations involved dispute it" (which, by my reading, is essentially Wales' position?) is simply a nonstarter - we're an encyclopedia, not a social media newsfeed; we summarize the best available sources. That means that we do need to sometimes be able to directly contradict the position taken by a nation-state, media empire, etc., when their positions are at odds with a clear consensus within academia and similar higher-quality sources. And all of this was clearly settled in the previous RFC. On that aspect, Wales needs to understand that even the founder of Wikipedia and someone who is leading an NPOV working group (as he emphasized in his argument for why we should revisit this) is sometimes going to disagree with a consensus and will sometimes have to WP:DROPTHESTICK. --Aquillion (talk) 01:57, 4 November 2025 (UTC)
• Support. A UNICEF report from less than a week ago shows that there was no famine in Gaza, so aspects of this article must be changed to meet the standards of the international community. LDW5432 (talk) 03:01, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  Is that a reliable source? That seems like an extreme claim, coming from an Israel-based news outlet I've never heard of and is not on our perennial source list, and I am curious if this claim is corroborated by other sources which we know to be reliable? -- Beland (talk) 03:22, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  Gaza famine also has charts showing a spike in famine-related deaths, which the cited article claims don't exist. That seems like a red flag. -- Beland (talk) 03:25, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  Talk:Gaza Strip famine might be the best place to discuss sourcing and technical definitions if this dispute turns out to be worth investigating. Even the data in question here seems to be haggling over a few percentage points and then declaring "no famine" which makes it sound like everything is fine, but it seems to be the difference between phase 5 and phase 4 of mass starvation. It could also be a biased news outlet grasping at any hint of something that could make Israel look better? It appears they're based in both the US and Israel, to correct my earlier statement. -- Beland (talk) 03:33, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  That's not a UNICEF report. M.Bitton (talk) 03:23, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  That article is based on the findings of a non-expert & HonestReporting, an unreliable Pro-Israel think-tank with a history of inaccuracy. This is not a reliable source. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 03:28, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  The existence of such transparently motivated misinformation being published by prominent organizations is exactly why we must be discerning in weighing sources on topics like this. StereoFolic (talk) 04:47, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  It seems incredibly misleading to have a direct link to a clearly partisan source written by a person employed by an Israeli news channel (i24NEWS), when on the surface it looks like a simple link directly to the UNICEF report. You can find all of the UNICEF reports here, which is never linked to (why?) in the jns article you linked. Presenting this link to a partisan source without any acknowledgment that experts disagree with its findings is exactly the kind of misleading POV-pushing that this article should avoid. JasonMacker (talk) 05:38, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  Did you actually read the article or just the headline? Because it does not support the claim made in the headline, it casts doubt on the UNICEF report for measuring starvation in children and not weighing it down with adult starvation levels. The original report clearly focused on children because they exhibit symptoms faster so they are a better indicator, and this seems like standard practice. A biased outlet questioning it doesn't mean the opposite of famine has been proven, at best the article is arguing the determination of famine might be overestimated but certainly not proven wrong.

  That said, the existence or lack thereof of famine doesn't preclude the academic and human rights organizations determination of genocide, many of which preceded the March 2025 blocking of aid. The blocking of aid on it's own is a genocidal act regardless of the results on the ground. Tashmetu (talk) 08:54, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Oppose Jimbo's proposed statement is so misleading. Its clear - its coming from political pressure. We should not encourage this Cinaroot (talk) 05:20, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Disagree with the need for an RfC. Looking back at the most recent one, there were already complaints that a similar one had been done in May. Adding on to that, it looks like it was well attended with well over fifty participants at a glance. We could do an RfC, but generally in these circumstances, you scold the editor for trying to force a new RfC in on the same subject right after the consensus of the last one. But this situation is abnormal. --Super Goku V (talk) 05:44, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

i think i voted at last rfc for procedural close originally. if ot for jimbo's appeal, i would have considered any new rfc too early. User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 05:51, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, that was why I disagree, but with the weird wording. The only positive that I can see if we do have a third RfC is that it likely would have more participants than the first two. (But again, the second one at the least was well attended by itself.)

I guess that if there is a third RfC, there could be an agreement to have a MORATORIUM put in place following it so that the subject can be brough to a close for awhile. --Super Goku V (talk) 06:08, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Oppose: We just finished an RfC about this and it took ages until it concluded. David A (talk) 07:27, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Oppose: This has been litigated over and over. Jimmy and others need to WP:DROPTHESTICK and accept consensus. TarnishedPath^talk 07:36, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Oppose: Whether the case for genocide exists (or not) is determined by the actions of the offending party, and whether the actions in question sufficiently demonstrate genocidal patterns, either in intent or execution. This is where we defer to the position of a broad spectrum of sources, rather than relying on statements by singular government sources or some media houses. The lead is an honest summary of the discourse. This is an issue that has had exhaustive community input in the past, clearly. Attempting to circumvent this process sets a terrible precedent, and perhaps even an abuse of the encyclopaedia. No genocide or war crime is ever not controversial. If we were to accept the counter argument, then the lead and content of every genocide article that exists on Wikipedia should be contested, and this won’t end. Best to nip this unnecessary hair-splitting exercise in the bud. Mar4d (talk) 10:22, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Support as I agree that the page is flagrantly non-neutral despite being strongly opposed to current US government policies, and now there's a great big gold bucket on the page; as far as I'm concerned the admins have protected the wrong version. Give it at least 20 years before we go categorically stating this was a genocide in the same manner as the Holocaust article. Passengerpigeon (talk) 11:26, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

20 years? The Nuremberg trials occured a year after the Holocaust so why would an encyclopedia not document genocide by then? The Genocide Convention was otherwise signed in 1948 which formalised the term. The US-slant would be to not even acknowledge a genocide, even if directly invoked, and not signing such a convention until 1988. So the suggestion is an encylopedia should be somewhere in-between this formalisation and US-acceptance? Specifically when the Voting Rights Act was finally established and Malcom X was assassinated? Seems a bit late that, even if I can see how being an English-language encyclopedia dominated by U.S. editors could come to that conclusion of waiting 20-40 years. Fortunately this project is diverse enough that we're not going to be waiting on American standards of acknowledging atrocities. CNC (talk) 12:31, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The Holocaust and Armenian Genocide were a lot more clear-cut because the violence was one-sided (or, at most, counterattacks against the perpetrator only started in response to non-combatants being killed). I guess I was also wrong to complain about the wrong version being protected because the most recent dispute was not about the lead paragraph; the last neutral version of that went away months ago. Passengerpigeon (talk) 15:37, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The Holocaust is clear-cut because the Nazis lost the war and are no longer in power. Some people still deny the Armenian Genocide. M.Bitton (talk) 15:41, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Oppose: per LegalSmeagolian and others. The comment from Jimbo Wales above amounts to abuse of power and pressure from a prominent user that we should not submit to. Nothing significant has changed since the previous RFC was closed. Ita140188 (talk) 12:29, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

No/oppose. Consensus can change, but it hasn't. There have been no persuasive policy arguments or sources put forward to support a change. The RfC was recent. Opening an RfC would also signal that pressure from "on high" gets results, and I think we should close ranks behind the community's established interpretation of NPOV. Also, comment: the protection on the page is going to expire in short order. Maybe it, uh, shouldn't? WillowCity^(talk) 13:06, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

How to proceed? The furious buzzing already shows faint signs of diminishing. No kicking or poking at the dead log over there anymore. The northern hemisphere is turning to winter and lower temperatures always help. Smoke does not seem necessary at this time.Dan Murphy (talk) 15:47, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Strong oppose - perhaps the ArbCom or whomever can perhaps impose a topic ban on Israel/Palestine for Jim Wales and Larry Sanger, since it appears they are responding to media pressure? Skrelk (talk) 16:09, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I support a topic ban for Jimbo and Larry from PIA topics due to the media pressure and a possible undisclosed WP:CIO as shown above by @WillowCity 𐩣𐩫𐩧𐩨 Abo Yemen (𓃵) 16:18, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

This is honestly ridiculous in my opinion. While their actions may be justly criticised, the necessary bar to meet topic banning based on COI requires much more than what is currently presented, in the case of Wales. For Sanger, the argument of media/political pressure for his position in this area is even weaker, as based on his various interviews over the years, these are simply his political positions sans any pressure. -- Cdjp1 (talk) 16:22, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

If anything is ridiculous, it would be the fact that the founder of Wikipedia is literally canvassing in a WP:CTOP, and sees nothing wrong about it 𐩣𐩫𐩧𐩨 Abo Yemen (𓃵) 16:37, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't think a topic ban is reasonable at this stage, since I'm not sure we actually have policies that cover this - putting aside Wales' position that the pressure he's under is irrelevant, being pressured doesn't result in a WP:COI. What I do think we might consider is a prohibition against people associated with the WMF invoking their position with the WMF during content disputes (of course WP:OFFICE actions are different, they're not content disputes.) The part of this that bothers me the most remains Wales' invocation of the NPOV Working Group, which is why I'd prefer to get a clear statement from him that this is unrelated to that and that the NPOV Working Group won't get involved, won't make recommendations related to or informed by his opinions on this article, etc. Even if he didn't intend it, invoking his position at the WMF inevitably has a chilling effect on discussions - intentional or not, there is an implication of "fix this article the way I want it fixed, or the WMF will get involved." I'm reasonably confident he didn't intend that but you can see how the line can get dangerously blurry (it's possible he's thinking "I'm just suggesting this as a regular editor, but if that doesn't work I'll have to talk to the NPOV Working Group about what recommendations can address what I see as the underlying problem") and that would be sufficiently harmful that we have to shut it down hard now. It's sufficiently dangerous even as an inadvertent implication that I feel it would be better to have a more clear-cut policy against referencing such connections during content disputes going forwards. Anyway, this sort of thing starts to go outside the scope of this article in particular, so it would probably be best proposed and covered at a noticeboard. --Aquillion (talk) 17:41, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

(+Abo Yemen) WP:ANI would presumably be the venue of choice, but I don't believe this will be successful nor do I believe it to be a good idea. --Super Goku V (talk) 18:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

As an update, this ended up at ANI. CNC (talk) 22:00, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Thankfully by the time I saw this, it had already been closed. --Super Goku V (talk) 01:59, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Support: As Cambalachero has pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, there needs to be a serious re-evaluation of what is considered the threshold of certainty on topics of this kind - including the weight of governmental opinion, what is considered a 'fringe' source, and I would also add something that often gets overlooked - there is an inherent bias in finding statements in favor of X where X is a topic that widely attracts ideological statements. Specifically, it ignores the fact that many non-ideological groups who do not believe in X have not formed a verdict and thus would not outright deny X. Those groups should also be considered in claims of broad consensus. For example, in this case neither the ICC or ICJ - currently considered the central legal authorities on such matters - have directly accused Israel's government of genocide/failing to prevent a genocide as they have in previous cases like Rwanda and Srebrenica (ICJ merely made the verdict that Gaza's Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide). This is a crucial fact that has been persistently neglected in these discussions. Michaelas10 (talk) 01:53, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

I also want to point out, as Jimbo did, that the page has widespread bias issues even beyond the first sentence. A few weeks ago I found a major issue in the very second paragraph, where it was implied that Israel has fully cut off Gaza's water from the beginning of the war. I corrected that they backtracked under U.S. pressure very soon after, but the fact that this characterization stood for over a year and a half in such a prominent place is very telling. There are many other examples of bias elsewhere in the article - for instance, there is no mention whatsoever of facts that contradict the narrative of the article, like the Israeli-coordinated polio vaccination campaign that likely saved thousands of Gazan lives, or the fact that Northern Gaza residents have been allowed to return after displacements (e.g. during the January 2025 Gaza war ceasefire). This is just the tip of the iceberg. Michaelas10 (talk) 02:30, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Not sure what it's "telling" us; Wikipedia is written by volunteers and not everyone does a good job or is careful. I'm not sure there's much to do other than comb through articles you care about and improve them. Thank you for your efforts to do so. -- Beland (talk) 07:11, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

"The fact that Northern Gaza residents have been allowed to return after displacements" That was part of the ceasefire deal, and as soon as Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire they ordered people in Gaza city to leave again. I'll give you the polio example, that was indeed a good counter and could be included in a no doubt to be tiny section of counter examples. Tashmetu (talk) 08:35, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

• Comment I fear maintaining NPOV in articles about hot button issues is a fool's errand. We all have our own biases (intense in this case), so have our sources. Only time will tell if our consensus was right, or ridiculous. The best we can do is to remain as detached from the topic as possible, maybe attribution is not that bad idea. Pavlor (talk) 06:56, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Frankly, if this were any other editor, this comment would have been met with a few terse comments and then archived. But it's still here and still being discussed. So it's clear that this isn't just a comment from any other editor and it shouldn't be treated as such. I find it fundamentally disturbing that Wales chose to inject himself and the WMF into this subject. Wikipedia has a process. The article's current state—whether you agree with its geopolitical slant or not—is a result of that process. And few have preached the merits of that process as Wales has. Yet here he is. Why is that? (Is it because the House Oversight Committee is breathing down the WMF's neck?) For all Wales' criticism of Musk and his incessant whining that Wikipedia is not neutral — that it is subject to political bias not rooted in reality — Wales has effectively vindicated Musk. This is a dangerous precedent. Shall we have a WMF working group on all political matters, like little encyclopedic politburos? ~ HAL333 23:10, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. If it was anyone else making public statements that this article and Zionism don't meet NPOV, after consensus had found that they do, there would be editors thinking of taking this to noticeboards.

@Jimbo Wales, if you really think these articles don't meet NPOV, and aren't simply kowtowing to the likes of Trump and Musk, then engage in RFCs and bring sources. TarnishedPath^talk 04:01, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Or he can make a statement, which he has full liberty to do, and has done. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:18, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

That statement is rightly being criticised. TarnishedPath^talk 07:32, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

And we have full liberty to critizise it. I have expressed my disapproval of another Jimbo statement in the past. It's just that this is how Wales chooses to make a change on Wikipedia, rather than edit directly, and we shouldn't tell him not to make statements and edit instead. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:40, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

This is nothing short of an attempted coup by one editor against the entire community, and the disturbing thing is that it might actually work. If some guy can barge in with a little 🎺HERE COMES THY KING!!!!🎺 hatnote, a bunch of bogus demands and veiled threats, a disappointed dad tone of voice, some so-called "working groups" to wave over our heads; and somehow cause a full-blown constitutional crisis for the encyclopedia, then I don't know what we're all doing here. This is absolutely un-WP:AGF-able. Jimbo is blatantly trying to use his cachet and name recognition to overthrow the community in favor of whatever outside interests are beckoning him to do so. The State of Israel explicitly considers Wikipedia to be a Hasbara battleground, and one former PM was foolish enough to give the cameras a tour of his little seminar on how to disrupt Wikipedia (link), and other editors have pointed out Jimbo's COI and how Wikipedia is currently in the crosshairs of many outside groups trying to capture the #1 source of information for most people. What is unexpected is for Jimbo himself to lead their charge. Say, Jimbo, how exactly are you going to enforce your counterconsensus demands? Is the WMF going to remove the admins who disagree with you and replace them with pliant ones? Should editors wear a WWJimboD bracelet while editing to ensure that they push your POV? Will we be required to follow your media interviews and edit accordingly? The community ought to treat this stunt as a five-alarm extreme threat to the encyclopedia and rally against it to make sure it never happens again. (P.S. if someone feels like I'm one of these "entrenched WP:CPUSHers who should have been tbanned at AE years ago", feel free to check my contributions and see that I voluntarily do not edit in this topic all too often.) 〜 Festucalex • talk 01:12, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Might I add that Jimbo's demands are simple old Hasbara points clothed with a thin veneer of WP:WIKISPEAK. Charges of bias against Israel (in wikispeak: POV) are nothing new, and Hasbara has thrown them towards basically every NGO, every organization, every journal, every media outlet, every academic, and even the UN and ICJ. They're nothing to lose much sleep over, and they're already more than adequately covered in the article. 〜 Festucalex • talk 01:19, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Accusing Wikipedia's most respected editor of being a talking head for Hasbro or whatever it is you're talking about is an extreme violation of WP:AGF. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:29, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@OmegaAOL, please beware of bludgeoning. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 07:33, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@IOHANNVSVERVS, I have only replied to this user, or this particular talking point (Hasbro), once. Please beware of not assuming good faith. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:37, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

You've made 17 comments here so far. Please read what bludgeoning is and consider taking a step back. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 07:48, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Uh-uh-uh. It doesn't matter that I've made a lot of comments here, the point is that my comments are mostly bringing up differernt points and replying to different points. I'm not dominating any single contentious point.

Please do not patronize me. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:52, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

typically, this means making the same argument over and over and to different people in the same discussion or across related discussions except I am not making the same argument over and over. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:53, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

OmegaAOL, could you please stop calling it "Hasbro" instead of Hasbara. It is hard to assume good faith when you misspell it multiple times. --Super Goku V (talk) 07:54, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

My mistake, I thought the user was legitimately referring to Hasbro, the toy company, in some fashion, maybe as an ardent Israel supporter? I didn't know that Hasbara was a thing; I do not much follow Israel or the Israel-Palestine conflict. OmegaAOLtalk? 08:04, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Fair enough and thank you for the explanation. Taking a second look, I can see where Hasbara could look like a misspelling for Hasbro. Sorry for the trouble, Super Goku V (talk) 08:08, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

No worries! I probably should have assumed that it wasn't the toy company, but we all make mistakes sometimes. OmegaAOLtalk? 16:28, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Jimbo is not a king, he is not infallible, he is not above criticism, and shouting "AGF! AGF! AGF!" means nothing when he extremely improperly accuses the community at large of POV pushing and tries to subvert its consensus in this blatant manner. You need nothing other than two eyes to see the dangerous overreach here. 〜 Festucalex • talk 08:00, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I am no stranger to criticizing Jimbo. I voted to strip him of his ArbCom king powers. I don't think that is his accusation though, at least not in respect to the community at large; he seems to be appealing to the broader community to take action(?) OmegaAOLtalk? 08:06, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

So he's WP:CANVASSING to get his own pro-Israel POV pushed on the article? How is that better? 〜 Festucalex • talk 08:13, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Doesn't canvassing involve bringing people to a talk page who wouldn't otherwise be here? This talk page is the appropriate forum for the concerns he's raised; it's not canvassing to raise concerns on the correct page. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:33, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

This could be in reference to this canvasssing. CNC (talk) 16:26, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Ehh, there isn't much indication of Wales's own personal views in his response. Also, he seems? to be canvassing in an appropiate manner, at least an appropiate manner as defined on the WP:CANVASSING page. OmegaAOLtalk? 16:27, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I also just remembered that time in 2023 when the community voted away Jimbo's last dictatorial power, that of unilaterally overturning ArbCom decisions. During that discussion, I said: [...] one would be more wary of a rogue Jimbo than a rogue ArbCom. At least we can elect a new ArbCom, while electing a new Jimbo is impossible. Quite presciently, User:Wehwalt responded: I don't think the fear is a rogue Jimbo, just a Jimbo self-deceived through his distance from the community, doing the wrong thing in the utter conviction that he is doing right. There was a time, admittedly before I was involved in Wikipedia, when Jimbo indeed had his finger on the pulse of things. But since then, he has grown more distant and shown a tendency to act before he really knows what is going on [...]. I think that this has come to pass. 〜 Festucalex • talk 03:02, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Am I the only one who finds Jimmy Wales' hatnote asserting his "founder of Wikipedia" as some sort of cred that his opinion weighs more than your average bear's to be highly offensive? Why this sudden interest in this topic, hmmm? Say your piece and move along, you or I may not agree with the exact wording of this page in its current form, but it has been very heavily debated and we don't need drop-in power plays over content by anybody here. Carrite (talk) 02:13, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The reason for sudden interest in this article was clearly explained: it was specifically asked about in a media interview, and Wales did not find the article to be up to standard. -- Beland (talk) 02:33, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Which interview? Link? Iljhgtn (talk) 02:43, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I already asked for that, and apparently it hasn't come out yet. -- Beland (talk) 02:47, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

So do we know there is this interview? Or are we just assuming that as the most likely catalyst? Iljhgtn (talk) 02:56, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The second line of the first comment in this discussion spells it out: "I was asked point-blank in a high profile media interview about this article, and I answered with transparency and honesty: this article fails to meet our high standards and needs immediate attention.". -- Beland (talk) 03:15, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I am sure that Jimbo has been questioned regarding all kinds of articles on Wikipedia. Even if prompted by that interview, we again have to ask why this article? Were there active congressional investigations for any of those other subjects? If any party, any lobby on Capitol Hill can launch an investigation—even one without subpoena power—and prompt this kind of editorial pressure, Wikipedia is no longer an independent, impartial project. ~ HAL333 03:43, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

It sounds like the Foundation mostly shrugged off the Congressional investigation, and this was more about maintaining Wikipedia's reputation for neutrality and fulfilling its mission. (Of course different people have different opinions about the right wording to do that.) It's certainly true that political pressure can set the agenda for what articles get a lot of public criticism and attention. If I remember correctly, an academic study found that kind of attention tends to improve controversial articles compared to the obscure. As they say, with more eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. -- Beland (talk) 06:16, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't see how Wales is a position to make that determination when he hasn't engaged in formal discussions which have occurred on the matter. TarnishedPath^talk 04:04, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

That's a fair criticism. I'm of two minds. There's something to be said for making articles more neutral in response to readers who stop consuming them because they just feel too biased from their point of view; detecting that just involves having a worldview, and doesn't require a careful reading of sources or participation in previous discussions. There's also something to be said for telling readers, "look, these are just the facts, like it or not", which does involve careful reading of sources which we vet on talk pages and in RFCs and in whatnot. -- Beland (talk) 07:41, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

This brings up a good point, but not the one I think you were trying to make.

Jimmy knows that his statements (as well as, to a lesser degree, statements of WMF staff but also other groups such as stewards, arbitrators, etc) are frequently misconstrued by the media. He isn't stupid. He knows that it's highly likely that a reporter (potentially from a "tabloid" but not infrequently from more respectable outlets too) who sees his statement on this talkpage would run with it and report something like Wikipedia founder admits their articles are heavily biased, volunteer editors refuse to do anything about it or similar. He knows that by him speaking out, he risks damaging the reputation of the English Wikipedia, other projects, and the WMF as a whole. To act like he didn't consider these potential outcomes before making this statement is naive at best, and is intentionally ignorant at worst.

Yet even after considering everything, he still chose to speak out here about it anyway - in an attempt to get people to start fixing the problems here. Most significantly the problems of editors being pushed away by incivility and unchecked clear POV pushing, but secondarily the actual problems with POV in the article. This suggests that he weighed the potential consequences and feels that the risk of allowing this article to continue as it has been (if he didn't speak out) outweighs the risk of damage to our reputation from him speaking out.

That is not something that should be treated as lightly as you are attempting to treat it here, while being uncivil towards Jimmy to boot. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 02:59, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The only thing that his behavior suggests to me, if we are running with the "all-seeing all-considering genius" angle, is that he's using the media to strong-arm the community, which only makes this worse, not better. 〜 Festucalex • talk 03:07, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

That is probably the worst violation of WP:AGF I have ever seen on this website. And you're stating it to try and ignore the real issues he has brought up, even though he has been nowhere near the only person bringing them up for the past year or more. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 03:17, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

As I already said in my original comment, Jimbo's behavior (in my eyes) fails the good faith check. WP:AGF states: This policy also does not mean you should ignore clear evidence of disruptive behavior or violations of site guidelines or accept all edits without question. Some bad actors may insist that trust in them should be immutable, per "assume good faith". You may disagree, but what I see here is a deliberate and viable attempt to disrupt Wikipedia, and I responded accordingly. 〜 Festucalex • talk 03:31, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I could make the same argument about you trying to summarily ignore/discount the valid problems Jimmy has brought up just because you disagree with their potential outcome. But I haven't been, because I am assuming good faith. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 04:21, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I will discount these so-called "valid points" all day long, because they are nothing more than misleading decrees from on high against the clear consensus and voluminous debate of this community. This article is well-written and no one editor can order everyone to insert his POV just because he wants us to. 〜 Festucalex • talk 04:40, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Calling something an attempted coup is not Wikipedia:AGF. GothicGolem29 (Talk) 03:18, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

• Jimmy, the community has had discussion on this article and Zionism and consensus has formed on what NPOV means. TarnishedPath^talk 03:55, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  @TarnishedPath: this is all true, and you are completely correct, and Jimbo knows this. The problem (at least in his eyes) is that this topic has been taken over by CPOV pushers, and those are the people forming consensus. I think his hope with this statement is to draw more, neutral, editors from across the English Wikipedia to this insulated topic. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:21, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  If that is his argument then it would be coming from a position of assuming bad faith, a violation of WP core guidelines. I'm not going to presume that's his argument. As I've stated above and below, if Jimmy thinks there are issues then he should be engaging in formal discussions and bringing sources. TarnishedPath^talk 07:30, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  POV-pushers are not always coming from a position of bad faith. Most of them are simply contributing with the best intent. However, the nature and recency of conflicts like this does usually lead to bias, even if only done by editors subconsciously.

  As I may have stated before (but I forget), Jimmy can either directly edit, or make statements like this which tend to be far more effective as his main power is his symbolic reach across the entire Wikipedia. OmegaAOLtalk? 07:48, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Look on the bright side folks. Setting aside the "So Debbie, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?' question about why so much interest in the 707th most viewed Wikipedia article of October 2025 out there, all of the attention will allow the article to rise in the rankings, and more people will have an opportunity to learn about what various reliable sources have published about the subject and perhaps engage with the article development. Sure, there are always issues about optimizing policy compliance and source sampling etc. but all of the people out there who genuinely care about Wikipedia making knowledge available to anyone will no doubt be thrilled that more people will be able to see what reliable sources have published about what the Israeli military are doing to Palestinians in Gaza. Perhaps the attention will help to encourage some Palestinians to become Wikipedia editors. It's a population group that appears to be very underrepresented in English Wikipedia. Sean.hoyland (talk) 04:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Glad to see User:Jimbo_Wales weighing in here—and we agree! I’m not sure when the last time was that the two co-founders were able to agree about something. So that’s great.

The reasoning and facts are straightforward. The trouble goes to the very title of the article, “Gaza genocide.” The fact is that many of those involved in the real-world controversy deny that it is best described as a “genocide.” By simply declaring in wikivoice “The genocidal acts include mass killings,” etc., Wikipedia is taking one side in an ongoing dispute. This is contrary to Wikipedia’s long-standing rules about neutrality, which require Wikipedia not to take sides in such disputes.

Neutrality does not require that Wikipedia reject the accusation of genocide. Rather, it requires that the article not assert the accusation and that it attribute the disputed epithet, “genocide” (and similar points of disputed analysis), to those who use it. At the same time, Wikipedia is required by its own rules to give voice to other descriptions, attributing them as well; e.g., as controversial as it may be to say so, the Israeli government describes the topic of the article as a legitimate military campaign against Hamas, or a war of self-defense. To reject their view of the controversy is precisely to take one side in an ongoing dispute—and not just a dispute, but a hot war in the middle of a fragile cease-fire. It’s frankly shocking (even to Jimbo!) that Wikipedians would think this is OK.

For those who are concerned that such neutrality requires an egregious violation of truth and justice, I will make the sort of argument I have always made: both perspectives must be fully canvassed, and this will enable truth to emerge and justice to be done. Details would be fully revealed, if they are not yet in the article. Readers would know (from the very first paragraph) that the subject is highly controversial, and they would be fully supported in their personal determination of both the facts and their proper evaluation. Or they would be permitted to remain, indeed, neutral.

Let me rebut a few points made above:

• A consensus formed against the views of many people and in contradiction of fundamental policy is illegitimate. Some have maintained that the article reflects a “consensus.” As I have argued, this sort of controversial sides-taking can articulate only an ersatz consensus, never a genuine consensus. Wikipedians may be following a kind of process, indeed; but the output is so obviously and egregiously biased on its face that the output itself constitutes a kind of argumentum ad absurdum of the process.
• Jimbo’s position is not determinative, but has some weight. As he says, Jimbo has been involved in a neutrality working group; he declared NPOV to be non-negotiable when it came under attack in the first year or two. I myself authored the neutrality policy, originally established and defended it, and wrote the longest philosophical defense of the policy that I know of. If we both are telling you that the title and key elements right there in the lede are obviously biased and contrary to standards of neutrality, that ought to give you pause. There is no need to litigate such claims, though; you are always free to disagree, of course.
• This case illustrates—as I have often said—the wrongheadedness of the very idea of “undue weight.” As soon as I saw the verbiage regarding “undue weight,” I knew that it would be abused in exactly the way it is now being abused. The very idea that we are to decide winners and losers on disputed questions and apportion “weight” (a certain length of text, or even any mention at all) to the disfavored points of view is a standing rebuke of neutrality, period. It always was. So I reject this argument, and advocate for the removal of this verbiage; and I encourage Wikipedia’s rank-and-file as well as Jimbo and the committee he is working with to use their voices to the same end. It is time that we toss this notion of “undue weight.” It makes NPOV into a self-contradiction. If only this aspect of WP:THESIS4 were implemented, it would do a world of good.

Again, let me be perfectly clear on this point: A neutrality dispute should never be an attempt to determine which side is correct, or which side has the right to assert its views. Neutrality means marking the boundary lines of a dispute and then carefully documenting it so that readers may make up their minds for themselves who is right. Given this fundamental issue, many of the issues regarding sources are ultimately irrelevant; after all, different sides disagree precisely on the credibility of sources. Neutrality is the more fundamental principle.

Finally, let me also say that the enforcement of civility rules is uneven on this page, and tends to favor one side in the larger dispute. Please show some self-restraint. Larry Sanger (talk) 16:02, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Well, you're wrong too. Nice shot about civility at the end there - I wonder if the admins will take the your invitation to ban the other side for being "uncivil". Skrelk (talk) 16:08, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm sorry but why did you just create a subsection titled "Statement from Larry Sanger" as if that gives you any authority here? Also, you've pinged the wrong Jimbo 𐩣𐩫𐩧𐩨 Abo Yemen (𓃵) 16:10, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The fact is that many of those involved in the real-world controversy deny that it is best described as a “genocide.” The same goes for all genocides throughout history. What's so special about this one? M.Bitton (talk) 16:10, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

That fact is that many of those involved in the real-world controversy over the Qanon conspiracy theory deny it is best described as a conspiracy theory. Get to work kids!Dan Murphy (talk) 16:17, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Funnily enough, this argument is actually the logical conclusion of Jimbo's request that we heavily weigh the denials from implicated parties in genocides. If we decline to consider the reliability of arguments when resolving NPOV, there is nothing standing between us and both-sidesing the Holocaust. StereoFolic (talk) 16:18, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

• Let me begin by stating that I believe the community is right here, after a two months long RfC of weighing and vetting sources (something much effort was spent on), it is quite clear to anyone approaching this even from an NPOV that a genocide has/is taking place. But it is a bad look, both within and outside, when two of the co-founders tell the community that they got something wrong. Jimmy's approach/tone of dictating what ought to be done is perhaps what turned most editors off, Larry is more attuned to the community process here. The question I ask though is what should to be done, another RfC?; or IAR of the current NPOV? If were to adopt Larry's approach to NPOV here or sitewide, we would then also have to rewrite scientific consensus [from a MAGA grievance on X] on articles such as climate change, vaccines, race realism/race and IQ and all manner of topics with valid scientific consensus constructs to cater to fringe chatter. Are we willing to do that (and go against every encyclopedia out there), I think the community would say no. I think another RfC should settle this, or if Larry and Jimmy want they can change NPOV to what they are suggesting here (the latter though would likely split WP entirely). Ultimately, I think both of the co-founders are wrong here. Gotitbro (talk) 16:51, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  Yes, it is a bad look when both co-founders call out the article, because that means the article has a serious problem.

  Saying we have to rewrite other articles involving scientific consensus is a straw man. This article is the problem, not any other article.

  I find it kind of baffling that a policy that states "don't take sides" is used as justification for taking sides. @Larry Sanger and @Jimbo Wales's interpretation of NPOV is what it actually says: Articles must not take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without editorial bias. This applies to both what you say and how you say it. Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them. The aim is to inform, not influence. Editors, while naturally having their own points of view, should strive in good faith to provide complete information and not to promote one particular point of view over another.

  The interpretation of what meets NPOV on this article is flawed due to substantial civil POV pushing from editors who think Wikipedia needs to call out Israel for its injustices. It's not Wikipedia's job to right the world's wrongs by calling Israel's actions genocide.

  The current state of the article is not NPOV, no matter how many arguments are made that it is, because it takes a side in a controversial dispute. All that we need to do to fix this is to attribute the statement to where it came from. Is that really so difficult?

  SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 17:45, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

  You should read up on what Larry has proposed for the reformation of NPOV to realize why editors have repeatedly raised points of contention for articles with scientific consensus which are considered contentious by political actors. This is not that far a bridge when you realize that NPOV is a sitewide policy which Larry proposes reforms for or asks Jimmy to do so from a top-down approach. This is why I say quite seriously such a move "would likely split WP entirely". With the challenges of the Grokipedia and Oversight Committee, these problems are much more graver than this article alone.

  Coming to the article here itself, yes bad optics abound when two founders say something is wrong. That is why I don't think another RfC would do us any harm, with the attention this is receiving it should finally settle this (I believe the outcome would be much the same however). Gotitbro (talk) 19:51, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Respectfully, it really seems like your ideas really go against the determination of truth to instead favor giving megaphones to everyone that's screaming. There is a genocide happening in Gaza, and it's no surprise that many organizations which are pro-Israel deny it, they're literally pro-Israel, this is the case with every genocide. Noam Chomsky tried to wish-wash it with the Cambodian Genocide, and look at how that turned out. CherrySoda (talk) 17:47, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Editors are not truth finders. We are not here to right great wrongs by calling out Israel for its actions. Personal viewpoints on whether is a genocide in Gaza are irrelevant to the requirement that controversial statements must be attributed. SuperPianoMan9167 (talk) 17:55, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

The point is that Israel and pro-Israel groups are not reliable sources when it comes to determine whether Israel is committing genocide or not. Ita140188 (talk) 18:33, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by pro-Israel - many of the sources of genocide accusations could be considered anti-Israel - but there are certainly reliable sources in the not-genocide camp that are not the Israeli government. Some are listed in Academic and legal responses to the Gaza genocide#Legal assessments. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 05:24, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

South Africa's genocide case against Israel is still ongoing and did not conclude there was a genocide. The preliminary reports warned Israel not to commit genocide rather than giving them an order to halt all military operations. LDW5432 (talk) 05:42, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Actually, this is just a symptom of a larger problem on Wikipedia. First, the weaponization of the deprecation of sources (determining that a source is completely unreliable and must never be used). On paper it's there to filter crackpot guys trying to insert their favorite self-published conspiracy book everywhere; but nowadays it is used to deprecate all right-wing or pro-Israel sources from Wikipedia, based on any minor transgression they may have committed at one point or another. And second, the weaponization of undue weight: again, meant to filter casual crackpots, but it degenerated into a whole system of "we decide by ourselves whose opinions have weight and whose do not". An example for this dispute: countries and national leaders are not considered to have weight, but the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (just 3 guys, who basically speak for themselves) somehow do. It's noticeable that some users keep repeating "...according to reliable sources" in almost every argument, as if it was some form of mantra. Others like to invoke "scientific consensus" even within topics that are not ruled by science (or rather by social sciences, whose "truths" are much less fundamental than the laws of motion or chemistry). In short, yes: talking in wikivoice about the "Gaza Genocide" is a neutral summary of the positions of reliable sources... but only within the mirror universe that Wikipedia has built for itself. "Wikipedia-neutral" and "Wikipedia-reliable" are definitely not "real-world neutral" and "real-world reliable". Each time Wikipedia deprecates a major source or ignores a major holder of an opinion, it diverges a bit more from being an accurate representation of the world, because major sources are still being read by millions and major opinion holders are still representing the opinions of millions. Cambalachero (talk) 18:53, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree. The deprecation of sources was added in 2015 and it has grown increasingly narrow in allowing multiple viewpoints on controversial topics. I hope the NPOV working group is addressing this. LDW5432 (talk) 05:45, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

I've always found it very curious that anyone takes you seriously after you have, among other things flirted with the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory [34] [35], or made statements like this Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:45, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

WP:ADHOMINEMs don't diminish the points Larry is making here; let's stick to the substance of the present discussion. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 05:45, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

On the contrary. It's the kind of evidence that should cause people to reduce their credence regardless of whether some see it as WP:ADHOMINEM. It should diminish credence in the points they make about anything. Sean.hoyland (talk) 06:57, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

The argument here seems to boil down to your 4th Thesis: restore the original neutrality policy. I think that your proposal would be a disaster for Wikipedia. Editors in this discussion have asserted that it's a strawman to say that you or Jimmy are comparing this page to contentious topics in science or other academic disciplines, but in fact, you give a list of theories unsupported by evidence that you would like to see Wikipedia give more deference to. So yes, I encourage everyone to read WP:THESIS4, where you advocate for major changes in the way Wikipedia handles topics like COVID-19 lab leak theory, Climate change denial, Conversion therapy, White genocide conspiracy theory and more. I can't necessarily say that the viewpoints you want to see more represented here are unpopular; a lot of ordinary and some influential people believe conspiracy theories and all kinds of things in error. But the views you want to see more of are unsupported by the bulk of the evidence, and your view here is too. Wikipedia, on the other hand, gets these issues right. Wikipedia has become trusted because editors have developed a process that works to meet the challenges of writing an accurate collaborative encyclopedia in the floodlit media terrain of the 21st Century. Editors have rebuked government influence, misinformation, the decline and restructuring of traditional media, AI and and other factors that have poisoned much of the rest of the internet. Wikipedia today is an island of scholarship, civility and intelligent debate on an internet that has become altogether less of a tool for ordinary people to inform themselves. Demolishing the infrastructure editors have built on top of the foundational principles of the site — the work of many hands over decades — would be both an act of tremendous disrespect to the volunteer labor of editors, and more importantly would turn Wikipedia into something more like the poor sources of information that people are trying to get away from when they come to this website to read and write and debate together. Monk of Monk Hall (talk) 20:44, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I strongly agree about that it would be absolutely terrible if Wikipedia's positive qualities as an island haven of rational thought and high reliability standards in an ocean of rotten sewage of engineered mindless divide and conquer misinformation, desinformation, distraction, tribalism, and hatred that is the modern Internet, would disappear. :( David A (talk) 21:37, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Yeah one of the few reasons this is still a good website is because of policies like WP:FALSEBALANCE, WP:FRINGE, and WP:NPOV exist. I cite NPOV because Jimbo and Larry or whatever's positions are not NPOV, as they expressly ignore the majority of reliable academic sources that go against their political positions. LegalSmeagolian (talk) 22:55, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

@Jimbo Wales: I apologise for disturbing sir, but would it sufficiently satisfy your concerns, and avoid Wikimedia Foundation intervention, if we no longer state that a genocide is taking place in wikivoice in the lead, and instead simply attribute it to the very strong majority academic consensus as we did before our recent 2 months long RfC, combined with expanding on the following two pages, that I think both were spun off due to page size constraints, with sufficiently reliable sources regarding highly notable officials and organisations that do not recognise this as a genocide? [36] [37]

It would probably help if we get a few concrete clarifications here regarding what we have to do at a minimum to avoid direct interventions. David A (talk) 18:19, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

What WFM intervention? --Super Goku V (talk) 18:41, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I had the impression that a WMF NPOV taskforce or similar might heavily target this page and/or its editors unless we comply with a few demands, but I mainly just thought that we need more clarifications regarding what is planned to happen here. David A (talk) 18:45, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Ah. So far as I have read, I don't believe that to be the case currently. (But this is a sizeable talk page.) --Super Goku V (talk) 19:01, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Looks like the taskforce is producing comparative overviews of policies and shared standards across different projects (Summary). It is not making demands or targeting pages (or users!). – SJ + 22:24, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that is what Jimmy proposes. But WMF getting involved in content disputes is simply not what should/would be happening here. Unless they actually want to start a community crisis. Gotitbro (talk) 19:56, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

What were the previous times that the WMF got involved with an article? Surely it wasn't as big of a fuss as this article, right? GarethBaloney (talk) 20:17, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

What were the previous times that the WMF got involved with an article? Surely it wasn't as big of a fuss as this article, right? GarethBaloney (talk) 20:18, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Never (as fas I know), because the foundation does not write or curate any of the content on the projects themselves. This article explains why that's important. M.Bitton (talk) 20:21, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

They sometimes get involved when dealing with legal issues, see for example Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation. Isabelle Belato ^🏳‍🌈 20:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

True, but not to write or curate any of the content. M.Bitton (talk) 20:58, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any Wikimedia Foundation intervention, nor would I expect it to intervene in content related issues. M.Bitton (talk) 20:14, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Jimbo is trying to use his name to get the change he wants because of media/political pressure. There are 100s of articles written in a similar fashion. I don’t see him coming to correct those. Cinaroot (talk) 20:38, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Why did Wikipedia cofounder block edits to the ‘Gaza genocide’ page?

Wikipedia co-founder locks edits on ‘Gaza genocide’ page, citing anti-Israel bias

Wikipedia co-founder joins editing conflict over the Gaza genocide page

This reflects poorly on Wikipedia and its editors. The edit block should be lifted immediately, as it is not related to Jimbo’s involvement. Cinaroot (talk) 20:44, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Its poor timing agreed. It ends automatically in a few hours anyways tho User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 20:46, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

These first two headlines are also patently false. Jimbo doesn't even have admin tools any more, so he couldn't lock edits if he wanted to. It was locked by an uninvolved administrator as part of standard dispute resolution procedure. I wouldn't blame people if they used these as examples against Al-Jazeera or the Times of Israel the next time these sources have their reliability up for discussion. Thank you to the third article (by The Verge) for pointing out that this is false. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 20:52, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Well - its a mistake. We know it. But media doesn't know it. Many media org are reporting the same - some have corrected the error. Cinaroot (talk) 20:56, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

All sourcing gets wikipedia policy wrong on some level. Though wikipedia strives to be easy to get into the minutiae of policy in ctop areas is hard to understand and regularly misinterpreted User:Bluethricecreamman (Talk·Contribs) 21:39, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

We should email Binyavanga Wainaina and tell him to write How to Write About Wikipedia Placeholderer (talk) 20:53, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I hate saying I told you so, but I called this out last night before going to bed that Jimbo virtually certainly expected that any comment he made would be picked up by the news. And not just picked up, I would be shocked if he didn't consider that the news frequently sensationalizes things (or in this case, blatantly gets them wrong) before making his comments. The fact he still chose to make his comments even considering the high likelihood (and now reality) of the news coverage shows how serious this situation is. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 00:25, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy requires that we assume good faith of other editors; this is a personal attack without evidence. If you wish to allege misconduct with evidence, file a complaint at WP:AN/I. -- Beland (talk) 07:24, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

WALES: I mean, they can. I think that's one of the worst Wikipedia entries I've seen in a very long time. I just looked at it myself, and I was shocked to see it. It needs to change. I think it's just terrible. It doesn't live up to our standards of neutrality. And I think it's very problematic. And it's definitely something that would not reflect on the way Wikipedia should work. And we need to fix it. That's all I can say to that. https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/ampr/date/2025-11-03/segment/01 Cinaroot (talk) 21:07, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

He sounds like Trump. LegalSmeagolian (talk) 22:56, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

There is so much text in this section that it actually lags out my web browser, but I would like to iterate (and reiterate) some things here.

• No one seriously, or at least no one who should be taken seriously, doubts that Israel's actions in Gaza constitute a genocide. In fact, I would reckon that there is not a single reliable source that doubts this, and the sources that do are either explicilty tied to Israel, Zionist NGOs, or governments with close relationships to Israel (such as Germany). We should not teach the controversy. This is not seriously or even "highly" contested, any more than vaccines, the moon landing, or evolution is "highly" contested. This is not a false equivalency: there is a clear academic consensus for each of these that is only contested by WP:FRINGE figures or outright bad actors.
• Jimbo's actions here are highly suspect; while it is usually commendable to act in an explicitly personal capacity, this appears to leverage social capital in order to effect a change. Jimbo does not have any more of a say in this than an IP editor does, yet he can use his position as co-founder and WMF board member to call Wikipedia's neutrality into question and attract bad faith editors to this very page through public interviews. I think AlexJFox (talk · contribs)'s observation is very astute: this smells like someone compromised by lobbying interets, or perhaps something more pernicious, like recent attempts by US lawmakers to "investigate" anti-Israel bias on Wikipedia.^[1] I already lost a significant amount of faith in the WMF because of their complicity with the High Court of New Delhi's blatant attempt at censorship, but this a new low.

Everyone should remember that Wikipedia is made and ran by us -- normal, volunteer editors, with or without a mop. It means jackshit if Jimbo thinks this page is 'biased' or 'problematic'^[2] for calling a spade a spade, just like it would mean jackshit if Jimbo up and decided the moon landing was faked (or rather that the moon landing was 'hotly contested'.) One of the more famous graffiti slogans from the May 68 protests in France read: Kill the cop in your head. I think it's time we indef'd the founder(s) in our head. wound theology◈ 00:15, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

"In fact, I would reckon that there is not a single reliable source that doubts this, and the sources that do are either explicilty tied to Israel, Zionist NGOs, or governments with close relationships to Israel (such as Germany)." and this is why the article is violating NPOV right now. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 05:30, 5 November 2025 (UTC)