Tensions are brewing at Wikipedia over the war in Gaza as volunteer editors have launched “edit wars” to manipulate the slant of pages, according to a report.
The non-profit encyclopedia has banned at least 14 editors from working on topics related to the Israel-Hamas war as it faces growing accusations of left-leaning bias, according to Bloomberg.
Even the site’s founders are at odds over whether to reveal the identities of the Wikipedia contributors, who are typically kept anonymous.
Wikipedia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some volunteer editors have allegedly conspired with other contributors to alter pages on the Middle East conflict to fit their agenda – stoking strong backlash from Jewish organizations.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative DC-based think tank, has reportedly been scheming to “identify and target” the editors responsible for pages deemed antisemitic, the Forward, an American-Jewish news group, reported in January.
Co-founder Larry Sanger backed the Heritage Foundation’s alleged plan to reveal and target the Wikipedia editors in question – a sharp reversal from Wikipedia’s tradition of anonymity.
“Admins and those with significant authority in the system should be as easily named and shamed as any ordinary journalist,” Sanger, who has been a frequent critic of Wikipedia’s so-called left-leaning bias since leaving the organization in 2002, said in a post on X.
Co-founder Jimmy Wales, meanwhile, called the scheme to expose editors “extremely worrisome,” according to Bloomberg.
“I agree that for many who are doing it, the motive does appear to be the undermining of civic norms and democracy,” he said.
Early last year, Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee barred three editors from its site for leading a pro-Israel campaign.
One of the three editors started emailing other Wikipedia contributors soon after the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, telling their colleagues to make changes to pages on the war in Gaza, according to Bloomberg.
On Oct. 16, one of the accused editors sent an email to colleagues working on PIA pages – or Palestine-Israel articles – encouraging them to vote to take down a Wiki page that referred to the war as a “genocide” started by Israel.
“Please vote for the article to be deleted or merged,” the editor wrote in the email, as seen by Bloomberg.
They called that page’s editors “propagandists” and slammed the article as “ridiculous.”
Meanwhile, a group of editors called Tech for Palestine allegedly coordinated pro-Palestine edits on Discord, an instant messaging platform, according to Bloomberg.
In April, an account on X, “Zei Squirrel,” announced a plan to “coordinate action on countering Zionest propaganda lies with facts on Wikipedia.” The account has 275,000 followers.
The following month, on Discord, a person claiming to be behind the X account said they had created a mailing list to send updates about editing articles about Israel and Palestine, according to Bloomberg.
These kinds of mailing lists – also known as “covert canvassing” – break Wikipedia’s rules.
As the “edit wars” worsened, conflicting accounts of a singular event in the Gaza strip remained up until early this year.
The first Wikipedia page described a June 8 event in the Nuseirat refugee camp as a “rescue” operation to save the hostages that led to a firefight between Hamas militants and Israeli troops, leading to around 100 civilian casualties, according to Bloomberg.
The other Wiki page called the June 8 event a “massacre” that killed at least 274 people and injured nearly 700 more, citing the Gaza Health Ministry, which is overseen by Hamas, the report said.
Wikipedia has been accused of a growing left-leaning bias across its pages by Jewish and conservative groups.
The Post’s editorial board has called on big tech firms to block Wikipedia for blacklisting right-leaning news sources.
Elon Musk, a close Trump ally and the face of the Department of Government Efficiency, the White House’s cost-cutting task force, has slammed the site as “Wokepedia” – citing a report that claimed 40 “Pro-Hamas” editors were working together to “delegitimize Israel.”
Musk urged his followers to stop donating to Wikipedia.
“Every time Elon tweets his nonsense, we get a surge in donations, and no wonder,” Wales told Bloomberg in an email. “Wikipedia is the antidote to his brand of sloppy misinformation, and the public knows it.”
Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It appears that Sanger disagrees. Last month, in a post on X, the Wiki co-founder asked Musk and DOGE to investigate whether any government employees had been paid to edit Wikipedia pages to fit a certain slant – and if so, to defund those programs.
