Nov 6, 2025
This piece was first published in NPOV.
More than two decades after launching Wikipedia together, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger have reunited. This time, it’s not so much in partnership but to protest Wikipedia’s take on one of the biggest geopolitical flashpoints today: allegations that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
In a remarkable Wikipedia moment — the likes of which hasn’t been seen for over a decade — the co-founders of the online encyclopedia have both expressed disappointment with the highly contested article.
This has set off an extraordinary firestorm inside Wikipedia, with one editor telling me the response has been “pandemonium.” They characterize the atmosphere surrounding these events as one of “major fear.”
Things have spiraled so far out of control that Wikipedia editors have referred Wales for disciplinary action in an attempt to have him banned from editing in that space.
a powerful group of editors is hijacking wikipedia, pushing pro-palestinian propaganda, erasing key facts about hamas, and reshaping the narrative around israel with alarming influence
a single editor repeatedly inserted the same "authoritarian" framing into multiple wikipedia articles, creating an illusion of consensus and shaping the record that now informs chatgpt and google
in a precedent-setting case with far-reaching implications, a portuguese court rules that wikipedia published defamatory claims masquerading as fact, forcing a global takedown order
inside the cultural revolution at wikipedia, which pivoted it from a decentralized database of all the world's knowledge to a top-down social activism and advocacy machine
users blamed bluesky for enabling genocide after the platform removed fake fundraisers for gaza. just how deep does the scam go?
a cottage industry of wikipedia editing services has emerged since the site's founding, and powerful brands and notable media outlets are some of its biggest clients