Wikipedia’s top adjudicating body, Arbitration Committee, has banned six editors who engaged in coordinated editing of thousands of articles in the Palestine Israel Articles (PIA) topic area. The editors were among 40 or so identified in my wide-ranging Pirate Wires investigation — “How Wikipedia’s Pro-Hamas Editors Hijacked the Israel-Palestine Narrative” — from October, which focused on how the group worked to shift the narrative on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The bans were issued as a result of an Arbcom investigation launched after that investigation documented the extent to which PIA had been co-opted by this group.

The six super-editors — Nishidani, Nableezy, Makeandtoss, Levivich, Iskander323, Selfstudier — have all received indefinite topic bans, which means they are prohibited from editing PIA articles for at least 12 months, at which point they can appeal to have the topic ban dropped. Another editor, Zero000, who has a higher Admin status on the site, received a warning.

The arbitrators involved in the proceedings, informally known as PI5, found that the editors had engaged in disruptive behavior and editing that violated key Wikipedia policies. “Editors have to focus on building an encyclopedia, and a pattern of editing that puts ideological interests above the project's interests harms both the encyclopedia and the collaborative environment,” noted one arbitrator, theleekycauldron, in their vote to support an indefinite topic ban against Iskander323, one of the most prolific and damaging of the group of 40 editors.