Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee (ArbCom), which is the site’s version of the Supreme Court, is on the verge of issuing indefinite topic bans to eight editors involved in the Israel-Palestine topic area, most of them of being anti-Israel editors.
ArbCom is Wikipedia’s highest dispute resolution board consisting of 15 members (one of whom is currently inactive) elected by the community, serving two-year terms; ArbCom only deals with editor conduct, not article content and is the option of last resort when all other means of dispute resolution have failed. As of the publication time, the committee has votes in favor of indefinitely topic banning “Selfstudier,” “Nableezy,” “Nishidani,” “Levivich,” “Iskandar323,” “Makeandtoss,” “BilledMammal” and “AndreJustAndre” and providing a warning to “Zero0000,” an administrator. ArbCom’s proposed decision states that all these editors engaged in “disruptive behavior,” a catch-all term referring to anything that makes it more difficult to edit articles and violates Wikipedia norms and policies. The disruptive behavior that these editors engaged in included non-neutral editing, edit warring and incivility, per the proposed decision.
Selfstudier, Nableezy, Nishidani, Levivich, Iskandar, Zero and Makeandtoss were all listed in a viral Pirate Wires piece as being part of the anti-Israel cabal that hijacked Wikipedia. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) noted in a Jan. 17 press release that Selfstudier, Nableezy, Iskandar, Levivich and Nishidani were all “part of a bad-faith campaign in an attempt to undermine the credibility of ADL”; the ADL was downgraded on Wikipedia to being generally unreliable on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in June. BilledMammal and AndreJustAndre are on the pro-Israel side.
However, it is important to note that as of publication time, a motion has not yet been filed to close the case and as such, the topic bans are not yet in effect. Tamzin Hadasa Kelly, a Wikipedia administrator, explained to me the current state of the case would be akin to “a House bill that seems to have the votes but hasn’t made it to the floor yet.” A vote on the motion will probably happen within the next few days, per Kelly. The likely topic bans are subject to appeal after 12 months.
ArbCom is also on the verge of passing a new measure called a balanced editing restriction. Kelly who played a role crafting the restriction, explained it to me as follows: “Someone under this restriction would not be allowed to spend more than a third of their content-related edits on PIA [Palestine-Israel Article] pages. In a bit more detail, if an editor is subject to it, and 1/3 of their edits in the previous 30 days have been about PIA, then they are treated as if they are topic-banned from PIA, until such time as they fall back below that 1/3-in-30-days threshold. This is all in addition to a topic ban from PIA edits outside of the article, talk, draft, and draft talk namespaces, which is in force regardless of the 1/3-in-30-days question.” Kelly further explained to me that the restriction is based on “a rolling 30-day window, counting backward from the moment that the edit is made” and that “it can be imposed based on a simple finding that doing so would be net-positive, without having to get into the person’s motives.” The restriction’s likely implementation will be reviewed by ArbCom after six months.
A measure that would have barred article titles from using contentious words like “massacre” and “genocide” in articles describing violent engagements in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (unless editors came to a consensus on them) and given admins discretion to replace such words with terms like “killing” or “attack” failed.
“I like the idea of something like the article titles restriction,” Kelly told me. “The part where it dictates exact word choice made it nonviable, but I would like to see a restriction that limits the rate of move requests full of debate over emotive word choice—maybe similar to what was proposed, but leaving the more granular decisions in the hands of admins and AE [Arbitration Enforcement].” AE is a venue where editors in discretionary sanctions topic areas can get reported if they are believed to have violated Wikipedia policy. “That would still walk the line between content and conduct, but the truth is we already do that,” Kelly continued. “If I siteblock a user because they add disinformation about something, I’m making a conduct decision, but I’m also making a content decision, right? It wouldn’t be that different to say, that an administrator can protect a page at a neutral title and foreclose debate over new titles, at least for some period of time. At the moment it doesn’t look like the Committee is considering any alternative restriction to this end, but maybe someone has something in their back pocket. If not … next year in Jerusalem.”
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement, “We’re pleased that the Wikipedia arbitration board has taken disciplinary action against some editors who, in our view, have spread malicious, false and biased information about Zionism and Israel across the platform … It’s worth noting that several of the chief instigators of the campaign against ADL are among those now facing topic bans or outright bans for their behavior. In light of this, it is now imperative for Wikipedia to begin work immediately to undo the harm caused by these rogue but prolific editors who literally have wreaked havoc across the platform, causing untold harm to potentially hundreds of entries about Israel, the Oct. 7 massacre, Zionism and topics relating to antisemitism.
“We’re pleased that the Wikipedia arbitration board has taken disciplinary action against some editors who, in our view, have spread malicious, false and biased information about Zionism and Israel across the platform.” – Jonathan Greenblatt
“As we have said before, Wikipedia needs to wake up to the reality that this is a systemic problem across the platform that needs immediate action. There is still a lot more that must be done to ensure that Wikipedia can live up to its policy around the encyclopedia holding a neutral point of view.”
But the longtime editor who runs “The Wikipedia Flood” blog did not share the ADL’s reaction, telling me that the likely actions from ArbCom are “flabby and insufficient” that only “deals with a small number of editors” and that the likely topic banning of BilledMammal and Andre is “purely out of ‘balance’ in a ‘split the baby’ fashion.” “[The arbitrators] showed that they weren’t even READING the evidence that was presented,” the Wikipedia Flood editor said. “One arb, for instance, fixated on my blog and insisted that my blog was a center of ‘canvassing’ (solicitation of edits on specific articles) when that is absolutely not true. Her reasoning was rejected but it shows that the arbs in general were lazy, robotic, and are utterly unsuited to provide ‘adult supervision’ of Wikipedia. Indeed, the arb case shows that there is no accountability for Wikipedia content, no adult in the room.”
The Wikipedia Flood editor added that they “don’t get the ADL’s joy here. Their complaint was rejected. The arbs made no mention of the ADL one way or the other. They are, in effect, claiming a ‘victory’ of sorts that does not exist. It is a very odd reaction that shows a lack of understanding of Wikipedia and is congratulating Wikipedia for absolutely no reason.” The Wikipedia Flood editor also noted that the likely topic banned anti-Israel editors are not about to be sanctioned because they “introduced bad information, but because they engaged in bad behavior. That is a crucial difference. I am appalled that the ADL so totally misread what ArbCom did.”
Kelly is “cautiously optimistic” about how the case, once closed, will affect the topic area. “I think the topic area was at a point where, kind of like in a toxic friendship or relationship, the question of who was at fault and how much paled in comparison to ‘Where do we go from here?’” they told me. “I haven’t looked into the merits of each individual ban, but broadly speaking the fact of a lot of bans coming down is a good thing, because the vicious cycle in the topic area wasn’t going to break with the same players there. This will create at least some level of power vacuum, but I think if anyone thinks Wikipedia will have a shortage of people looking to edit about Israel/Palestine, they haven’t been paying attention for the past 80 years or so. My hope is that the vacuum will be filled by experienced editors who have heretofore been afraid to edit in the topic area given its toxicity. The presence of the extended-confirmed restriction makes that a bit more likely than it might otherwise be, since new users can’t start turning up on Day One post-enactment and filling the gaps.” Kelly is referencing how editors can’t edit in the Israel-Palestine topic area until they’ve been an editor for at least 30 days and have made at least 500 edits.
That said, “cautious optimism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict don’t mesh very well together,” Kelly noted. “That’s where the systemic changes being made come in. The balanced editing restriction and changes to AE should make it easier for admins to handle new problem editors as they arise. I’m moderately more optimistic about that than about the bans on their own fixing the quality of discourse. One aspect to consider here is social capital: A lot of the editors being (likely) sanctioned have a lot of accumulated social capital that made it hard for an individual admin to come down on them, even within the framework of such admin actions being intentionally hard to overturn. ArbCom has done the dirty work of (likely) sanctioning some popular users. In a way, that’s why we have ArbCom, to make those decisions by fiat that no individual has the social capital to make. So if going forward there’s a new generation of editors contributing to toxicity, they won’t have nearly as much social capital behind them, while admins will have broader discretion than before to weigh in.”
Other editors I spoke to were not particularly celebratory of ArbCom’s likely actions.
“I figured the odds that they would fix the BS genocide title was low since few talked about it,” one editor told me, referencing the Wikipedia “Gaza genocide” article title. The editor was “surprised” the article title restriction was even an option. “I’m not surprised that it was rejected as it isn’t a behavioral issue (at least wasn’t presented as such). The balanced editing thing might be of use. It would slow down a POV account while not being a requirement of the topic area, just a sanction for a user. Ultimately this [case] seems like little more than a mass blocking of editors. That might help in blocking some of the bias in those articles but much of the damage is done.”
One editor who grew disillusioned with Wikipedia after making thousands of edits told me that ArbCom’s likely actions are “too little, too late.” “It may calm down the topic area for a while, but the s—-y articles remain and the numbers [of anti-Israel editors] remain,” the editor said.
Another editor told me that they are both “pleased by this result and more frustrated than ever. While it’s a relief to know that that the Arbitration Committee is capable of taking broad action on problematic issues, the narrow case docket and even narrower series of remedies offered leaves much to be desired. We have far, far more than eight users who have been engaging in long term battleground behavior in this topic area, and this case neither addressed this problem, nor even set the ground for it to be addressed in the future.” “Battleground behavior” is a reference to Wikipedia policy stating that editors are not supposed to engage in an “us vs. them” mentality.
Regarding the balanced editing restriction, this editor said that they defer to the comment from the arbitrator “Guerillero” that the restriction will either be “forgotten or a complete quagmire in 2 years, but it is worth a shot.”
A former Wikipedia editor who goes by the alias “Ron Merkle” on X told me that while it’s great that “some pro-Hamas distortionists” are likely going to be topic banned, “there are a few other distortionists who escaped consequences simply because they aren’t included as parties in the arbitration case, or because they were simply admonished rather than let’s say, a fixed-duration topic ban. In some ways this isn’t quite different than the Holocaust in Poland arbitration case, where those responsible for distorting historical facts were let off with minimal consequences.” Merkle touted an alternative to Wikipedia called Justapedia, where Merkle currently edits.
An editor told me that “other s—y editors” would likely fill the void of the pending topic banned anti-Israel editors and that they were unsure if the current crop of pro-Israel editors “have what it takes to hold off the onslaught.” But if the topic area keeps having cases where the six worst anti-Israel editors get topic banned and only two pro-Israel editors are topic banned, “this should be a good resolve to the pro-Jewish editors to learn from all of this and not give up.”
