Thầy Nguyễn Xuân Nghĩa, , có yết bài đăng “Sự thật về Wikipedia” trên trang facebook của Thầy tại trang facebook: DianamaxForum , danviet.com.au xin được trích lại để hầu độc giả

SỰ THẬT VỀ WIKIPEDIA!

Bài rất nên đọc của Seth Mandel trên Commentary vì tính chất thiên vị của Wikipedia, dù bài viết chú ý nhất đến yếu tố Do Thái!

Với tôi, Wiki có ích về khoa học thường thức cấp trung học. Về khoa xã hội, kinh tế (có chính trị) thì ai trích nguồn Wiki là người ít am hiểu vì còn trẻ, hoặc bị dẫn dụ sai lạc mà không biết! Cả một hệ thống nhân lực của các chế độ cực tả nhào vào xóa hẳn bộ nhớ của thiên hạ để viết lại lịch sử. Một trong các nhà sáng lập Wiki ban đầu đã than phiền về tình trạng này của Wiki.

[Hơn chục năm trước tôi đã than phiền về chuyện này với bạn thân là học giả Nguyễn Ngọc Bích mà đành chịu vì thiếu phương tiện nhân sự để ngăn được phần nào. Thế rồi ông Bích qua đời trên phi cơ khi bay qua Phi Luật Tân cho cuộc tham luận bảo vệ chủ quyền VN trên các quần đảo ngoài Biển Đông...]

https://www.commentary.org/

Wikipedia Was Never Better Than This

(by Seth Mandel - Commentary - September 18, 2024 American Society )

The Wikipedia experiment has always been about testing whether passion is more valuable than knowledge in the realm of information. The answer has never been yes, though the popular crowdsourced encyclopedia hopes it isn’t too obvious.

High-profile controversies, such as the recent one over Wikipedia’s explosion in anti-Zionist disinformation, make it more obvious. Wikipedia’s value is not in its accuracy but in the transparency of its sourcing because when it comes to information, passion always has to answer eventually to knowledge.

Wikipedia’s vulnerability to manipulation isn’t confined to controversial geopolitics. Take this 2023 story in The Critic about controversial Cambridge professor Priyamvada Gopal. A superfan of the prof with the username PostcolonialLitNerd spent years “tenderly editing her Wikipedia article, removing anything that might be offensive to the reputation of” Gopal. “Negative information about Gopal, and there is a lot of it, was systematically erased or twisted.” The user was eventually banned when “administrators had discovered that one of the editors who, like PostcolonialLitNerd, only edited Gopal’s article and nothing else, was in fact none other than PostcolonialLitNerd herself.” The user kept registering new “sock puppets” while the site’s administrators played whack-a-mole keeping them banned.

What happens when such zealots become editors of Middle East topics? The battles spill out into the open, where the politicization of Wikipedia pages becomes more and more pronounced.

Yesterday, social-media users highlighted the change in Wikipedia’s definition of Zionism. In 2023, it was “a nationalist movement that emerged in the 19th century to espouse support for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition. Following the establishment of Israel, Zionism became an ideology that supports ‘the development and protection of the State of Israel.’”

Here’s the 2024 (and current) version: “Zionism is an ethno-cultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of a land outside of Europe. It eventually focused on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, a region corresponding to the Land of Israel in Judaism, and of central importance in Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 by way of the proclamation of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, Zionism became the ideology supporting the protection and development of Israel as a Jewish state and has been described as Israel’s national or state ideology.”

When zealots get hold of a supposedly neutral source of information, they must make a public execution of it and parade their victim through the streets. The mutilated corpse of a Wikipedia page isn’t a sign of intellectual inquiry but an indication of a kind of ISIS-of-the-mind.

The process of manipulating Wikipedia entries is both common and complicated. In a July article for Tablet, the scholar Izabella Tabarovsky described how Polish editors “spent years systematically distorting Polish Jewish history across multiple Wikipedia articles to align it with far-right Polish nationalist preferences. Working in concert, the group falsified evidence, promoted marginal self-published sources, created fake references, and advanced antisemitic stereotypes.” The campaign of manipulation was unearthed by two historians last year, who wrote: “Challenging the distortionists takes a monumental amount of time, more than most people can invest in a voluntary hobby.”

Tabarovsky was writing in the wake of Wikipedia’s downgrading of the Anti-Defamation League as a reliable source on Israeli-Palestinian issues. It was quite clear that the ADL’s staunch defense of Zionism was the reason behind the downgrading. Facts were not at issue; ideology was the sole factor. As Jewish Insider noted at the time, Wikipedia’s editors had downgraded the ADL’s reliability while keeping Al Jazeera in the reliable category. Which is to say, the literal state propaganda outlet that employs members of terrorist armies to cover their own attacks is considered reliable, because to Wikipedia editors, reliability is a measure of ideological fealty.

No one should be surprised by this: Merriam-Webster changed its dictionary definition of “sexual preference” in 2020 immediately after Democrats attached a stigma to the phrase in order to criticize Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. If an actual reference publication will allow day-to-day partisan politics to dictate its contents, an imitation reference publication will have no qualms about doing so. Wiki see, Wiki do.

The Wikipedia experiment has always been about testing whether passion is more valuable than knowledge in the realm of information. The answer has never been yes, though the popular crowdsourced encyclopedia hopes it isn’t too obvious.

High-profile controversies, such as the recent one over Wikipedia’s explosion in anti-Zionist disinformation, make it more obvious. Wikipedia’s value is not in its accuracy but in the transparency of its sourcing because when it comes to information, passion always has to answer eventually to knowledge.

Wikipedia’s vulnerability to manipulation isn’t confined to controversial geopolitics. Take this 2023 story in The Critic about controversial Cambridge professor Priyamvada Gopal. A superfan of the prof with the username PostcolonialLitNerd spent years “tenderly editing her Wikipedia article, removing anything that might be offensive to the reputation of” Gopal. “Negative information about Gopal, and there is a lot of it, was systematically erased or twisted.” The user was eventually banned when “administrators had discovered that one of the editors who, like PostcolonialLitNerd, only edited Gopal’s article and nothing else, was in fact none other than PostcolonialLitNerd herself.” The user kept registering new “sock puppets” while the site’s administrators played whack-a-mole keeping them banned.

What happens when such zealots become editors of Middle East topics? The battles spill out into the open, where the politicization of Wikipedia pages becomes more and more pronounced.

Yesterday, social-media users highlighted the change in Wikipedia’s definition of Zionism. In 2023, it was “a nationalist movement that emerged in the 19th century to espouse support for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition. Following the establishment of Israel, Zionism became an ideology that supports ‘the development and protection of the State of Israel.’”

Here’s the 2024 (and current) version: “Zionism is an ethno-cultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization of a land outside of Europe. It eventually focused on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, a region corresponding to the Land of Israel in Judaism, and of central importance in Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 by way of the proclamation of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, Zionism became the ideology supporting the protection and development of Israel as a Jewish state and has been described as Israel’s national or state ideology.”

When zealots get hold of a supposedly neutral source of information, they must make a public execution of it and parade their victim through the streets. The mutilated corpse of a Wikipedia page isn’t a sign of intellectual inquiry but an indication of a kind of ISIS-of-the-mind.

The process of manipulating Wikipedia entries is both common and complicated. In a July article for Tablet, the scholar Izabella Tabarovsky described how Polish editors “spent years systematically distorting Polish Jewish history across multiple Wikipedia articles to align it with far-right Polish nationalist preferences. Working in concert, the group falsified evidence, promoted marginal self-published sources, created fake references, and advanced antisemitic stereotypes.” The campaign of manipulation was unearthed by two historians last year, who wrote: “Challenging the distortionists takes a monumental amount of time, more than most people can invest in a voluntary hobby.”

Tabarovsky was writing in the wake of Wikipedia’s downgrading of the Anti-Defamation League as a reliable source on Israeli-Palestinian issues. It was quite clear that the ADL’s staunch defense of Zionism was the reason behind the downgrading. Facts were not at issue; ideology was the sole factor. As Jewish Insider noted at the time, Wikipedia’s editors had downgraded the ADL’s reliability while keeping Al Jazeera in the reliable category. Which is to say, the literal state propaganda outlet that employs members of terrorist armies to cover their own attacks is considered reliable, because to Wikipedia editors, reliability is a measure of ideological fealty.

No one should be surprised by this: Merriam-Webster changed its dictionary definition of “sexual preference” in 2020 immediately after Democrats attached a stigma to the phrase in order to criticize Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. If an actual reference publication will allow day-to-day partisan politics to dictate its contents, an imitation reference publication will have no qualms about doing so. Wiki see, Wiki do.

Commentary.org: Wikipedia Was Never Better Than This