https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241108-its-not-close-israel-committing-genocide-concludes-wikipedia-ending-editorial-debate/

‘It’s not close’ – Israel committing genocide concludes Wikipedia ending editorial debate

Wikipedia has officially added “Gaza genocide” to its “List of Genocides” page, marking a major shift in how Israel’s aggression on the besieged enclave is being documented on the world’s largest online encyclopaedia.

The addition, which now appears as the first entry due to the list’s reverse chronological order, comes after months of extensive debate among the platform’s editors. On its “Gaza genocide” page, it states that “Experts, governments, United Nations agencies, and non-governmental organisations have accused Israel of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people during its invasion and bombing of the Gaza Strip in the ongoing Israel–Hamas war.”

The entry for “List of genocides,” Wikipedia states that “Israel has been accused by experts, governments, UN agencies and non-governmental organisations of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian population during its invasion and bombing of Gaza during the ongoing Israel–Hamas war.” The page goes on to list the death toll in Gaza while mentioning that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians killed are civilians.

The decision to include the Gaza genocide in the list followed Wikipedia’s formal Request for Comment process, which began in July. Editors supporting the inclusion argued that it met the page’s criteria of events “classified by significant scholarship” as genocide. They also pointed out that the Gaza situation had stronger scholarly consensus than some existing entries on the list, such as the Darfur and Rohingya genocides.

British Wikipedian, Stuart Marshall, made the final ruling in September, decisively supporting the article’s inclusion. “Based on the strength of the arguments … and it’s not close … I discarded the argument that scholars haven’t reached a conclusion on whether the Gaza genocide is really taking place”, Marshall wrote in his decision. “The matter remains contested, but there’s a metric truckload of scholarly sources linked in this discussion that show a clear predominance of academics who say that it is.”

Marshall concluded his ruling with the straightforward statement: “We follow the scholars.”

According to Wikipedia, events qualify as a genocide if they have been classified as such by “significant scholarship.”

Wikipedia’s decision comes amid wider discussions about source reliability, particularly regarding Israel and Palestine. In a related move, the platform’s editors recently voted to declare the Anti-Defamation League “generally unreliable” on the subject, adding it to their list of banned and partially banned sources.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldYfQT35_38 (just listen to the first two minutes if you're lazy)

Lemmy is inherently democratic. If you don’t like a muni, or an instance, you go to another one. Without centralization dictatorship is impossible.

That's more like voluntarism than democracy.

Online? Dictatorship. Let the guidelines be clear and the conversations civil and on topic. If my speech isn’t wanted in a particular community I can find another, or make another where I’m the dictator.

I like StackOverflow's democratic moderation. It also scales better than centralised moderation.

The squabbling process moves the law toward meeting the needs of more people.

Are there data on this?

You're making a causal claim (if squabbling, then more needs met) and that's either empirically true or not.

Misinformed.

The founding fathers of the USA never mentioned democracy in the constitution nor declaration of independence.

In their writings, they only ever used the word as a pejorative: https://founders.archives.gov/?q=democracy&s=1111211111&sa=&r=1&sr=

"we are not so absurd as to “design a Democracy,” of which the Governor is pleased to accuse us"

"You would have torn up the Foundations and demolished the whole Fabrick of the Government, and have suffered Democracy... to have arisen in its Place."

Are those the founding fathers you're talking about?

No.

Book-learning is realllllly overrated in our world, especially in a forum like this.

Less than 1% of knowledge is expressible in words.

Lemmings

Is there a film called Lemmings? Seems a safe bet there is one.

Meme posted by Southern Hemisphere Gang

Fun fact: folk etymologies are always lies.

I've also heard that 'gringo' derives from people telling green-clad soldiers to go away (green, go)

I've heard that 'fuck' is an acronym for 'fornication under consent of the king'

All nonsense of course.

I’m originally from Sabah in northern Borneo, Malaysia

Hey I've been there. Hello.

Certain topics (mostly household things), I'll think in Irish.

Or sports.... it's easier for me to think "tá an cailis déanta aige" than "he fouled the player" because my sporting life has generally been through Irish.

Was North Korea 3rd world?

You wouldn't

Agreed. Being civilised is an Englishy queen-and-country virtue.

https://d-place.org/parameters/SCCS1650#0/14/150 — 52 of 186 uncivilised peoples in this dataset have no war.

There's probably war without civilisation, but "more civilised means less war" is hard for me to accept.

whether uncivilised people have 'war' is controversial; many people thi k war arose with civilisation

For example, the book Warless Societies and the Origin of War by Kelly argues that you need civilisation to have the sort of organisation and population density for war. A counterargument is that some great apes have been observed warring.

Anti-civ people could respond that a civilisation focused on war is particularly civilised.

Scores are stable over time. This can be determined by statistics. It's called test-retest reliability.