6 ms·

Distortion of the history of the Holocaust on Wikipedia

39 points by akolbe 4y ago

sandworm101 4y ago
I'm not directly touching this debate with a 20-foot pole. Wikipedia has issues with its insular editor pool for sure, but this minefield isn't the best vehicle for a public discussion of the issue.
- honkler 4y ago
  what would happen if you do touch it with a 20-foot pole?
- akolbe 4y ago
  As you might imagine, there are plenty of discussions of this paper on Wikipedia itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#Suggestion_by_Nick_Moyes_(2023-02-10) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/N... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Wikipedia’s_Intentional_Distortion_of_the_History_of_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not... (The first contains links to others.) Similar points were raised by Haaretz a few years ago: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2019-10-04/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-fake-nazi-death-camp-wikipedias-longest-hoax-exposed/0000017f-e367-d568-ad7f-f36f77000000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2019-10-04/ty-article-ma...
thrown_43 4y ago
[flagged]
SQueeeeeL 4y ago
>Due to this group’s zealous handiwork, Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles This is such a bizarre conspiracy theory, maybe it makes more sense with the specifics of how Poland teaches their history, but Poland got straight up invaded, decimated, and occupied by fascists. Like, how are they gonna even try to point fingers at the Jews and Communists as being responsible.....
- kckfldod 4y ago
  [flagged]
- SuperNinKenDo 4y ago
  No comment on the collaborationist narrative, but your comment completely ignores the very obvious fact that Poland was subdivided between said Fascist power AND the Soviet Union, a Communist superpower.
freitzkriesler2 4y ago
[flagged]
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  I refuse to give money to anything that Jimmy Wales is affiliated with. He's unethical, and I assume the same for Wikipedia.
  - freitzkriesler2 4y ago
    The Wikipedia foundation is one of the most impressive non profit money laundering ops out there. The cost of running Wikipedia vs the foundations actual income is staggering. There's more than enough money and investment income available that they don't need to throw up that annoying "gib us money plz" message they do all of the time.
anigbrowl 4y ago
I've followed this specific issue for a while, and this is a fairly good write up of it. It could be improved by moving beyond the narrative format (albeit supplemented by a few charts) and developing a network analysis of virtual territorial conflict over time. Jumping off points for this sort of work include: Automated sockpuppet detection on Wikipedia: https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3129&context=td https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti... Identifying paid content on Wikipedia: https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10289863 https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10289863 Detecting Wikipedia vandalism w/spatio-temporal analysis of revision data: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA514680.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA514680.pdf
dang 4y ago
There's probably an interesting, cautious discussion to be had about this analysis (whatever it is) but a large, open internet forum is probably incapable of having it. Still, I've replaced the title with something less baity (in keeping with the HN guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait"). If you comment in this thread, please make sure you're up on https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and especially this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." Flames and ideological battle are not welcome—nay, not even on this topic.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  It would certainly have been more accurate to title the article as 'Intentional distortion of holocaust history on Wikipedia' that to attribute intent to Wikipedia qua entity - though abusive & adversarial editing practices are a sufficiently well-known and documented problem on that platform that Wikipedia's nonprofit governance could reasonably be accused of negligence.
  - dang 4y ago
    If there's a better i.e. more accurate and neutral title, I'd be happy to use it as long as isn't baity, but making accusations about intentional distortion is too baity (that's why I took that out). Edit: this is a tangent, but it's also a weak claim since if you say something about someone's intent, they can just say "no it wasn't" and act like they refuted you. I finally learned not to do that about HN comments after experiencing this many times. Edit 2: I changed the edited title from "Wikipedia editors and the history of the holocaust" to something that's closer to the actual title and better represents it.
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      Oh, I was just ruminating on the original title of the article rather than commenting on your selection. Sorry for the confusion.
chx 4y ago
The Hungarian wikipedia being overrun by ... how to say this politely? neonazis, yes, that's a polite word, I guess, is a well known fact. I am not at all surprised this happened to the English one as well. Long ago there has been an analysis of how much better organized the "pro life" crowd was online than the "pro choice" and this is just another facet of the same: alas, it seems those on the right are playing this better. Oh well. Everyone knows or should know Wikipedia can not be trusted or if they didn't then the Scottish Wikipedia scandal should have taught them this.
- leephillips 4y ago
  Everyone should know, and yet I often see people, in HN comments for example, citing Wikipedia as if it means something. As the great Tycho has said, “The fact of the matter is that all sources of information are not of equal value, and I don't know how or when it became impolitic to suggest it. In opposition to the spirit of Wikipedia, I believe there is such a thing as expertise.” https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/12/16/i-have-the-power https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/12/16/i-have-the-pow...
  - akolbe 4y ago
    An additional factor here is that now chatbots like ChatGPT are trained on Wikipedia as well, in addition to search engines' knowledge graph panels and voice assistants bringing up Wikipedia texts in response to queries. It does make you wonder sometimes whether technological progress really does make things work better than before ...
  - arp242 4y ago
    On the other hand if I link to example.com, random-website.org, or even a published study, then that's also not a guarantee it's anywhere near accurate. Blindly trusting Wikipedia would be foolish, but so would blindly trusting anything else, or blindly mistrusting Wikipedia. Gathering reliable and comprehensive information on any topic you're not an expert on is hard, because you lack the background knowledge and expertise to judge the accuracy of something – basic critical thinking/bullshit detection helps, but will only get you so far. Wikipedia isn't perfect and has its share of issues, but it's not bad either.
gambiting 4y ago
Well, considering that currently in Poland it's literally illegal to even suggest Poles have commited any crimes linked with the holocaust, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. One of the most shameful things about this country for me personally.
- 988747 4y ago
  No, it is not illegal, who told you that? There are Polish historians working on documenting everything that happened during the World War II, no one restricts them in any way.
  - gambiting 4y ago
    It's literally in the linked article. But if you prefer a different source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5128341/poland-holocaust-law/%3famp=true https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5128341/poland-holocau... >>no one restricts them in any way. Yes, because scientific research is explicitly excluded from that law.
  - akolbe 4y ago
    I think they were referring to this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44627129 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44627129 When Poland made it a criminal offence this year to accuse it of complicity in Nazi war crimes, there was an outcry in Europe, Israel and the US. Anyone found guilty could face up to three years in jail. Five months later, the right-wing prime minister has moved to change the law to decriminalise the offence, describing it as a "correction". An amendment to the Holocaust law was quickly backed by the lower house of parliament and now moves to the Senate. The law had been intended to "defend the good name of Poland" but from now on it would be a civil, not a criminal offence, the head of prime minister's office, Michal Dworczyk, told public radio.
- jmolinski 4y ago
  (disclosure: I'm Polish) This is not true. The legal act that regulates it[0] says (only relevant parts) """ Article 1: This act regulates 1) recording, collecting, developing, maintaining, making available and publishing documents of the state security authorities, obtained and collected from July 22, 1944 to July 31, 1990, as well as Third Reich and USSR security authorities, regarding: a) crimes committed against persons of Polish nationality or Polish citizens of other nationalities in the period from November 8, 1917 to July 31, 1990: - Nazi crimes, - communist crimes, - crimes of Ukrainian nationalists and members of Ukrainian formations collaborating with the German Third Reich, - other crimes constituting crimes against peace, humanity or war crimes, [...] Article 55: Whoever publicly and contrary to facts denies the crimes referred to in Article 1, point 1, shall be subject to a fine or imprisonment for up to 3 years. The sentence shall be made public. """ (art and research is exempt from this law) So it is illegal to deny Holocaust or to attribute the responsibility for it to Poland or the Polish nation or to say that the death camps linked to Holocaust were Polish or operated by Poland. It is legal to suggest or just simply say (as it is documented by the Institute of National Remembrance - a Polish state research institute) that there were individual Polish citizens that collaborated with Nazis and took part in committing Nazi crimes. [0] https://sip.lex.pl/akty-prawne/dzu-dziennik-ustaw/instytut-pamieci-narodowej-komisja-scigania-zbrodni-przeciwko-narodowi-16832221 https://sip.lex.pl/akty-prawne/dzu-dziennik-ustaw/instytut-p...

39 points by akolbe 4y ago

I'm not directly touching this debate with a 20-foot pole. Wikipedia has issues with its insular editor pool for sure, but this minefield isn't the best vehicle for a public discussion of the issue.

honkler 4y ago
what would happen if you do touch it with a 20-foot pole?
akolbe 4y ago
As you might imagine, there are plenty of discussions of this paper on Wikipedia itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#Suggestion_by_Nick_Moyes_(2023-02-10) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/N... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Wikipedia’s_Intentional_Distortion_of_the_History_of_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not... (The first contains links to others.) Similar points were raised by Haaretz a few years ago: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2019-10-04/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-fake-nazi-death-camp-wikipedias-longest-hoax-exposed/0000017f-e367-d568-ad7f-f36f77000000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2019-10-04/ty-article-ma...

thrown_43 4y ago

[flagged]

SQueeeeeL 4y ago

>Due to this group’s zealous handiwork, Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles This is such a bizarre conspiracy theory, maybe it makes more sense with the specifics of how Poland teaches their history, but Poland got straight up invaded, decimated, and occupied by fascists. Like, how are they gonna even try to point fingers at the Jews and Communists as being responsible.....

kckfldod 4y ago
[flagged]
SuperNinKenDo 4y ago
No comment on the collaborationist narrative, but your comment completely ignores the very obvious fact that Poland was subdivided between said Fascist power AND the Soviet Union, a Communist superpower.

freitzkriesler2 4y ago

[flagged]

Overtonwindow 4y ago
I refuse to give money to anything that Jimmy Wales is affiliated with. He's unethical, and I assume the same for Wikipedia.
- freitzkriesler2 4y ago
  The Wikipedia foundation is one of the most impressive non profit money laundering ops out there. The cost of running Wikipedia vs the foundations actual income is staggering. There's more than enough money and investment income available that they don't need to throw up that annoying "gib us money plz" message they do all of the time.

anigbrowl 4y ago

I've followed this specific issue for a while, and this is a fairly good write up of it. It could be improved by moving beyond the narrative format (albeit supplemented by a few charts) and developing a network analysis of virtual territorial conflict over time. Jumping off points for this sort of work include: Automated sockpuppet detection on Wikipedia: https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3129&context=td https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti... Identifying paid content on Wikipedia: https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10289863 https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10289863 Detecting Wikipedia vandalism w/spatio-temporal analysis of revision data: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA514680.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA514680.pdf

dang 4y ago

There's probably an interesting, cautious discussion to be had about this analysis (whatever it is) but a large, open internet forum is probably incapable of having it. Still, I've replaced the title with something less baity (in keeping with the HN guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait"). If you comment in this thread, please make sure you're up on https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and especially this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." Flames and ideological battle are not welcome—nay, not even on this topic.

anigbrowl 4y ago
It would certainly have been more accurate to title the article as 'Intentional distortion of holocaust history on Wikipedia' that to attribute intent to Wikipedia qua entity - though abusive & adversarial editing practices are a sufficiently well-known and documented problem on that platform that Wikipedia's nonprofit governance could reasonably be accused of negligence.
- dang 4y ago
  If there's a better i.e. more accurate and neutral title, I'd be happy to use it as long as isn't baity, but making accusations about intentional distortion is too baity (that's why I took that out). Edit: this is a tangent, but it's also a weak claim since if you say something about someone's intent, they can just say "no it wasn't" and act like they refuted you. I finally learned not to do that about HN comments after experiencing this many times. Edit 2: I changed the edited title from "Wikipedia editors and the history of the holocaust" to something that's closer to the actual title and better represents it.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Oh, I was just ruminating on the original title of the article rather than commenting on your selection. Sorry for the confusion.

chx 4y ago

The Hungarian wikipedia being overrun by ... how to say this politely? neonazis, yes, that's a polite word, I guess, is a well known fact. I am not at all surprised this happened to the English one as well. Long ago there has been an analysis of how much better organized the "pro life" crowd was online than the "pro choice" and this is just another facet of the same: alas, it seems those on the right are playing this better. Oh well. Everyone knows or should know Wikipedia can not be trusted or if they didn't then the Scottish Wikipedia scandal should have taught them this.

leephillips 4y ago
Everyone should know, and yet I often see people, in HN comments for example, citing Wikipedia as if it means something. As the great Tycho has said, “The fact of the matter is that all sources of information are not of equal value, and I don't know how or when it became impolitic to suggest it. In opposition to the spirit of Wikipedia, I believe there is such a thing as expertise.” https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/12/16/i-have-the-power https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/12/16/i-have-the-pow...
- akolbe 4y ago
  An additional factor here is that now chatbots like ChatGPT are trained on Wikipedia as well, in addition to search engines' knowledge graph panels and voice assistants bringing up Wikipedia texts in response to queries. It does make you wonder sometimes whether technological progress really does make things work better than before ...
- arp242 4y ago
  On the other hand if I link to example.com, random-website.org, or even a published study, then that's also not a guarantee it's anywhere near accurate. Blindly trusting Wikipedia would be foolish, but so would blindly trusting anything else, or blindly mistrusting Wikipedia. Gathering reliable and comprehensive information on any topic you're not an expert on is hard, because you lack the background knowledge and expertise to judge the accuracy of something – basic critical thinking/bullshit detection helps, but will only get you so far. Wikipedia isn't perfect and has its share of issues, but it's not bad either.

gambiting 4y ago

Well, considering that currently in Poland it's literally illegal to even suggest Poles have commited any crimes linked with the holocaust, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. One of the most shameful things about this country for me personally.

988747 4y ago
No, it is not illegal, who told you that? There are Polish historians working on documenting everything that happened during the World War II, no one restricts them in any way.
- gambiting 4y ago
  It's literally in the linked article. But if you prefer a different source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5128341/poland-holocaust-law/%3famp=true https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5128341/poland-holocau... >>no one restricts them in any way. Yes, because scientific research is explicitly excluded from that law.
- akolbe 4y ago
  I think they were referring to this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44627129 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44627129 When Poland made it a criminal offence this year to accuse it of complicity in Nazi war crimes, there was an outcry in Europe, Israel and the US. Anyone found guilty could face up to three years in jail. Five months later, the right-wing prime minister has moved to change the law to decriminalise the offence, describing it as a "correction". An amendment to the Holocaust law was quickly backed by the lower house of parliament and now moves to the Senate. The law had been intended to "defend the good name of Poland" but from now on it would be a civil, not a criminal offence, the head of prime minister's office, Michal Dworczyk, told public radio.
jmolinski 4y ago
(disclosure: I'm Polish) This is not true. The legal act that regulates it[0] says (only relevant parts) """ Article 1: This act regulates 1) recording, collecting, developing, maintaining, making available and publishing documents of the state security authorities, obtained and collected from July 22, 1944 to July 31, 1990, as well as Third Reich and USSR security authorities, regarding: a) crimes committed against persons of Polish nationality or Polish citizens of other nationalities in the period from November 8, 1917 to July 31, 1990: - Nazi crimes, - communist crimes, - crimes of Ukrainian nationalists and members of Ukrainian formations collaborating with the German Third Reich, - other crimes constituting crimes against peace, humanity or war crimes, [...] Article 55: Whoever publicly and contrary to facts denies the crimes referred to in Article 1, point 1, shall be subject to a fine or imprisonment for up to 3 years. The sentence shall be made public. """ (art and research is exempt from this law) So it is illegal to deny Holocaust or to attribute the responsibility for it to Poland or the Polish nation or to say that the death camps linked to Holocaust were Polish or operated by Poland. It is legal to suggest or just simply say (as it is documented by the Institute of National Remembrance - a Polish state research institute) that there were individual Polish citizens that collaborated with Nazis and took part in committing Nazi crimes. [0] https://sip.lex.pl/akty-prawne/dzu-dziennik-ustaw/instytut-pamieci-narodowej-komisja-scigania-zbrodni-przeciwko-narodowi-16832221 https://sip.lex.pl/akty-prawne/dzu-dziennik-ustaw/instytut-p...