Optional: write a lede — not necessarily a WP:LEAD. Interesting > encyclopedic.

Israeli media outlet Ynetnews has released a deep dive into alleged antisemitism on Wikipedia, and an advocacy group it says aims to "poison" information in favour of Palestine. Drawing on research by Israeli academic Shlomit Aharoni Lir, a research fellow and lecturer at the University of Haifa and a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (Israel), the article argues that Wikipedia's place in the information ecosystem, combined with freedom of editing and anonymity, makes it a key target for those who desire to manipulate human knowledge and public perception. Topics covered include suspicions of "involvement by external actors", the disqualification of information sources, and alleged fabrication of histories such as inventing Hellenistic Palestine.

The article favourably mentions the letter sent by James Comer and Nancy Mace – chair of the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and chair of the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology and Government Innovation – to the Wikimedia Foundation, in which Comer and Mace announced that the U.S. Congress was investigating Wikimedia because of "multiple studies and reports highlighting efforts to manipulate information on Wikipedia for propaganda" (see previous Signpost coverage, "US Congress probes Wikipedia"). It goes on to introduce the concept of "knowledge poisoning" as a form of "soft terrorism" and favourably compares Elon Musk's Grokipedia and Justapedia to Wikipedia, describing them as "two online encyclopedias that are also not free of problems and biases, but at least on the Israeli-Palestinian issue they do not take a clear side". At the conclusion of the article, Aharoni Lir asserts that as things stand –

Wikipedia plays a substantial role in the dumbing down of the masses, in which entire publics take part in a struggle based on shallow perceptions and a lack of understanding of reality. Wikipedia used to be the thing itself, but now it is a symbol of a dystopian reality, of a beautiful vision of democratizing knowledge that has become a source of exclusion, bias and deception.

The article's illustrations include a picture of Aharoni Lir pictured next to a Wikipedia puzzle globe decorated with a red swastika.

Another article was published by Jewish News Syndicate, raising the issue of "content contamination" Aharoni Lir says is still left behind in Wikipedia after two editors were banned in the recent Maghreb arbitration case.

– M, AK, B

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, in conjunction with the Sweden and UK Wikimedia chapters, have signed a memorandom to "expand public access to reliable information on food, agriculture and related topics." The organisation plans to contribute various form of content, and engage with the Wikimedia community across a variety of platforms. This continues on the ongoing collaboration between the FAO and Wikimedia community, having collaborated with the aformentioned chapters since 2019, regularly engaging in the annual Wikimania event, and have hosted a Wikimedian-in-Residence. – M

You would think that professionals with an ounce of respect for the public, or the volunteers here, would not follow the advice given by Law.com at "The Wikipedia Play: Overlooked Reputation Lever for Law Firms in the AI Era" (subscription required). The Signpost has been onto this sort of thing since at least our 2019 Special report, "Are reputation management operatives scrubbing Wikipedia articles?", if not our 2015 Op-ed, "We are drowning in promotional artspam". Or maybe it was 2012 thing 1 thing 2 thing 3? In any case, we don't call what we do a "Reputation Lever" over here. – B

Previously covered in the 10 March 2026 issue, Indonesian readers and editors can finally login to Wikimedia projects after being blocked for nearly two months from logging in.

After repeated delays by the Wikimedia Foundation to register with Indonesian authorities since November 2025, Indonesia gave the Foundation a final seven days grace on 15 April to comply otherwise facing a wider access block on all Wikimedia projects. In a statement on 25 April, the Foundation agreed to register after having sought "assurances that there would be no unlawful content takedown orders or data disclosure requirements that could put the Wikimedia community-led model at risk".

In a Diff post, the Foundation stated that it had completed its registration as an Electronic System Provider (PSE) on 30 April 2026, of which was stated to be an administrative one after authorities shared a legal letter with the Foundation that the registration "will not be a legal basis for content moderation or data disclosure that could undermine the Wikimedia community-led model." The completion of the registration was briefly delayed due to an issue with the registration platform. The community's open letter has 17,489 signatures at its closing on 2 May 2026, mostly from anonymous editors (some who may be registered editors who could not login). – RS

A deadly train collision in Jarkata, Indonesia involving a taxi and two trains had sparked off a brief edit war in the incident article as well as that of the taxi company, Green SM. One of Green SM's taxis first stalled on the tracks at a crossing and caused a collision with a train. Editors were fleshing out details of the incident, including Green SM's initial response to the collision (that the public found lacking) when anonymous editors begin to remove mentions of the company and related information from both pages, with one stating that it was done under directions of their superior to remove negative information about the company in Vietnamese in their edit history. The removed content were restored and both pages were semi-protected to stablise them. The anonymous editors earned a sock report and corresponding blocks. Inilah – RS

In the lead up to his trip to Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has conducted an interview with Wikipedia co–founder Jimmy Wales. Several topics were raised throughout it, being his opinion on AI and how it impacts Wikipedia's "vision", Elon Musk's development of Grokipedia, and how the projects maintain trust. – M

• Who Decides What’s True on Wikipedia?: Coleman Hughes interviews Ashley Rindsberg on the influence of anonymous editors on shaping "the internet’s encyclopedia through ideological bias, and corrupt the AI systems being trained on it."
• And another one: Boing Boing reports on another "much more engaging" wikipedia game called "Catfishing" [1]
• Training (AI) in progress: Reuters has reported that plans by tech giant Meta to record keystrokes on employees across websites will include Wikipedia, as well as on hundreds of other sites. Internal Meta messages allegedly suggested this was for the purposes of training their artificial intelligence models. [2][3]
• AI brain on drugs: "A new Wikipedia-style site is purportedly made entirely of AI-hallucinations, treating visitors to preposterous insights beamed from a nonexistent reality." [4] (Futurism)
• Subtitle: "A room of one's own on Wikipedia: The editors who have been doing justice to women on the internet for over a decade", "The initiative seeks to correct biases and show the protagonists of history beyond their role as daughters or wives" (El País in English)
• Secretly influential: Twenty-somethings and a 16-year-old contributor to Wikipedia's music articles are profiled by Pitchfork, who says they combat "music journalism's slow erosion" by joining the "secretly influential cabal that edits Wikipedia". If you haven't heard of hyperpop, dariacore, hexD, digicore, landfill indie, recession pop, shitgaze, or SoundCloud rap, try to keep up – read up, that is. And maybe help out with that SoundCloud rap draft.
• Is a self-made claim of microlooting notable for a public figure's biography?: Washington Free Beacon microlooting
• And Jimmy said, Let there be light: and there was light.: We may have misquoted just a bit there, but how about: "In 2001, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger Opened a Simple Wiki for a Slow Project: That Fix Established the Foundation for Wikipedia" The Financial Times
• Subtitle: https://www.wired.com/story/why-does-wikipedia-think-im-evan-spiegel/ https://edithistory.substack.com/p/whats-going-on-with-evan-spiegels
• Subtitle: https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/29/poisoning_large_language_models_6nimmt/
• Jimmy Wales: Maybe restricting information not such a good idea: ”Wikipedia founder brands Australia’s social media ban an ‘unmitigated disaster’ and ‘embarrassment’” The Guardian & MediaPost [5] & The News International [6]
• Jimmy Wales: Maybe restricting contributors not such a good idea: Nupedia, which was Jimmy Wales' predecessor to Wikipedia, had "a seven-step scrutiny process, requir[ing] contributors to fax in their CVs for checking before they could write" for it.". Turns out that volunteers with a mix of experience and knowledge works pretty good. (Forbes; also a plug for the book Seven Rules of Trust.)
• Wikipedia ethos, but for country data: OpenFactBook is "the same data the [U.S.] government long offered [in the CIA Factbook], only now it’s maintained by dedicated volunteers" (Fast Company)

• Lawsuit claims page deletion: Corgi (insurance company)'s Wikipedia page was "repeatedly" deleted by a competitor, they say in court https://www.theinsurer.com/ti/news/corgi-accuses-matcha-founders-of-using-anonymous-wikipedia-account-in-campaign-2026-05-12/ (theinsurer.com by Reuters) (subscription required)
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Article series

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