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Timeline

The Forward reports on plans by the Heritage Foundation to unmask Wikipedia editors whose contributions on Israel it deems antisemitic. As The Signpost said in its report:

The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank that, despite being already known for its highly-influential role in the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, has most recently returned to the spotlight for masterminding Project 2025, a controversial political blueprint for the incumbent Trump administration.

The Heritage Foundation acknowledges their plan to investigate Wikipedia contributors to The New Yorker.

"Mike Howell, of Heritage, told me that this 'investigation' of Wikipedia, which, he said, 'is where information is laundered,' will be 'shared with the appropriate policymakers to help inform a strategic response.' "

The appropriate policymakers are likely to be in Congress, The Signpost adds.

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman [[James Comer] (R-Ky.) and Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation Chairwoman Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) announce their investigation into efforts to manipulate information on Wikipedia. They draw particular attention to coverage of Israel:

Multiple studies and reports have highlighted efforts to manipulate information on the Wikipedia platform for propaganda aimed at Western audiences. One recent report raised troubling questions about potentially systematic efforts to advance antisemitic and anti-Israel information in Wikipedia articles related to conflicts with the State of Israel.

Comer and Mace are particularly concerned about efforts "to influence U.S. public opinion on important and sensitive topics by manipulating Wikipedia articles" and "the role and methods of foreign individuals".

He same day, longstanding WMF Board member Esra'a Al Shafei, who is from Bahrain, is removed from the WMF Board and replaced by American Council on Foreign Relations member Mayree Clark.

Al Shafei had in the past been highly critical of the war in Gaza, as this mention of her in a December 2024 Guardian article illustrates:

Al Shafei, who is from Bahrain and never shows her face online to protect her own security, said "there is credible evidence that this is the most tech-advanced genocide in history", speaking of Israel's use of drones, surveillance and AI in Gaza.

It is noteworthy that Comer and Mace appeared to view Wikipedia as essentially a US asset, rather than a global project created and read by users worldwide, regardless of nationality.

The WMF posted Lane's Candidate Statement on YouTube. Lane said, in part:

Please consider that right now, the Wikimedia Foundation is proposing to replace some of the text in Wikipedia articles from the content written by humans with content written by artificial intelligence. I think that the human to human connection in Wikipedia is very important. Human fact checking, human curation is important, and that the human editors have an important connection with the human readers who are using Wikipedia. We shouldn't compromise that trust, and we should move much more slowly with ideas like this. We're not only facing technological threats, but also we're facing threats, as governments are accusing Wikipedia of spreading propaganda and Wikipedia editors of being agents in opposition to governments. This is not true. We're trying to share neutral, fact checked information. Editing Wikipedia is not a crime. Wikipedia editors speak for themselves and should be protected from persecution. The reason why we're struggling with ideas, changing to technology, reacting to political threats, is because we don't have enough training in volunteer leadership. We've had plans on the table for years to transfer some of the resources that we're spending, like, for example, in the United States to other countries around the world, so that people in different cultures, language communities and nations can speak for themselves. It's very important that we proceed with these plans. We've wanted it for a long time. Help me advance these initiatives.

The WMF posted Ravan's Candidate Statement on YouTube. She said, in part:

Ravan's candidacy was covered by the Jerusalem Post on 10 August: https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-863804

The Wikimedia Foundation announces a change to its Board of Trustees Candidate Review Process.

A graph generated by TestUser345 and brought to the attention of The Signpost by our suggestions page shows that the number of accounts blocked due to AI (Large Language Model, LLM) usage is doubling every 100 days. Note the graph has a logarithmic scale on the vertical axis. – B

Comment these items out if something happens.

• Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects have reached milestones: TKTK
• Articles for Improvement: This week's Article for Improvement is TKTK. Please be bold in helping improve this article!
• The first Request for adminship since April (stats, see footnote re July elections) was successful still open but 186-0 when written.
• WMF announced to The Signpost team that the temporary accounts feature on English Wikipedia will be rolled out on October 21.