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Comment by simplotek | Hacker News Reader

> Wikipedia is vulnerable to coordinated, tendentious editing

Wikipedia is not a primary source. Wikipedia quotes primary sources. If you insist in pushing a belief that's not supported by primary sources then you are the problem, not wikipedia.

To me this article reads like someone trying to push unfounded propaganda I'm wikipedia to whitewash conspiracy theories with a veneer of authoritative source, but was stopped by their inability to present primary sources that supports his personal claim.

Once that character lost an edit war, he resorted to attack wikipedia with yet another conspiracy theory.

It's telling that the article has been framed with a conspiracy behind wikipedia while leaving the supposed sources as unquestionable.

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Your use of terms like “conspiracy theory” make it seem like you’ve come to some very strong opinions about this specific debate.

Your original question at the top of this thread made it seem like you had a reasonable meta-question about whether it’s appropriate to “escalate” editorial conflicts to a journal, and that was answered by several posters. But I don’t think you really had a question: you seem to have a dog in this fight. Might I suggest that HN is not the right forum to pursue it.

> Your use of terms like “conspiracy theory” make it seem like you’ve come to some very strong opinions about this specific debate.

Holocaust denial is a long lived conspiracy theory. There is no way of getting around that fact.

> Your original question at the top of this thread made it seem like you had a reasonable meta-question about whether it’s appropriate to “escalate” editorial conflicts to a journal (...)

There is no escalation. There's at best a blatant attempt to throw accusations in a way that prevents those attacked of defending themselves, and at worst there is libel.

Let's look at the facts: the wikipedia article on the Holocaust is clear in pointing out that the 6 million figure was actually provided by the leading Nazi official responsible for the Holocaust. The same wikipedia article then says in no unclear terms that "Historians estimates range from 4,204,000 to 7,000,000." What exactly is questionable about these facts? Nothing.

Nit: Wikipedia articles are supposed to be based primarily on secondary sources, not primary ones, though some uses of primary sources are accepted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research...

> Wikipedia is not a primary source. Wikipedia quotes primary sources. If you insist in pushing a belief that's not supported by primary sources then you are the problem, not wikipedia.

I'll assume you meant secondary sources.

I would normally agree. The original idea was for dispassionate scholarly discussions followed by consensus. Except that gangs who have no intention of allowing that to happen can and do circumvent that process. Bullying, hostility, gaslighting and weaponizing sanction procedures are tools in the toolbelt of these gangs, and as I said there is no effective in-Wikipedia process for recognizing and defeating it. There is in fact a willful denial that this is even a possibility, which essentially guarantees that it's rampant.

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