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In the media

Playing professor pong with prosecutorial discretion

Four-dimensional pong

Three-way pong, anyone?

There is a three-way pong match taking place, concerning the 2023 article "Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust" published in The Journal of Holocaust Research and the conclusions that should be drawn from it.

To enter the fourth dimension, you can sample "Wikipedia's War on Truth: The Fight Against Bias Toward Israel" (2:45:36 duration) in which Boaz Hepner hosts a panel of Wikipedia experts, including journalists and Justapedians, on the assumed role of Wikipedia's neutrality, and how far it appears to have veered from that path[, e]specially when analyzed by its stance on the Israel/Palestinian conflict, and Zionism. It was filmed in February 2025 and presented by The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles in May. Or "Taking Sides: Wikipedia Advances Anti-Israel Narratives" in RealClearInvestigations, released after our writing deadline, which finds The plethora of anti-Israel academics makes it easy to present anti-Israel narratives under the guise of neutrality.

For prior Signpost coverage see 2023-03-09 Recent research, 2023-05-22 In the media, 2023-05-22 Arbitration report, and 2023-06-05 In the media. – B, SR, AK

Ed Martin's record

The New York Times reports on Ed Martin's record as acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia ending, with his high jinks trying to get the WMF's tax-free status revoked. The Times described Martin's action as being radically opposed to the accepted standards of prosecutorial discretion.

At another point, Mr. Martin said he viewed himself as being engaged in a "war over information." He cited a letter he had written to Wikipedia accusing it of bias and improperly shielding itself from scrutiny through its tax-exempt status.

He never suggested that Wikipedia had broken the law. He indicated that his letter was to air his view of their actions in the public arena.

"A prosecutor saying that about Wikipedia is vastly different than Tucker Carlson saying it," Mr. Martin said. "And that’s the point of the job."

The role of a prosecutor, he claimed, "is not just to find the right guy to prosecute" but to publicize their purported wrongdoing in public.

In a landmark 1940 speech, a top Justice Department official offered another vision.

Robert H. Jackson, then the attorney general, told department employees that the "greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power" was when an official "finds some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense."

Meanwhile, the Senate failed to vote to confirm Trump's appointment of Martin as US Attorney for DC, so Martin was instead appointed to the positions of the head DOJ Pardon Attorney and director of the DOJ's Weaponization Working Group, which don't require Senate confirmation. To be clear, the Weaponization Working Group's job is to counter weaponization that allegedly occured during the Biden administration. – S

In brief

Donald Trump in the Oval Office, February 11, 2025 (public domain)



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  • Can someone clarify what The Jerusalem Post is trying to say (and whether it's accurate)? What do they mean by "platforming" on the part of arwp? Nardog (talk) 02:47, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • Just from a quick rereading of the JPost article (so you might want to check the details): The Palestinian Authority (PA) sponsored an on-Wiki contest to edit the Arabic Wikipedia, with prizes totaling about $1,000 (divided among 4 winners) about the 1948 Nabka (catastrophe) when the Palestinians lost their land. I don't think this type of government sponsored contest would fly on EnWiki, but maybe a government sponsored GLAM downunder might have done something similar (just guessing). One definite parallel I've seen is a contest by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry to encourage articles on the Ukrainian and other Wikis about Ukrainian culture, the spelling of Kyiv (not Kiev), and Ukrainian cities and settlements (with total payments maybe about $5,000 (before the war). Different Wikis have different rules. These small payment contests sponsored by governments are not my favorites, but they are usually not against Wiki rules (arguably are on EnWiki). And I can see them as good faith efforts all around on other Wikis. "Platforming" seems to mean just posting the contest on Arabic Wikipedia. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:40, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Who's going to tell Collider that xXx has been a consistently top-rated article every month for the past decade and no one knows why? ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 07:48, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yeah, like anyone who's been reading the Top 25 Report for long enough, I couldn't help but laugh at the shoddy journalism there. Not once do they stop to consider why people could be searching for it aside from genuine interest in Vin Diesel's movie career. I think there's probably some merit to the theory that the views are driven by people looking for pr0n and googling "xxx movie" or similar while leaving SafeSearch on. SMH pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 15:42, 24 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      • I mean, let's be real, that's the only logical explanation for it... Even I remember that xXx wasn't even that big of a box office hit when it came out while I was a kid, and instead it has almost cult-classic status sitting on the Hit Report! XFalcon2004x (talk) 17:25, 25 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
        • It's an illogical explanation since it implies the world's interest in pornography has gone up 40% in the last few months. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 23:27, 27 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
          Wouldn't that suggest that perhaps a search engine changed its behavior when people search "xxx" or a related term? i.e. people aren't searching for porn more, people are getting shown the article for xXx more *while* searching for porn. —Ganesha811 (talk) 01:47, 28 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
          The age verification laws that went into effect in various US states in the past year or so may have some to do with it. Nardog (talk) 02:10, 28 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
XXX (soundtrack) (views) is on the level of Beethoven, Taylor Swift, Bollywood Bluerasberry (talk) 16:19, 2 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

















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