Electronic Intifadah has exposed a campaign by CAMERA, the propagandists, to try to infiltrate the administration of Wikipedia in order to put out a pro-Israel view of the Situation on the world’s encyclopedia. EI got a hold of CAMERA’s emails, in which "Ini" and "Zeq" advised the cadre how to do their dirty work:
Ini suggests that after
volunteers sign up as editors for Wikipedia they should "avoid editing
Israel-related articles for a short period of time." This strategy is
intended to "avoid the appearance of being one-topic editors," thus
attracting unwanted attention.
…To further conceal the identity of
CAMERA-organized editors, Ini warns, "don’t forget to always log in
before making [edits]. If you make changes while not logged in,
Wikipedia will record your computer’s IP address" — a number that
allows identification of the location of a computer connected to the
Internet.
A veteran Wikipedia editor, known as "Zeq," who according to the emails
is colluding with CAMERA, also provided advice to CAMERA volunteers on
how they could disguise their agenda. In a 20 March email often in
misspelled English, Zeq writes, "You don’t want to be precived [sic] as
a ‘CAMERA’ defender’ on wikipedia [sic] that is for sure." One strategy
to avoid that is to "edit articles at random, make friends not enemies
— we will need them later on. This is a marathon not a sprint."
Zeq also identifies, in a 25 March email, another Wikipedia editor,
"Jayjg," whom he views as an effective and independent pro-Israel
advocate. Zeq instructs CAMERA operatives to work with and learn from
Jayjg, but not to reveal the existence of their group even to him
fearing "it would place him in a bind" since "[h]e is very loyal to the
wikipedia [sic] system" and might object to CAMERA’s underhanded
tactics.
