Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales tells Ian Bremmer that the platform made a serious mistake by adopting the “voice of Wikipedia” on a specific page titled “The Gaza Genocide.” While the page remains closed to edits, Wales says it still presents the claim as fact—something he believes violates Wikipedia’s core principles. “We say things in the voice of Wikipedia far more than we should,” he explains.
Wales stresses that Wikipedia’s role is not to settle contested political questions, but to accurately describe debates. “We should absolutely report people saying this is a genocide, people saying it isn’t,” he says. “But for us to take a side would require, in my view, nearly unanimity within the community.” On Gaza, he argues, that threshold clearly was not met.
What worries Wales most is the effect on trust. He notes that no major news organization—Reuters, the BBC, or others—uses the term “genocide” in its own voice when describing Gaza, yet Wikipedia does on that page. “That’s a problem,” he says, especially for “people of goodwill” who expect balance. While Wales says he cannot unilaterally change the page, he adds that the community is now reexamining how consensus is reached—because Wikipedia, at its best, should never tell readers what to think, only what is being debated.
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