Talk:2024 J.E.W.I.S.H creatives and academics doxxing incident/Archive 1

Archive 1

Rename article

@Noteduck. I think the current name is a bit long. Here's a few other options I can think of at the moment:

• Jewish Australian doxxing incident
• 2024 doxxing incident
• 2024 Australian doxxing incident
• 2024 Australian Jewish doxxing incident (alt: 2024 Jewish Australian doxxing incident)
• 2024 Jewish Australian creatives and academics doxxing incident (similar to current title)

My preference is: 2024 Australian doxxing incident or 2024 Australian Jewish doxxing incident. I am open to other ideas. דברי.הימים (talk) 11:37, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

"2024 Jewish Australian doxxing incident" works pretty well if you agree? Noteduck (talk) 09:16, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Resolution

Hi Noteduck. I don't like conflict with editors, so I thought I'd start a conversation to try and resolve a couple issues I see more amicably.

• The phrases "individuals describing themselves as pro-Palestine activists" and "a group describing themselves as pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist activists" seem biased, considering that you don't describe the WhatsApp group as "a group describing themselves as 'J.E.W.I.S.H creatives and academics'. Why do only pro-Palestinians and anti-Zionists get doubt cast on them? Can we not just call them pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionists?
• The use of the block quote strikes me as a case of WP:UNDUE, but only because it's a block quote. It's fair to mention someone said that, but selective use of block quotes have a reputation on Wikipedia for POV pushing. I don't think there's any chance the choice of formatting that as a blockquote would survive any form of independent review. I think this should just be formatted as regular prose. There is nothing stopping me from adding my own blockquote. For example:

'One of the members of the WhatsApp group stated:

"Give me a rundown on whether the group has tackled Clementine and Lauren Dubois in particular, and where those efforts are at? I’d love to coordinate some kind of collective effort ..."

However, I don't want to do that. So can we just avoid using blockquotes entirely?

Also for transparency, considering that the article uses many, many sources from pro-Israeli writers, who aren't described as pro-Israeli in the prose, I intend to lodge a requests for comment if Copland gets labelled as "pro-Palestinian" again, like he was when I first came to this article [1]. Just to clarify, the issue is not the accuracy of whether Copland is pro-Palestinian, the issue is that he was labelled that way when pro-Israelis were not. Either label all of them or none of them. I note that label wasn't added by you, I just thought I'd mention that now so it's not a surprise if that gets added back.

Incidentally, I understand you may not care about my personal opinions (which is fine), but just in case you're curious I don't support the mass doxxing at all. I share the opinion of Bernard Keane from Crikey. I feel a lot of sympathy for the majority of people who weren't involved in the targeted campaigns against Palestinian activists who had their names shared and then received threats. I hope everyone who made a threat of violence against them gets arrested and convicted.

In over 16 years of editing Wikipedia I've avoided anything related to the Arab-Israeli conflict until now. The reason I came here is in my edit summary here [2]. As per that summary, I was planning on permanently leaving this article if the few changes I made (such as pointing out that there is more than one source that gives a different opinion) were left intact. However, because the entire paragraph I added regarding that was deleted [3], I believe I now have to watch the page in order to make sure that doesn't happen again. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that now that I'm going to be involved in the article long-term I thought it would be more civil to actually talk to you. Have a nice day. Damien Linnane (talk) 14:05, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Hey Damien Linnane, thanks for this.

A few things that are significant in my view:

• I thought that given that the majority of sources do describe the leakers as motivated by antisemitism rather than activism I thought “ describing themselves as…” worked to avoid conflating pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist sentiment with antisemitism, but feel free to change it
• This incident attracted a LOT of press coverage here and abroad which attests to its gravity and significance. Coverage by the Oz, The Age, WSJ, NYT, and many Jewish publications in Australia and internationally attest to this. There are also many statements from the affected Jewish community that say the leak was unprecedented, shocking, reminiscent of past very serious antisemitic incidents.
• What is clear is that the vast majority of sources state that the leak was motivated by antisemitism - Keane and Copland seem very much in the minority in questioning this assessment. The Conversation is a good source and Crikey is fine as any Australian media and I think that including Copland and Keane is necessary they shouldn't have undue weight.
• You were right to remove the descriptor “pro-Palestinian” from Copland, which is immaterial unless other sources have described this as significant. If I see it re-added I’ll delete it
• I thought the block quote kind of succinctly aggregated a lot of points. Given the stated aim of exposing Australian Zionists, I did think it was noteworthy that so many sources said that individual stances on Israel-Palestine were immaterial in whose details actually got leaked. I take your point though - I can appreciate the risk of a page on a contentious topic like this degenerating into rival multiple “rival” block quotes. I think it’s consistent with WP:MOS to reformat it into the paragraph, and I’ve done so
• You were correct in restoring your original disaggregation of the Copland and Breakey sources, thank you
• something I’d point out: not many sources give an actual synoptic rundown of the group’s content, which was of course 900 pages long so difficult to summarise. I thought this assessment from the White Rose Society was an illuminating analysis [[4]] but that a Twitter thread wasn't a sufficiently good source to warrant inclusion. This also gives quite a lot of detail and I think should be mentioned on the page[[5]]
• It might be good to add an additional quote about the defenses given by the leakers’
• I do have an interest in Jewish history, along with lots of things, and lately I've been editing pages related to antisemitic incidents in the Ottoman Empire, but I've edited a few pages related to the modern Israel/Palestine conflict as well

Thanks for your input! Noteduck (talk) 23:26, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, I appreciate it, and your comments, and your recent edits addressing the sourcing issues. From your userpage, it's clear that even if you do feel strongly about this issue (which in itself is fine), you edit about a number of unrelated topics and that you're Here to build an encyclopedia. If everybody who edits this article also fit that description, I don't think we'd have much of a problem here.

This is a difficult subject to cover objectively, for numerous reasons. For example, I don't doubt the majority of the sources state motivation was antisemitism, but I also don't think the majority of sources that choose to focus on this issue are likely to cover it in an objective manner. I actually don't dislike The Australian as a newspaper overall; I'm friends with a couple of their staff members. But there's no denying they have an editorial bias towards Israel in anything that covers this issue. For example, here's a WP:RS source which does an analysis the language used by The Australian and other publications, and concludes they have an anti-Palestinian bias:[6]. Three seperate articles from The Australian are currently used in the article to confirm Ford participated in the doxxing. The two that aren't behind a paywall and that I can read make no mention of the fact some members of the group specifically targeted her, and that that was her motivation for the leak. Which is not to say her actions were justified, but it does show The Australian isn't objective. An objective publication would at least mention what her stated motivation was, instead of framing her entirely as someone who shared a list just because the people in it were Jewish, without even considering the possibility that she had any other reason for her actions. The Australian is cited ten times. A majority of the other sources, like Tablet (magazine), are also very obviously likely to have a bias here. The Tablet source, not surprisingly, also makes no mention of targets against pro-Palestinians from within the group. Incidentally I completely agree with you that very few sources go into the actual details in the group chat, which is a shame. I don't have a lot of experience editing contentious topics, so I'm not sure what the precedent is here. I.e. if the majority of sources that choose to cover an issue are likely to not be objective, should they be still be used to constitute the majority of the article? I honestly don't know. I'd be curious to know what a dispute resolution process would conclude, but at this stage I don't have the inclination to invest the time into starting one. Others are welcome to of course though.

Thanks for your suggested to add a statement from the leakers; I've done that, and I've moved a lot of things around so that they're in a better chronological order. Let me know if you have any issues with these edits. Damien Linnane (talk) 04:25, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Incidentally while I was searching for a couple new sources I realised something. There's no denying that more sources describe this as antisemitism than whistleblowing, but many sources also don't describe it as antisemitic, and just report what happened. The article might be currently giving the impression that all reporters/writers only felt one way or the other. Of course, there are difficulties saying on Wikipedia that a source didn't say something (I think that might constitute WP:OR), so I'm not sure if or how that could be mentioned in the article, but I just thought it was worth pointing out. Anyway, I think I've finished putting the article in a more chronological order, which I believe flows better for the reader. Let me know what you think. Damien Linnane (talk) 13:19, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Potential sources to add

• Arrest of one person AJN.
• Sydney Morning Herald article re: Australian Human Rights Commission According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Human Rights Commission fired a consultant who was involved in the doxxing incident.
• Link to QUT incident "QUT anti-racism symposium organiser urged people to act on doxxed Jewish creatives" (The Australian).
• Antisemitism in the arts & link to doxxing event – How doxxing victim Nina Sanadze was lauded one day hounded the next.
• TJI article response to job losses.
• OHPI Article ohpi article

דברי.הימים (talk) 11:49, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Over-referencing in the lead

I note that there is a ridiculous amount of references in the lead. Most of them need to be changed. Each sentence should have no more than 4 references maximum and preferably no more than 2. I also note that some of the references are tagged as failed verification. They should be removed. TarnishedPath^talk 03:17, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

Undue Weight to The Australian

I'm seeing a lot of citations for news and opinion to The Australian. Now I actually can't read any of these as The Australian has a particularly aggressive paywall. Considering the history of this outlet for partisanship I'm concerned that it's being given undue weight - particularly with its "they got a grant" coverage. Simonm223 (talk) 13:50, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

The disproportionate reliance on The Australian has been an issue I've repeatedly brought up, starting at the NPOVN discussion. The over-use of this source is not reflective of the full range of reliable sources discussing the topic, and as you note, there are partisan issues. Here's a WP:RS source that did a scholarly analysis and found they have a bias in this overall issue in relation to their use of language: [7]. This should also be obvious to anyone reading the sources anyway. When the article was first written for some reason three sources from the The Australian were chosen and used to support that Clementine Ford participated in the doxxing. I removed one clear opinion piece, but two remain. One connects her with anti-semitism, and one states she was "exposed for ‘doxxing’ Jewish ­creatives" (when she wasn't 'exposed', she did it openly). However, neither source even mentions that members of the group she doxxed campaigned against her, and she openly stated this was her motivation. Not that doesn't necessarily justify her actions of course, but an objective journalist would have at least mentioned that. It's clearly a partisan source. Damien Linnane (talk) 00:14, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

I'd suggest first looking at the content of the citations before making any decisions. TarnishedPath^talk 02:41, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Herald Sun

I have removed two references from Herald Sun and any material that was supported only by it. Refer to Special:Diff/1276480150. Please see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 426#Reliability of the Herald Sun for a discussion of the source at WP:RSN where I collated links to prevoius discussoins concerning it. If anyone wishes to challange my assessment of the Herald Sun as being generally unreliable, please start a new discussion at WP:RSN. TarnishedPath^talk 02:39, 19 February 2025 (UTC)