Wikipedia editors decided to roll a page on the “destruction of Israel in Iranian policy,” which garnered more than 62,000 page views in the past 30 days, into a larger article called “Iran-Israel relations.” Experts told JNS that, while discussions were underway on whether to delete the page or combine it with another, it ought to be a standalone article.

Max Abrahms, an associate professor of political science at Northeastern University, said at the time that if the page was deleted or merged, “Israel will be less popular, the Islamic Republic will be more popular and readers will be stupider.”

What should be done?

The “closer,” Wikipedia’s term for someone uninvolved in the topic brought in to look for a consensus of editors and decide what to do with the page, stated that “it appears most appropriate to merge into the parent article and discuss the content there first.”

Shlomit Aharoni Lir, a research fellow at the University of Haifa who studies Wikipedia, participated in the discussion on the online encyclopedia about what should be done with the page.

“The article provided a focused and well-sourced examination of a documented policy that is particularly relevant to understanding current events,” she told JNS.  She said the arguments to delete or merge the article are “part of a recurring trend of proposals to delete or merge entries that don’t conform to the dominant editorial stance on the platform.”