HEBREW WIKIPEDIA VOTES TO REMOVE ENTRY ON PM NETANYAHU'S SON FOLLOWING HIS REQUEST

Hebrew Wikipedia Votes to Remove Entry on PM Netanyahu's Son Following His Request

The community of Hebrew Wikipedia editors voted 75-54 to merge Avner Netanyahu's page into that of the Netanyahu family after the Israeli prime minister's son requested that his entry be removed earlier this month

April 23rd, 22PM April 23rd, 22PM

The community of Hebrew Wikipedia editors voted Tuesday to remove the biography entry of the digital encyclopedia for Avner Netanyahu, the son of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at his request.

The decision followed a vote last week in which 75 editors approved the removal and 54 opposed it. The vote passed with a supermajority of 58.14 percent, 3 percentage points above the 55 percent required for the removal of a page.

After the decision was made, relevant details about Avner Netanyahu from his page were added to an entry for the entire Netanyahu family.

The vote came following Avner Netanyahu's unusual appeal to Wikipedia editors two weeks ago, in which he requested that the entry on him be removed due to a "lack of public interest."

"I am the subject of an entry, and I do not see any public importance for it. The entry is sparse in any case," Netanyahu wrote in his request. Hebrew Wikipedia editors initially did not believe that the request was indeed from Netanyahu, and referred him to the local branch of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that formally oversees the website, to verify his identity.

Netanyahu appears to have done so April 16. A longtime editor then submitted the page for removal, noting that it was per Netanyahu's request, and called on his colleagues to vote for the deletion.

"Usually I am against reopening issues that have already been decided in a vote, but in this case – due to the fact that the previous vote was decided by a margin of 2 votes, and due to the request having come from the entry's subject, opening the vote is justified in my opinion," a site editor wrote Tuesday. "In this case, I believe that the entry is not appropriate for Wikipedia, since it contains almost no significant information."

While anyone can edit the entries on Wikipedia, only those who have been active for a long time can participate in community decision-making processes such as deletion votes.

In a previous vote initiated by editors in 2019 regarding the entry on Avner, there was a simple majority for deletion, not the required supermajority. A vote regarding his brother Yair Netanyahu met a similar fate.

2024-04-23T19:20:09Z dg43tfdfdgfd