Did Wikipedia "ban" the Anti-Defamation League? The truth is more complicated

Contrary to news reports, Wikipedia's decision doesn't group ADL with the National Enquirer—it's closer to HuffPost and Rolling Stone, sources useful for some topics, but not for others

Everyone’s familiar with arguments about who gets to have an article on Wikipedia, but you don’t hear as much about arguments over who gets to be a source on Wikipedia. That changed a bit last week when the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had its status as a “reliable source” downgraded by Wikipedia editors, through a standard discussion process called Request for Comments (RfC).

The decision made international news, driven in part by the complaints of ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who was quoted in USA Today claiming that the ADL had been “silenced” and its research “marginalized”. Greenblatt went on Morning Joe to discuss the matter, which MSNBC promoted with the headline “‘It’s flat out wrong’: ADL head slams Wikipedia for saying org is unreliable source”.

The truth is a bit more complicated. The ADL was certainly rebuked, but the severity has been overstated, and what happens next is up to ADL leadership.

On reliability

Wikipedia’s Reliable sources guideline doesn’t include a list of approved sources. Contested sources are debated at Reliable sources/Noticeboard, and the outcome of significant debates is listed on a page called Perennial sources.

For years, the ADL had been counted in the most trusted category of sources useful for verifying information included on the encyclopedia, though that’s not to say it had never been challenged. The ADL’s focus on combating antisemitism and hate groups is inherently controversial territory. An earlier RfC held that the ADL was “generally reliable”, but included this cautionary note:

Some editors consider the ADL a biased source for Israel/Palestine related topics that should be used with caution, if at all.

That admonition, an afterthought in the summer of 2020, took on new significance in the post-October 7 world, where the Hamas terrorist attacks and aggressive Israeli response have forced debate about Israel and Palestine upon many institutions who’d much rather avoid it.

But where university leadership faced difficult decisions in the face of student protests, and corporate leaders acted cautiously, Wikipedia is a very different thing: decisions are not made from the top down, but the bottom up. No one is asking Wikimedia CEO Maryana Iskander to make a statement, because she doesn’t control what Wikipedia says about the conflict. 

That role belongs to Wikipedia’s volunteer editing community, which is perpetually deciding how to address real-world controversies, and whose internal debates are simultaneously open to all and impenetrable to most.

What Wikipedia actually said

The recent RfC, which ran from early April until last week, racked up more than 650 separate comments and nearly 67,000 words. The question was this: given the ADL leadership’s tendency to blur the line between criticism of Israel’s policies with Israel’s right to exist, as well as its increasingly strident rhetoric, could the organization’s published work still be trusted?

Wikipedia’s eventual answer was far more nuanced than the headlines suggested. In fact, Wikipedia editors came to three separate conclusions: 

1. The ADL is generally reliable for topics unrelated to the Israel/Palestine conflict 

2. Reliability is unclear for topics related to antisemitism outside the context of Israel and Zionism

3. The ADL is generally unreliable regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict

Here’s how it appears on the Perennial sources page:

The RfC is too long to recommend reading, but the carefully-written summary by the editors who rendered the final decision is worth your time. 

Contrary to Greenblatt’s assertions, Wikipedia’s decision was made solely with concern for the accuracy of Wikipedia’s articles, and construed as narrowly as possible so as not to discard what’s valuable about their work. The ADL continues to be perfectly suitable for identifying antisemitic and extremist groups in the United States. Journalists covering the decision should have made this clearer.

What the media reported

Readers following the news coverage could be forgiven for thinking that Wikipedia had handed down an outright ban. The Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA), which had the story first, headlined their report: “ADL faces Wikipedia ban over reliability concerns on Israel, antisemitism”. CNN went even further: “Wikipedia now labels the top Jewish civil rights group as an unreliable source”.

But it wasn’t just the headlines. According to the JTA, “in a near consensus, dozens of Wikipedia editors … said they believe the ADL should not be cited for factual information on antisemitism” because it “tends to label legitimate criticism of Israel as antisemitism”. CNN followed suit, claiming Wikipedia “overwhelmingly said the ADL is an unreliable source on antisemitism”.

This is just wrong. The RfC closing statement states, the ADL “can roughly be taken as reliable on the topic of antisemitism”, save for topics involving Israel and Zionism. One can also review the mid-debate survey of editors, which shows a little more than half of editors leaning toward some form of reliability.

Another common error was overstating the downgrade. Three examples:

• JTA: The ADL “is now grouped together with the National Inquirer [sic], Newsmax, and Occupy Democrats as a source of propaganda or misinformation in the eyes of the online encyclopedia.”

• USA Today: “The decision … puts it in the same company as Russian state media and the National Inquirer [sic].”

• The Independent: “The decision … puts the organization on par with tabloids like the National Inquirer [sic] and right-wing outlets like Newsmax…”

To understand why this is wrong, it helps to understand that Wikipedia has multiple levels of source reliability:

As the color coding suggests, the first three categories apply to the ADL, depending on the topic. The fourth category is reserved for sources whose use is actually prohibited, including… National Enquirer, Newsmax, Occupy Democrats, and Sputnik. Any claim that the ADL is grouped with them is completely false.

Instead, the decision puts the ADL in an awkward group with publications like Huffington Post (subject of a 2020 RfC) and Rolling Stone (another 2020 RfC), which also have different designations based on content and context. Both are considered reliable for non-political topics, but the partisan lean of both sources has compromised their credibility, resulting in a similar Neapolitan swirl: 

The ADL is in rare company another way, too. Whereas the vast majority of sources used on Wikipedia are news or academic in nature, the ADL is just one of three advocacy organizations considered reliable in at least some circumstances, along with Amnesty International—which survived a similar RfC in 2022—and the Southern Poverty Law Center—which may face its own reckoning soon. 

For any organization, but especially a non-traditional “reliable source”, this status is hard-won, easily lost, and should never be taken for granted.

A moment for reflection

Wikipedia’s decision—and the wave of opinion pieces following—wrestle with the question: what kind of organization is the ADL? Is it a research-based organization that follows the facts where they lead, or is it an advocacy group pushing for specific policy outcomes? Wikipedia’s RfC, along with other reporting and commentary, suggests the ADL itself is divided on this question.

In the aftermath of the RfC, Jewish Studies professor James Loeffler told USA Today: “The problem is that there’s one message coming from the leadership and one coming from the research team. The leadership statements are much less disciplined and raise questions about exactly how rigorous their measurement is and their standards for defining antisemitic acts.”

The ADL is currently used as a source in more than 1,200 Wikipedia articles, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon. But it’s very much in question whether the ADL will continue to be used with regularity—and without argument. 

Meanwhile, its research is cited by publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian, with no questions about its methodology. Whether that will change is something Jonathan Greenblatt has more power over than any Wikipedia editor.

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