In a March 19 email to NIAC, Wikipedia promised to “indefinitely halt” all editing on Wikipedia articles, “Trita Parsi” and “The National Iranian American Council.”
In Wikipedia’s own words, “It seems clear that a small group of people, if not possibly a single person posing as several, has been consistently trying to re-add…questionable, poorly sourced information about your organization [NIAC] and its president. In addition to being possibly libelous, it is strongly against the policies of our project.”
Many opponents of dialogue and diplomacy—the same people that Babak references in his post, Disrupting Discourse—have used Wikipedia as a platform for baseless attacks against Trita and NIAC. While these attacks say more about the undemocratic mindset of some factions of the Iranian-American community than they do about NIAC or our work, it is unfortunate that Wikipedia, a well-trusted source of information for so many people, has become the most recent target in their efforts.
We, as the NIAC DC team, are thrilled that Wikipedia recognizes the need to halt public access to the “Trita Parsi” and “National Iranian American Council” articles. We hope this victory helps elevate the discourse in our community beyond ad hominem attacks, to genuine debate about the issues facing Iranian Americans. We thank Wikipedia for helping push the conversation about these issues to a better, more productive level.
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