Hamichlol ( "The Entirety") is a censored wiki-based Internet encyclopedia project for the Haredi public. Most of the articles on the site are exact copies (as of the date they were copied) of articles from the Hebrew Wikipedia or re-edited versions of Hebrew Wikipedia articles, adapted for the Haredi reader, while original articles currently constitute only a small portion of all the articles on the site. The site is managed and operated by the Institute for Literacy and Proper Knowledge, which was established for the purpose of creating the site.
The editor community of the site censors mainly any mentioning of homosexuality, information that contradicts a Creationism worldview, and behaviors deemed Tzniut.[ המכלול:סינון/מדיניות הסינון The hamichlol.org.il] The site is referred to by the site owners as an aspeklaria (), "mirror", as it is a re-edited edition of the Hebrew Wikipedia.
The site was launched on January 11, 2015. As of October 2, 2020 the site contained 279,979 articles, which is about three thousand more than the Hebrew Wikipedia. Many of the site's articles, such as the one on God, are being edited and reviewed for compliance with Talmudic law.
As of October 2, 2020 the site's Alexa Internet's ranking was 222 in Israel.
Background
In 2014 the Israeli
Hasidic rabbi Yosef Kaminer founded the Institute for Literacy and Proper Knowledge () through which the site would be produced.
The institute also created another website,
Shitufta, a
Torah repository and platform for publishing
Hiddush.
The site is intended for the
Haredi Judaism public who are very conservative and refrain from using Wikipedia's content according to their stringent interpretations of
halakha. Hamichlol aspires to be "the largest Jewish encyclopedia in history, which includes articles on all issues pertaining to the Torah,
Jewish law and the history of the Jewish people, but also knowledge pertaining to mankind and from all the secular" ( transliteration:) "fields–written in clean language according to the Jewish worldview."
Operation
Originally, the site of the site imported the entire
Hebrew Wikipedia and re-edited or deleted the content which they considered not proper for the Torah-observant public, and specifically
Haredi readers. The content is imported from the Hebrew Wikipedia in accordance with Wikipedia's free license, which enables editors to perform such a "split". Because many Haredi avoid pictures of women, some images are edited to remove women, including historical pictures or group photos (for example, a photo of the thirty-fourth government of Israel's cabinet).
The owners of the website state that in the instances in which imported articles from Wikipedia contain content deemed problematic, the editorial team of the website will gradually review the articles to determine whether the content is appropriate: problematic articles which also contain proper content will be rewritten, while the articles with totally inappropriate content will eventually be permanently deleted.
Copyrights
All content on the site which was originally imported from Wikipedia is provided under the free license
CC BY-SA. The copyrights of the rest of the site's content is reserved to the Institute for Literacy and Proper Knowledge.
See also
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Baidu Baike—Chinese online encyclopedia censored per government requirements
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Conservapedia
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Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español
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List of online encyclopedias
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Qiuwen Baike
-
Ruwiki (Wikipedia fork)
External links
