Infamous Gang of 40 Leader Banned

Inside Wikipedia’s turbulent arbitration that led to Iskandar323's site ban

Wikipedia has imposed a site ban on Iskandar323, permanently removing one of the platform’s most influential editors. A site ban is Wikipedia’s most severe sanction, revoking editing access entirely and ending an editor’s participation across all articles and administrative processes.

NPOV reported earlier this month that Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) had voted unanimously in favor of the ban. At the time, enforcement appeared imminent. Instead, the decision entered a period of uncertainty, as procedural challenges and internal disputes delayed implementation and raised questions about whether the ruling would ultimately be carried out.

Last week, it was.

Iskandar323 had operated for years at the center of a coordinated network of editors —known as the Gang of 40—responsible for shaping over a million edits across articles related to Hamas, Iran, Zionism, and the broader Middle East conflict. The group enforced ideological alignment through edit disputes, administrator channels, and procedural pressure, while marginalizing dissenting sources and softening material unfavorable to Islamist actors.

NPOV’s recent reporting documented Iskandar’s role within this network and the scale of his activity. Earlier investigative work, including a 2024 Pirate Wires exposé by NPOV Founder and Chief Investigative Officer Ashley Rindsberg (Ashley Rindsberg), first mapped the Gang of 40’s coordinated editing patterns and identified Iskandar as a central operator.

Those findings helped precipitate Wikipedia’s fifth major arbitration case on the Israel–Palestine topic area, known internally as PIA5, which resulted in sweeping topic bans and restrictions across dozens of accounts. Iskandar323 was among the editors sanctioned, receiving a ban from Palestine–Israel articles intended to curb coordinated behavior within the group. Enforcement quickly became contested, with editors pushing the boundaries of what constituted participation in the topic area, resulting in the latest motion to site-ban the editor.

Throughout the final days leading up to his site ban, Iskandar323 remained highly active on Wikipedia. As the Arbitration Committee’s deliberations were ongoing, his contributions included revisions to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran article —a page outside the core Palestine–Israel topic but one he had edited repeatedly in the past and that figures prominently in broader debates about Iran-related coverage.

In our recent coverage on pro-regime coverage, Inside Iran’s Wikipedia War, NPOV reported on editing patterns in Iran-related topics highlighted Iskandar’s broader activity across both active conflict pages and historical subjects:

Iskandar323 operates as a battleground editor focused on active conflicts alongside his edits on past events, editing on the 1988 mass executions as recently as 18 January.

The final action against Iskandar323 did not hinge on a single clear violation. Instead, Arbitrator Guerillero cited a “continuation of PIA [Palestine-Israel Articles] related editing just outside of the topic area,” pointing to a small number of diffs involving historical articles such as Hellenistic Palestine and Yahweh.

ArbCom argued that adjustments to ancient historical language—including edits touching on terms like “Judea” or “Israelite”—constituted proxy engagement in the modern conflict.

This interpretation sparked backlash. Veteran administrator Zero0000, a Gang of 40 leader who was warned as a result of PIA5, criticized the evidentiary standard, writing: “Now we have two claims that personal impressions, not supported by a single diff, are good enough. This case is turning into a real scandal.”

Iskandar323 echoed the concern during the proceedings. “I was quite sure that ‘trust me bro’ was the standard of proof here,” he wrote, “but now people are telling me it isn’t.”

Other editors reviewed the cited diffs (Wikipedia edits) and pushed back forcefully on ArbComs decision. “I find it amazing that the motion is passing 7-5,” Kingsindian wrote in Iskandar’s defense, arguing that ArbCom had been “bamboozled by a blizzard of diffs.”

The Pirate Wires Connection

One of the violations cited in the enforcement log involved Pirate Wires itself. Iskandar was penalized for a comment referencing the “bad math” of a Pirate Wires article—the same investigation that had originally exposed the Gang of 40’s coordinated activity.

Administrators ruled that because Pirate Wires had published “How Wikipedia’s Pro-Hamas Editors Hijacked the Israel-Palestine Narrative,” any negative reference to the outlet by Iskandar constituted a violation of his topic ban.

“Talking about a PW piece… about editing in the Arab–Israeli topic is a violation,” administrator HouseBlaster wrote. Iskandar argued that he had merely pointed out factual looseness in a media outlet. ArbCom disagreed.

A Partial Reckoning

The ban removes one of the Gang of 40’s most active operators. NPOV’s reporting has shown that the group collectively carried out millions of edits, including the removal of Hamas’s 1988 genocidal charter language from major articles.

Iskandar alone accounted for an unusually large share of activity in the topic area and frequently coordinated with other core figures, including Nishidani, who remained a vocal defender throughout the proceedings.

While the unanimous vote projects institutional unity, the process itself revealed a governance system under strain — reliant on subjective inference, vulnerable to manipulation, and increasingly unable to separate procedural authority from ideological enforcement.

For now, one of the most prolific architects of Wikipedia’s distorted reality has been removed. But the machinery he helped build, and tens of thousands of edits made by him, remain intact.