I’ve had an interesting journey this past week or so which began, as most journeys do, unexpectedly.

In my professional work, one of my functions is in investigating how to integrate newer knowledge management technologies in ways that are unique within our business (which isn’t to say that it’s always ‘cutting edge’ technology, but sometimes it is). One of these technologies I decided to do a bit deeper dive into recently was with some targeted wiki’s. So, the first place I started was the public wikipedia. Because I work with some technophobes, I was trying to evaluate some of the “user-friendliness” of basic functions, which led me to play around with editing pages (without saving them) and looking at the content management processes around them.

I’m sure you’re probably yawning by now, as I was starting to, when I read a comment on CRN.Info that caught my attention:

Ken (Silva) says: “I was flattered to see that the Lord has seen fit for Apprising Ministries to show up on the Wikipedia entry for Emergent Church Pastor Rob Bell”

So I went to the Rob Bell page, and it looked like this (without the stuff at the top). So, I made a few quick edits just to put my toe in the water without changing too much. Then, I ended up getting busy with some other things, and forgot about my wiki experiment for several days.

The Plot Thickens

Well, eventually, I remembered the experience on the wiki page, so I went back to check it out. What triggered the visit was that I had just read an article on Wikipedia about how blogs cannot be used as verifiable sources, especially in articles for Biographies of Living Persons.

Material about living persons available solely in questionable sources or sources of dubious value should be handled with caution, and, if derogatory, should not be used at all in biographies of living people, either as sources or via external links.

Self-published books, zines, websites, and blogs should never be used as a source for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article

So, I went back to the article, and all of the changes (minor as they were) had been reverted by an anonymous user. In a breach of protocol I was unfamiliar with, I went ahead and edited out all of the blog-sourced material from the article (located primarily in the “Criticisms” section, though there were some blog reviews of VE and Bullhorn in the links section), and started going through some other things, when I realized that someone else was editing the page right back as I was changing it. I was warned for making “vandalism” edits because the changes I was making weren’t being discussed on the Rob Bell Discussion page (silly me), and that I had participated in a Revert War and needed to stop.

So, using this new bit of information, I started (clumsily) using the discussion page and requesting that the other anonymous user(s) who continued to revert any and all changes made by me and other people please discuss this with us on the discussion page. Finally, the other user was warned by the admins and everything calmed down for a few days. We proposed a number of changes on the discussion page and gave them a day or more elapsed time before making them to the main page.

But all was not well.

Revert War Deux

Finally, the anonymous user logged in as “Gump“, a user who had made a number of caustic changes over the previous month, while refusing to engage anyone on the discussion page. He started reverting the page again, referring to me – by name – in the comments section. After multiple requests to Gump to discuss changes, we received this message (on an edit) in response

There is nothing to discuss with the unreasonable: your crowd opposes ALL criticism. Stop censoring.

That was about all we were going to get out of him in reasonable discussion. To make a very looooooong story short, Gump refused to talk, completely, escalating his complaint with our changes to Arbitration (which is kind of like appealing a traffic warning to the US Supreme Court).

A group of religious misfits [...] have arrived to remove all substantial material content found by them to be even remotely critical in nature. They are now screaming to “discuss” the situation on the article’s talk page yet their actions in reverting [...] efforts to preserve critical viewpoints demonstrate their capacity for reasoning with opposition.

Opposing views are not tolerated and are routinely removed by this gang of Preterist buddies. This same group has removed unbiased revisions by many other users over the past year. Any discussions on the article’s talk page are dominated by the gang and only accepted terms between these buddies are deemed final, as if a real process of discussion actually took place. I will admit that in my efforts to suppress the weight of their overwhelming presence, I have broken revert rules. For this I apologize and am now motivated to take this issue to the proper channels – namely, you.

You may or may not be familiar with their religious sect, but in sum, they belong to a radical element of Christianity called the “Emergent Church” which holds to a Preterist eschatology whose desire is to bring “justice” to earth by forcing heaven (”the kingdom”) to come down in their rendition of social justice…..apparently they view winning this Wiki-war as one part of their war for “restoration” – yep, you read correctly…..please….help.

(Talk about paranoia and not knowing who you’re talking to…) This was the sum total of his Arbitration, which was, as I predicted to him, denied. It was followed up by a temper-tantrum on the Rob Bell discussion page. I won’t repeat it here, so as to save Gumpie (who I could have sworn was Ken due to his refusal to discuss and his “Tsk, Tsk” homilies) a little bit of dignity.

Needless to say, our changes stuck after review by a non-biased third party, the Rob Bell page is now in a Neutral Point of View, and so long as folks keep watch on the page now and then, it should remain free from Apprising “Ministries” (sic).

The unbiased third party wrote back to us:

This really doesn’t need a third opinion. The suggested version by Lyonscc clearly cleans up the original research and lack of a neutral point of view. If the reverts continue I suggest taking the issue to the admin notice board. Although, the proposed change still has some weasel words (”some evangelicals criticized some comments made in the book”), but it’s certainly better than the alternative. Justin 19:44, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Once we were done, I had this section added to the discussion page, should it be needed for reference in the future:

The Unsuitability of Apprising.org as a source

One thing that needs to be settled once and for all in this particular discussion is the complete unsuitability of apprising.org links and/or information as source material.

1) It is a blog. This, in and of itself, is reason enough for it to not be a source. Per Wikipedia:BLP#Reliable_sources

Self-published books, zines, websites, and blogs should never be used as a source for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article (emphasis mine)

2) Apprising is poorly sourced: Apprising.org is a blog for Apprising “Ministries” (sic), a one-man show run by Ken Silva, the “pastor” of a church of 5 people in rural New Hampshire. It has been documented that more than two thirds of his “research” is simply self-referential links to his own sites, and that the remaining third of his “research” is to sites he contributes to or other blogs [1].

3) Material from the apprising site in unhinged. He has claimed that God raised him up to bring down Rob Bell, in particular, and if you pick out articles at random from his site, like this one [2] it becomes completely apparent that this site is not of the quality required for a W:V verifiable source.

Per Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_sources_.28online_and_paper.29

Self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer;

What Was Gained

Well, besides keeping a Christian brother’s wikipedia page slander-free and likely having Gump (a first year law student at Liberty U) blocked from ever editing Bell’s page again, I learned a whole lot about wikipedia and its policies around Neutral Point of View, Verifiability, Biographies of Living Persons, No Original Research and especially Coatracking (which will keep all of the VE and Nooma review links off, as well) – all things which will keep pages like Rob’s clear of watchdoggie abuse. It looks so much better now.

Oh, and just to be consistent, I cleared the junk off of Erwin McManus’ page, as well, making sure to add a note about Apprising in its discussion page, as well.

And so, I must say that I am flattered that the Lord has seen fit for me to have a small hand in the events leading to Apprising “Ministries” (sic) no longer being able to mar the wikipedia article for non-emergent pastor, Rob Bell.*

No sense in sending poor unsuspecting souls from wikipedia to such an unreliable source…

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*If you don’t understand the reference, please click the link.