from alert FIRIS fan – Damien
Force-feeding biased information into our primary school education system just might not be enough for Access ministries anymore. It appears they have now taken their attack on fair and balanced education on to wikipedia. Someone operating under the name ‘Chelm ACCESS’ has repeatedly attempted to turn the wikipedia article ‘Council for Christian Education in Schools’ (the organisation which also operates under the name Access ministries) into an advertisement for their cause.
Whilst wikipedia is certainly not without its flaws, it was designed as and remains a free encyclopaedia, with the intention of presenting facts in a neutral point of view, taking no sides in any dispute. Unbiased and educational. It’s no wonder someone claiming affiliation with Access ministries had to try and put a stop to that.
This user added a large section to the wikipedia article under the heading “The Distinctiveness of Chaplaincy”. Not only was this information biased, this large addition of text was presented in a manner that showed no relevance whatsoever as to why it should appear in an article about Access ministries. On its own it was just an attempt to advertise and promote the school chaplaincy program. An attempt riddled with formatting errors no less. Now this alone could have been forgiven. As an experienced wikipedia editor I often see isolated attempts from other users to promote a cause or organisation in a biased manner. Normally after a quick explanation of why their changes were not appropriate they get the message and cease their non-constructive edits. Not ‘Chelm ACCESS’ however. This editor either has incredibly poor comprehension skills or suffers from extreme arrogance, possibly an unhealthy combination of both.
After their edit was reverted by another user, ‘Chelm’ decided to ignore the majority of the reasoning for why their edit was reverted, and persisted to add the information back, without explanation, and with reinforcements. The article size was more than doubled, turning it largely from a fair and balanced reflection of how Access ministries has been reported on by the mainstream media, into an oversized advertisement for the school chaplaincy program.
Thankfully a third editor undid these changes citing spam and advertising concerns. Concerns that once again were immediately ignored by Chelm who promptly added the information back, again without explanation. Only after a fourth editor reverted this shameless advertising, and both the third and fourth editor commented on Chelm’s personal page that these edits were inappropriate did they get a response. A response accusing all the other editors of censorship and questioning where they got the “authority [they] perceived to hold” to overturn these debated edits. If Chelm had of spent more time reading the guidelines for editing and less time trying to skew the wikipedia article in their favour they would have found the answer to that question long before somebody else had to point it out to them.
The gall of ACCESS and their supporters never ceases to amaze me.
Here is a link to ‘Chelm ACCESS’ personal talk page, which is mentioned in the blog: http://en.wikipedia.org/