Dear friends,

 

Internet-expert Adriane F. Clement shows us with this month’s text a new area of Christian activities.

 

Wikipedia has become a main source of information. In the last months ideologically motivated users have shown anti-Christian tendencies. The way they edited articles shed a negative light on Christians or Christianity by being either incomplete or tendentious. Increasingly, individuals who stand for Christian principles are being picked on to harm their reputation.

 

The commitment of many Christians could turn these tendencies around in the service of truth. Objective information on sensitive issues would then be more accessible. What everyone can do to contribute, you will find below in the text of Adriane Clement.

 

„Christians must be present in all areas of society and public life,” she writes, “internet added new areas. To learn how to engage for the benefit of everyone is a demand of today.”

 

Your Europe for Christ - Team

 

PS: Thank you for praying for a Christian Europe

 

 

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Christians in the Net: Working with Wikipedia

by Adriane F. Clement

 

The online-encyclopedia Wikipedia is a fascinating tool of sharing information. Everyone can contribute by simply login on. In the end, an immense pool of detailed information is accessible to all. There is a danger, however: when contributors are not motivated by sharing knowledge and truth - but a certain agenda.

 

Today, it seems that the enormous popularity and the broad usage of the online-encyclopedia Wikipedia is increasingly being used by ideologically motivated activists to spread abusive criticism about living persons or flawed information about terms which are important to Christianity. As a result, objective information is not fully accessible. Individuals who are being targeted suffer severe professional and personal damages, since this unmerited criticism is passed on to a large audience.

 

Currently this abusive criticism is especially bestowed on individuals by enemies of Christianity as well as homosexual activists. The suspicion alone that someone might be critical of homosexuality suffices to make him a target. This includes people who are not fully classified as personalities of public life.

 

It is therefore very important that Christians contribute to Wikipedia. How to do that is rather easy:

 

• Sign up with a username on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (right corner).

 

• The first fifty of your contributions (edits) should be placed at pages with uncontroversial contents. Learn & collect experiences.

 

• Look for articles where Christian issues, Christian individuals or the Church are portrayed in a wrongful way.

 

• On such pages – read first the ‘discussion page’ to see who says what and why. When you have gained an overview, begin to contribute.

 

• If you post 200 edits – earliest after 8 weeks, you begin to climb up in the ladder of hierarchy and it will give you more rights and possibilities. Currently, it seems that in the hierarchy not many people identify themselves with Christianity.

 

• The highest level you can reach is “administrator”, which includes many responsibilities. Good people are needed in such positions!

 

Christians must be present in all areas of society and public life. Internet has added new areas. To learn how to engage for the benefit of everyone, and in service of truth, is a demand of today.