What Christians Can Learn From Skeptics: Editing Wikipedia

This is a video that every Christian or Messianic Jewish apologist needs to see. Susan Gerbic is one of skepticism's greatest geniuses for developing this method. The lecture itself is only 27 minutes long, and is absolutely worth viewing multiple times. This is a lecture by Susan Gerbic, who is a skeptic and anti-paranormalist. She leads a group of Wikipedia editors in order to infuse her ideology into Wikipedia. From Gerbic:

We use Wikipedia to shape the public's view of paranormal topics. We already know that shouting and belittling believers is not the way to go about changing minds. Guerilla skepticism is the act of inserting well-documented well-cited information into Wikipedia. We still follow all of Wikipedia's guidelines. We are also trying to improve the history of the scientific skeptical movement and document it. It allows editors to edit from home without being confrontational with people.

From a fan: "I am amazed at what great ideas you and your team have with Wikipedia. It is the opposite of harm reduction. I'll bet that 99% of hits on Wikipedia pages you update come from non-skeptics. The best part is the sure fact that they are going to Wikipedia means that they are in the moment in that ever-so-elusive information gathering phase of thought. For typical laypeople, that phase is shockingly short, and once it's over, it's over for most true believers."

Gerbic is absolutely right. People generally trust Wikipedia, and do not view it with the same degree of scrutiny with which someone would view an atheist website.

If you are a rising Christian apologist, but don't have the time, money, or experience to publish in professional journals or debate atheists on stage, that's fine. The Internet is a great place to conduct apologetics. Instead of wasting your time arguing on message boards or social media (like Facebook), why not learn to edit Wikipedia? It costs nothing but time, and it reaches an audience far more open-minded than anyone you will debate online. Remember that people trust Wikipedia as a reliable source of information, something not lost on Gerbic.

Gerbic's tactics have worked due to organization. Wikipedia has mobs of tens of thousands of editors. Gerbic's group is a small, but highly focused army of 90 editors, and it has changed the face of Wikipedia's paranormal pages, as well as its pages on famous skeptics, creationism, and evolution. As far as I know, there is not one single Christian apologetics organization that focuses on Wikipedia. Not one. Zilch. Zip. Zero. This needs to be fixed.

Gerbic's Tactics

Working Backwards: Instead of starting with a Wikipedia article, look for an article in a well-documented source, such as a book by Lee Strobel or Josh McDowell, and find a home for the information on Wikipedia. You're not creating a page for the topic, but finding apologetics and research material related to the topic, and then finding an article or several articles in which to insert the information. Gerbic says that one issue of Skeptic magazine can give you 100 edits on Wikipedia. I assume that Craig Keener's book on Miracles can give you far more.

Inserting Links: Find ways of getting those nifty blue links to your favorite apologists on to different pages. An example is mentioning J.P. Moreland or Richard Swinburne on the Dualism (philosophy of mind) page, and making sure that the name is linked, so that someone who is browsing philosophy of mind may decide to visit the apologist's page. Wikipedia articles are like potato chips, you cannot read just one.

We've Got Your Wiki-Back: Improving the Wikipedia pages of Christian apologists, so that when people visit their pages, they will have easy access to their works and materials. We want the Wikipedia pages for apologists like J.P. Moreland, Frank Turek, Lee Strobel, and Sean McDowell to be as full, updated, and rich with information as the pages for James Randi and Richard Dawkins. We are not doing this project for us. We are doing this project for the world, and especially for people who are on the fence about these issues. If we don't respect our spokespeople, who is going to respect them?

Relevant Topics: Topics and people that are relevant to apologetics. We want to add information from apologetics sources to Wikipedia topics such as creationism, intelligent design, pseudoscience, philosophy of science, dualism-interactionism, historical Jesus, eyewitness testimony, the minimal facts argument, and various arguments in natural theology. We need to add links to criticism of opponents of apologists, especially the ones that are in the news. People who are in the news get a lot of Wikipedia hits.

Specialists: Gerbic's World Wikipedia Project recruits people from all over the world who speak different languages, so that she can insert skepticism into pages in Dutch, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and other languages. We need people who can translate, and closed caption apologetics lectures so we can get them into other languages, which can then be imported into foreign language Wikipedia entries. We need photographers who can take and upload better photos of apologists and apologetics events, which can then create better pages for apologists and their events. Some people specialize as researchers. Others track and post pages that need updates and expansion. Some even monitor Wikipedia pages to make sure that the right edits go on them.

Working as a Team: Gerbic's team coordinates their projects. They train new Wikipedians on how to edit Wikipedia so that the edits stay. They proofread each other's work, and make sure that all material cites its relevant sources properly. They share tactics, discussing what does and does not work.

Bonus: And for anyone who doubts how effective her team has been, check out the results of their major projects.