Several news source are reporting this morning that the ruling body of Wikipedia has banned the Church of Scientology IP blocks from editing Wikipedia. Members of the organization were believed to have been constantly editing articles related to Scientology, removing any critical or negative information posted to articles, and posting biased information of their own.
While I usually disagree with censorship, I think this is a case of true abuse of Wikipedia by The Church of Scientology. Scientologists have used an organized, aggressive attack on those that would criticize their organization. This attack has occurred through personal intimidation, the courts, and through online attacks and editing by church members. Banning Scientology editors from the site sends a clear signal to others that might maliciously edit on the site.
Other groups, including Catholics and the US Congress have attacked Wikipedia in the courts or through biased and malicious editing because they didn’t agree with the content of the site. The US Congress’s IP range was actually temporarily blocked by Wikipedia to stop a string of biased edits. I am happy to hear that the leadership took this stance to continue to crack down on these types of people. Wikipedia is a great resource. Never in the history of humankind as so much knowledge been agregated in one place for public consumption. I think that resource needs to be protected from those that would harm it for personal gain.
