Wiki Wars: In battle to define beliefs, Mormons and foes wage battle on Wikipedia

................... Nicholson learned that if people have questions about the LDS Church and its founder Joseph Smith Jr., they will often turn to Wikipedia for answers first — and trust what they read. Even if they use the search website Google.com, Wikipedia's articles are invariably one of the first listed responses to almost any query.

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Most people don't really understand that they can change anything they want on Wikipedia. All they have to do is click on the "edit" tab on any page.

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Two main factions battle for control of Mormon articles on Wikipedia. On one side are Mormons who want articles to leave room for belief. They want positive facts of history to be prominent. On the other side are people who do not believe in the LDS Church. They want negative aspects of history to take precedence. Both sides think they are being neutral.

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A recent report from the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project found that 42 percent of all American's 18 and older use Wikipedia to look for information. This means 53 percent of adults that use the Internet use Wikipedia. The survey also found that 69 percent of Internet users that have college degrees turn to Wikipedia to look up topics. It is more popular than instant messaging.

But Wikipedia wasn't the only wiki in town. The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research (FAIR) had a wiki about Mormon topics at Fair/Mormon .org. Nicholson got out his frustrations by posting the text of several Mormon articles from Wikipedia and then citing every Wikipedia rule Foxe and other editors broke.

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