Steve Page, one of our supporters has been working on our behalf to tackle an editing bias on Wikipedia which has resulted in a section on Firearms UK to be systematically deleted time and time again. As part of this effort Steve has kindly produced a guest post for us on this topic; shown bellow, please give it a read and share widely, thank you.
Sportsmen and women up and down the country who shoot face an uphill battle fighting ignorance, discrimination and malicious bias on a daily basis, what doesn’t help is when Wikipedia is used as a tool to promote an anti-gun agenda. Let’s be completely honest, it isn’t all Wikipedia editors by a long shot; however, there are a few anti-gun editors attempting to control certain shooting associated articles on the site, one of the articles being Gun Politics Of The United Kingdom.
The fact is that Wikipedia increasingly has become the number one research tool used by young people, students and adults as their primary source of knowledge, the online encyclopaedia has become immensely powerful and relevant in today’s world, subsequently when the system employed to prevent vandalism is misused to promote a certain biased point of view and complaints swept aside by obviously anti-gun lobby admins something needs to be done and the only way that can be achieved is by concerned shooters getting involved, so please Create a Wikipedia account on Wikipedia, search for the various articles connected to shooting in the UK and help put some balance back into the articles.
One of the most powerful tools in our arsenal is passion, combine that with a dedication to track down and employ factual accuracy and half our job is done.
- Always ensure your facts are correct and that you can point to reliable sources such as newspapers, magazines and books to promote your position and most importantly ensure you cite your facts in the article itself.
- Always edit the article from a neutral point of view otherwise the crazy anti-gun lobby will pounce on you and delete all your hard work.
- Always check the article’s ‘Talk’ page, a talk page offers the ability to discuss articles and other issues with editors. I have linked the Gun Politics Of The UK talk page as an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kingdom
- Be firm but fair, always assume good faith even when others do not.
The UK shooting community has for far too long put on their helmets, battened down the hatches in the hope it’ll all go away, the problem is it hasn’t, every day that goes by the national impression of shooting gets ever worse, yesterday it was believing (promoted by mischievous elements in the media) that all gun crime is committed by legally-held firearms, today it’s an attempt to connect shooting with pornography.There is only one direction we can take now and that is forward, to be brave enough to challenge the media’s tarnished image of shooting and firearms then present to the nation a group of enthusiasts who are law-abiding and just like them.
