brian flemming
Brian Flemming's Weblog

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the god who wasn't there
My most recent film, The God Who Wasn't There, is available on DVD at the official site and elsewhere.

the god who wasn't there
Bat Boy: The Musical is currently being staged in productions of various sizes around the world. A movie adaptation directed by John Landis is in development, with no casting announced or shooting date set.

danielle
My next feature film, Danielle, remains in development.

nothing so strange
Bill Gates is still dead.




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THIS ENTRY:
A Wikipedia user who apparently has an axe to grind with atheism has attempted to delete the Wikipedia entry for The God Who Wasn't There. Since it is not at all unusual for a movie to have a Wikipedia entry--and...


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July 30, 2005

Wikipedia user tries to kill The God Who Wasn't There

A Wikipedia user who apparently has an axe to grind with atheism has attempted to delete the Wikipedia entry for The God Who Wasn't There.

Since it is not at all unusual for a movie to have a Wikipedia entry--and since any Wikipedia entry can be edited by the user base--this is a rather blatant attempt at censorship. The cranky user attempting the censorship has also attempted to delete an entry about Atheists of Silicon Valley (aka "Godless Geeks").

Fortunately, there is a sensible deletion policy at Wikipedia. Once an entry is nominated for deletion, the deletion goes up for a vote. At this writing, the 10 votes are unanimous for keeping the entry. But please go and vote here just to make sure. Just choose the "edit" link and add your comments in the same format as the others (that's how Wikipedia works).

And now another good Christian has submitted a frivolous copyright complaint against the entry, which has caused it immediately not to be displayed at all.

Man, who would have thought that people would do unethical things in the name of Jesus?

UPDATE: Wow. Thanks to all who responded. I am informed by a sympathetic veteran Wikipedia editor that the response has been so great that it's in danger of fueling backlash, so I have removed the request for votes (unless you were already a registered Wikipedia member before July 30). It seems highly likely that the entry will stay, and author SideSwept's work will probably be augmented even more now that it has attracted so much attention.

The original user's attempt to make the movie disappear from Wikipedia has clearly backfired--now more Wikipedia users than ever are aware of the movie because of this controversy.

And Wikipedia's process did work--they didn't let one disgruntled crank vandalize their database. I only take issue with their policy to assume that all accusations of copyright violations are instantly valid and to take the drastic action of removing an entire entry based on any unsupported allegation. I found it frustrating to have someone claim to be protecting my copyright while actually engaging in censorship. There was little or no attempt made to actually verify the copyright-violation claim, which was false from the get-go and could easily have been demonstrated to be false.





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