Talk:Mercy Multiplied

Removing Ex-gay/Pro-life part of description

This is true as referenced further up in the discussion. Why is it being taken out? Can you explain?Victoria Lucas (talk)

Undid Vandalism

The article has been reverted after a user appeared to delete some of the main information. I hope that's ok.

Primary sources and other concerns

This article has about five times too many references published by Mercy Ministries. This article (as with all articles on WP) should be based primarily on secondary sources independent of the organization. Additionally, the entire "Beliefs" section should probably be removed per WP:UNDUE, the Locations section should be trimmed, and the Fundraising section should be drastically slashed. The latter is the worst, in that it clearly is intended to promote the organization by tying a bunch of famous names who've fundraised for it; this information is not really relevant to an encyclopedic treatment of the subject.

However, I would like to add that DownRightMighty was correct to remove all of those blogs and the excessive focus on the Australian scandal. Like the rest of the article, controversial information must come from reliable independent sources, and blogs almost never qualify as reliable sources (nor do other self-published wesbsites).

I'm not going to edit this page at the moment--I'd prefer that interested editors start to have a conversation here about article improvement. I'd rather act primarily as an administrator here at this time. Qwyrxian (talk) 11:41, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for being objective about the article and the edits. I have no issue with the discussion which has been started on my talk page. I just want people to have a level head as I will discuss anything that needs to be in order to get a consensus. The edits from Miss Bobbins were disruptive to Wikipedia and done to make a point. We will continue dialogue on my talk page and hopefully reach a consensus. I will work on the other information that you suggest above over the next couple of days. I will need time to obtain references that meet the criteria that you site and make the adjustments as necessary. Again, sorry to get you involved. --DownRightMighty (talk) 20:46, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

I have an inquiry about the Australian scandal. Since there is ample coverage by various Aussie news sources and the Nashville Scene in Tennessee, I don't believe it to be 'excessive focus.' Could you elaborate on that, please? Ollyoxen (talk) 05:47, 17 October 2012 (UTC)Ollyoxen

Censorship

My main concern about the recent edits by Mighty is that almost half of the content of the entire article has been deleted. My reason for reversing them without comment is that it looked like censorship of criticism which would fall into the category of vandalism. This page has been the victim of censorship over the years by supporters of this organisation and even Mercy Ministries themselves (scroll down and read). It was even frozen for a time for this reason. So when close to half of the article was deleted, that was my first impression of what had happened.

Deletions of content I had previously added had been removed, but more than that, content that had been there for years has also been deleted, despite the article discussions showing the fine tuning process of why that content should be there.

I am hoping to go through each section of the article and discuss its current and previous states, one by one, and see if we can work towards a more balanced and accurate article. I think this is the best way forward.

Reasons given for a number of deletions was that it relied on unreliable sources such as blog pieces.

1. A substantial number of statements that were deleted were in fact supported by published media articles
2. Some of the links that related to blogs etc were actually duplicates of media stories that are no longer viewable at their original source. In addition, some of these blog/website pieces contain evidence such as scanned letters from Mercy, or copies of the counselling manual that they use or have used in the past. Therefore, if a sentence in the article is supported by that type of content alone (rather than the actual blog commentary), then I don’t see why those statements should be deleted simply because at face value they reference a blog link.
3. Finally, there are statements that were supported by both media stories and blog links, and in those cases, all one would have to do is delete the blog references, provided they do not fall into the above category.

If there is anything else anyone thinks should be discussed before we go through each section, then please post it here for discussion so we can work through it.

MissSherryBobbins — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.171.82.91 (talk) 22:29, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

First, a note: "censorship" is not vandalism--vandalsim (per WP:VANDAL) only refers to cases where someone is intentionally trying to make an article worse, like saying "Obama is an idiot" or "suck it!". This is a content dispute.

But, moving forward: the best step would be to reintroduce, slowly, the content you think still belongs. Work only from reliable sources--newspapers, news tv shows, etc. You can't use blogs, even if the blog was "reproducing" content from other online sources, because we cannot verify that the blog accurately copied the original source. And we definitely would never include blog info that has allegedly "scanned info"--such sources would be primary sources, and only if we had absolute, rock-solid proof that they were authentic, which we cannot get from a blog. This is really not something that can be compromised on--if mainstream sources haven't covered it, we can't either. However, please note that sources don't have to be online--if you know full publishing info for a newspaper article that's not archived online, you can include it. If someone wants to challenge the info, you may be asked to provide quotations to verify the info.

Given my experience with articles like this, the best thing to do is tackle one small section at a time, adding sources, making sure they meet WP:RS and the text meets WP:NPOV. Then we can evaluate each part, and gradually build up a good article. Work on the lead last, because we can't know what belongs in the lead until we know what's in the article itself.

Oh, at the same time, we can also go about removing the excessive material sourced to the Ministries itself, as that's also WP:UNDUE and WP:PRIMARY. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:14, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you again for giving us both insight on what needs to be done. You are correct about the undue weight which is why the Australian information was removed in part. 50% of the article seemed to be dedicated to this affiliate location. I am unsure of how it would equate to 50% of the article and also to be mentioned in every section including the intro, an "ethos" section, locations, Australian controversy, etc. Although I agree with Qwyrxian's reasoning stated above, I would recommend coming to a consensus on the talk page prior to any edits being made. In fact, I have cut down the funding section as suggested and will paste a recommended version of the new text here tomorrow. We can discuss the content and hopefully come to a consensus on what needs to be added or removed from that section. Also, I will be introducing some additional references in the next few minutes. I will NOT be changing the content as there is a current content dispute and I will not add content or remove it going forward unless there is a consensus. I will only be adding the primary sources as suggested by Q. Keep in mind that Wikipedia is about consensus. So, regardless of your reason for wanting more weight to negative information on the organization, let us try to reach a consensus here for the sake of the millions of people who use Wikipedia on a daily basis. --DownRightMighty (talk) 01:01, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I propose that due to the dispute between us, that we work with the original version that was negotiated and agreed upon before either of us made edits. I propose that we restore the version of this article from 13 July 2012 at 03:31. We can then discuss what sections we should add or remove from that one. This version has less content about the controversy, and you can insert the sections that you created such as funding which have and are already being discussed herein.

I propose this as a neutral way forward for both of us, because I am being accused by you of trying to undermine this process and I have serious concerns about the past and present issue of gross censorship that this article has undergone, by you and others and also by IP addresses that belong to this organisation.

On the subject of censorship, many things were deleted that were referenced by proper sources such as the countless media articles available on the subject of this organisation. And not all of those things that were deleted related strictly to the controversy. There has also been controversy surrounding the US branches, and that section was removed entirely, despite references to several media articles and radio interviews.

I am not bringing this up to discuss the controversy section here (let's create another heading for that), but rather to make the point that we should both work from the version that existed prior to either of our edits. It is a more neutral starting point as edits up to that point have been made upon considerable discussion and input of many before us.

Please advise if you are disagreeable.

MissSherryBobbins — Preceding unsigned comment added by MissSherryBobbins (talk • contribs) 09:35, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I just mentioned on MissSherryBobbins' talk that we can't do that, because that version, while it does contain a number of good references that I think can be salvaged, also contains a number of blogs, self-published websites, and advocacy sites (some clearly made specifically to harm the Ministries) which we cannot have on the page, even temporarily What we should do, though, is go back to that version (I'm thinking of this version from July) and pull out some of the newspaper sources. One thing that MSB said to me is that this controversy isn't just in Australia, but also in other countries as well. And even if it is just Australia, the current coverage seems too light given how extensive the news coverage seems to have been. As such the right level is likely somewhere between the current one and the way it was a few months ago. I recommend that, in a new section, someone start collecting useful articles (including offline ones, if necessary), and you start to figure out how to summarize those with due weight and neutral tone. Qwyrxian (talk) 09:49, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Independent Sources

• Again, Keep in mind that I am only adding better sources and not changing any content.

1. Added an article from the Tennessean that talks about the closing of Australia franchises and the apology issued by the Australian director. Also removed the under referenced notice. More references to follow.--DownRightMighty (talk) 01:26, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

2. Removed self-published source from the MMOA website (http://www.mercyministries.org/what_we_do/our_program.html). Was used twice as a reference in the opening paragraph. --DownRightMighty (talk) 01:27, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

3. Added the source from Today's Christian Woman to support the information previously sourced by #2 above. This should suffice to support the content in the opening regarding adoption.--DownRightMighty (talk) 01:34, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

4. Removed self-published source to MMOA website (http://www.mercyministries.org/who_we_are/about/locations.html). Used Washington Times Article (Mercy Not Strained; Christian Mission Nurtures Young, Distressed Women) to replace the self-published source.--DownRightMighty (talk) 01:46, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

5. This source (http://www.mercyministries.org/who_we_are/founder.html) is self-published and used 3 times in the article. I have removed the 1st instance of it and replaced it with the above referenced Washington Times article. --DownRightMighty (talk) 01:52, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

• Note that there will be quite a few self-published sources removed under the proposed new wording of the funding section below. The new section will be limited to the independent and reliable sources, not the organization's website.--DownRightMighty (talk) 02:03, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

6. Removed source to MMOA website under the funding section. Link is self-published and also a dead link.--DownRightMighty (talk) 17:01, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

7. Removed another self-published source (http://www.mercyministries.org/AboutUs/OurFounder/MercyHistory.aspx) from funding. Cutting out the fat first. Will introduce the independent sources under the "funding" section on this talk page for everyone's review.--DownRightMighty (talk) 17:01, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

8. I have not yet removed this reference (http://www.mercyministries.org/who_we_are/about/statement_of_faith.html) as it is the one that supports the beliefs section. Although not independent, the article states that "According to their website...." References 3 & 4 in the article would also support the belief section; however, stating what they DO believe is different from what they STATE that they believe. It could be subjective to state that "they believe" as opposed to a more objective "they state that they believe." --DownRightMighty (talk) 17:40, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Funding

I have edited the funding section and cut quite a bit out. Instead of having subheadings within the main heading, I would propose to leave it as just one heading. Here is what the new proposed wording is:

MMOA is funded through donations from individuals, businesses, and organizations. They do not accept state or federal funding. MMOA is supported by numerous celebrities including New York Times Best selling author Dave Ramsey and The Ramsey Family Foundation, California-based multi-millionaire Buzz Oates, and Joyce Meyer and Joyce Meyer Ministries among many others.

MMOA partners with numerous other nonprofit and charity organizations. One of their principles states that they will give at least ten percent of all donations that they receive to other organizations and ministries. In 2012, Big Idea Entertainment, the animation production company best known for the VeggieTales films and now owned by DreamWorks Animation SKG, announced a partnership with MMOA. The partnership revolves around the company's recently released (August 2012) video entitled VeggieTales: The Penniless Princess - God's Little Girl, which features a video intended to help drive donations to Mercy. The video contains testimonials from girls who have been through the MMOA program.

MMOA also partners with many famous artists to raise funds and awareness for the mission. In 2010, Grammy nominee Contemporary Christian musician Matthew West invited the girls from Mercy to be a guest of himself and his wife Emily on The Story of Your Life tour. In November 2000, Donna Summer recorded the song Take Heart for The Mercy Project, a compilation CD with proceeds benefiting MMOA. Other artist supporters featured on this CD include Amy Grant, Martina McBride, Point of Grace and Michelle Tumes.

The section is shorter and it cuts out the lengthy details about each event that they have conducted with a celebrity. I feel that it is important to leave information about how they do partner with celebrities, but not in as great of detail as it was. This is because the articles that I found that support their funding are largely based with celebrity and popular artist partnerships. Of course, I welcome the comments from others. --DownRightMighty (talk) 02:00, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

The above wording would be supported by the following sources [1], [2], [3], [4]. There are additional indpependent sources that I am looking for now. They are in hard copy and not online so I will need to find them and then post them here for everyone's review. If you take a look at the current article, the above section here and the sources that I currently propose, it will widdle down the self-published sources from Mercy down quite a bit. Please make a comment about the above proposed wording. Also, if you have a reference that shows that they do in fact take donations from government sources.--DownRightMighty (talk) 17:35, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Page 3 of this source, http://www.tn.gov/sos/acts/103/pub/pc0372.pdf from the Tennessee Senate Bill in 2003 contradicts the statement that MMOA does not accept state or federal funding. Could you point out a more relevant or direct source that shows that this is incorrect? Ollyoxen (talk) 05:54, 17 October 2012 (UTC)Ollyoxen

A government bill is not a reliable source. First, we would need a reliable source to verify that the bill was passed, and passed in the version that you linked to. Second, you would need evidence that money was actually disbursed to MM--just because they're on the list, doesn't mean any money was finally sent, because lots of bureaucratic decisions can intervene between a law passing and money changing hands. Finally, the wording of the bill makes it unclear about "who" is getting the money; there are two ways to read it, and one of them implies that, while these charities are facilitating a process, they aren't actually receiving the money--they're just passing it on to other "clients". So, in fact, its you, Ollyoxen, that needs a better source to support your claim that they do take state funds. Qwyrxian (talk) 08:50, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I have looked at the above source. It is a good reference to show what the government has stated they are going to do; however, it does not state that they actually gave the money nor does it say that Mercy accepted it. Can you help me by telling me how you have direct knowledge of their funding? If you can actually point in the direction where you are obtaining your information it would help me find a source that is independent that we can use in the article. Thanks.--DownRightMighty (talk) 17:35, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Australia Scandal

(Recopied from "Locations" as I believe I misplaced this discussion originally)

I'm not certain this is an accurate statement:

"Affiliates of the Mercy Ministries brand also exist internationally, although each affiliate has its own independent executive director and board according to MMOA's website.[9] Affiliates include Vancouver, Canada; Auckland, New Zealand; and Bradford, United Kingdom. These homes are operated and financed independent from MMOA; an international board from Mercy Ministries International (MMI) oversees these worldwide operations.[10]"

According to the news sources in Australia over the controversy and the Nashville Scene article in 2008, Mercy Ministries of America is a new concept and the terminology was used after the scandals. I don't believe it is correct to state that "each affiliate has its own independent executive director and board" unless it is qualified with a "now" or "after the allegations." Ollyoxen (talk) 06:01, 17 October 2012 (UTC)Ollyoxen

Upon further reading, I don't agree with the following statements based on the articles that are from Aussie news sources.

"An independent charity with two homes founded by Darlene and Mark Zschech[11] in Australia called Mercy Ministries of Australia (MMAU) closed in 2008 and 2009.[12][13] These locations had no oversight from MMOA,[11] and they had separate and independent leadership, program design and organizational structure.[14] According to MMOA's website, because of a shared vision to serve hurting girls, Nancy Alcorn, Founder and President of Mercy Ministries of America, permitted Darlene and Mark Zschech to leverage the "Mercy Ministries" brand when they founded MMAU in 2001."

This would be a "he said-she said" account of allegations that are quite serious with MMOA blaming Darlene and Mark Zschech for the incidents that the Aussie news sources documented as MMOA's fault. I will link the original Aussie news sources I'm referencing after I gather them. Ollyoxen (talk) 06:17, 17 October 2012 (UTC)Ollyoxen

A recent 2012 article discusses the scandal: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-17770794

Programs: Structure

Under structure, I would suggest adding this quote from the Sydney Morning Herald under "Funding" or "Structure".

"Yet few who donate to Mercy understand they are giving money to fund exorcisms in a program that removes young women from proven medical therapies and places them in the hands of a house full of amateur counsellors. Its literature claims to have a 90 per cent success rate - yet nowhere does it publish any results.

The allegations by Johnson, Canham-Wright, Smith and others indicates the program cannot lay claim to such a success rate."

Another point I would suggest to add is this statement from the same article, saying the following:

Some former residents of Mercy Ministries spoke with Syndey Morning Herald reporter Ruth Pollard about their stay at Mercy. Pollard writes of the women's experiences: "Instead of the promised psychiatric treatment and support, they were placed in the care of Bible studies students, most of them under 30 and some with psychological problems of their own. Counselling consisted of prayer readings, treatment entailed exorcisms and speaking in tongues, and the house was locked down most of the time, isolating residents from the outside world and sealing them in a humidicrib of pentecostal religion." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ollyoxen (talk • contribs) 06:27, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

While that's a good article to look at for information, putting it in the funding section would not be appropriate--it's not really about funding, it's about the quality of the services MM claims to provide. As DRM pointed out above, it is inappropriate to try to turn every single section of this article into something critical about MM. However, that does look like a great article from to draw criticism. Could you all work out how to do so together? Qwyrxian (talk) 09:04, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Sections to be agreed upon

Although this will ultimately get worked out as we proceed, I thought it would be a good idea to maybe list the sections/sub-sections we think should go into or be reinstated into the article. Drawing from the 13 July version, my edits, and DownRightMighty's edits which are represented by the current version, here is what they are combined:

A. Intro/overview

B. History

C. Beliefs/Ethos

D. Locations

E. Funding E1. Direct funding E2. Charitable partnerships

F. Programs F1. Structure

G. Media outlets

H. Controversy H1. Australian controversy H2. US controversy I. Exorcism

J. Use of false memory recalling/Use of recovered memory therapy at Mercy Ministries

My initial thoughts are:

• Remove sub-sections in funding section. You can have paragraphs about "direct" and "charitable partnerships", but I don't think that the subsection headings are necessary.

• I'm not adverse to there being a "history" section, but at the moment it looks more like Nancy Alcorn's bio. Unless someone wants to create a page on her, I think that this section should be reserved for the organisations history, not Nancy's.

• "Beliefs/Ethos" could probably be covered in the intro/overview. It's more recently been simplified to "Christian", but i think that the previous description of "evangelical" and "charismatic" elaborate on this well, as subcategories of Christian, and those labels are well supported by available evidence that could be cited.

• Have "Program structure" as a heading or something similar, rather than a sub-heading for "structure".

• Media outlets is not really accurate... MM aren't a media outlet. Many organisations publish newsletters but they wouldn't be called "media outlets". I am wondering if there should even be a section for this? It seems more promotional than anything.

• DownRightMighty mentioned in a comment that he/she thinks that the controversy section should be limited to that section and not spill over into other sections. From a structural perspective, I think that this would be ideal, but due to the magnitute and the nature of the controversies, I don't know if it is possible to not at least reference them in those other sections. The controversies arose mainly around the nature of the program and counselling used across all homes (which highlight allegations of exorcism and false memory therapy technique, not to mention their entire counselling manual), false and misleading advertising of services as shown in government undertakings signed by former directors, and the taking of government welfare monies when the program was advertised for free. According to US media sources, not all of these issues were isolated to the Australian homes. And these controversies relate to sections such as "funding" and "program structure". What are everyone's thoughts on how to approach this?

• As for exorcism and use of recovered memory therapy, we could put those in controversies, however as they relate specifically to the nature of the therapy, do we put this in "program structure" and subcategory "counselling"? Or do we simply reference them there and then elaborate in controversy?

• In the controversy section, I am wondering if we should add a "UK controversy" given there are at least two newspaper articles that I am aware of.

Would like to know what others think?

MissSherryBobbins (talk) 12:10, 17 October 2012 (UTC)MissSherryBobbins

Note that you can't put spaces before you start a line--it doesn't indent, it just messes up the formatting; I've reformatted your section. As for your proposal, two things. First, you're putting the cart before the horse. You can't decide ahead of time what sections there will be until you find out what sourced information you have. We've already established that large chunks of the old article were unsourced or linked to unreliable sources, and until you establish that reliable sources exist, we can't guess ahead of time there will be a section. Second, in an ideal article, there is no controversy section. Instead, relevant controveries are mentioned within the rest of the article. This doesn't mean they should permeate every aspect of the article (unless, of course, the group is primarily notable for controversy), but it does mean we should try to put a controversy next to a topic. If that can't be done (because there's no clear way), then a separate section is okay, but it's always preferable to avoid. As an example, If exorcism is a major portion of their activities, and that can be documented, then have that as a separate section, including both positive and negative comments (if soured, WP:DUE, etc.). Qwyrxian (talk) 12:58, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Use of abbreviations and referencing Mercy Ministries homes correctly

Even though the article is titled "Mercy Ministries", the first line of the article says "Mercy Ministries of America (MMOA)", and then uses this abbreviation throughout the article.

Firstly, if this is an article about Mercy Ministries, then we should use the term "Mercy Ministries", not "Mercy Ministries of America" (except where referring to the US branches specifically), and there is no reason why the term should be abbreviated throughout the article.

Some time ago, someone kept changing references to "Mercy Ministries Australia" to "MMA". Again, there is no good reason why this should happen, and without making accusations of any one person, I have wondered if in the past this was a further attempt at censorship or perhaps an attempt to interfere with search engine rankings.

Also references to other Mercy Ministries homes should be called by their name, eg "Mercy Ministries Australia", "Mercy Ministries UK", and not simply "an affiliate". All of these homes were overseen by Mercy Ministries International for many years and all are linked to the entity "Mercy Ministries Inc". The idea of thes homes merely being an affiliate only popped up in the last year, but I see no evidence to support that Mercy Ministries of America or MErcy Ministries Inc being entirely seperate from the other homes that bear its name.

Thoughts?

MissSherryBobbins (talk) 12:16, 17 October 2012 (UTC)MissSherryBobbins