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'''Conservapedia''' is a right-wing encyclopedia written with a {{tag|conservative}} viewpoint. More specifically, Conservapedia's articles are politically conservative, friendly to young Earth creationism and conservative Christianity, and USA-centric. Conservapedia is in general hostile to liberals, homosexuals, and people who support or teach the theory of evolution or special or general relativity. Conservapedia also removes ideologically neutral content that provides information that could be used in ways deemed contrary to Christian ethics.[http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&page=Suicide+methods] | '''Conservapedia''' is a right-wing encyclopedia written with a {{tag|conservative}} viewpoint. More specifically, Conservapedia's articles are politically conservative, friendly to young Earth creationism and conservative Christianity, and USA-centric. Conservapedia is in general hostile to liberals, homosexuals, and people who support or teach the theory of evolution or special or general relativity. Conservapedia also removes ideologically neutral content that provides information that could be used in ways deemed contrary to Christian ethics.[http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&page=Suicide+methods] | ||
The site was started in November 2006 by Andrew Schlafly and a group of homeschooled people to provide an alternative to the perceived anti-Christian, pro-Evolution, anti-American and anti-conservative bias of [[Wikipedia]]. The stated purpose of the site is to provide a family-friendly resource for homeschooled children from fundamentalist Christian homes. However, a few more adult topics such as [http://www.conservapedia.com/Homosexuality homosexuality] are also treated in depth from their viewpoint. | The site was started in November 2006 by Andrew Schlafly (presently the site's only active [[bureaucrat]]) and a group of homeschooled people to provide an alternative to the perceived anti-Christian, pro-Evolution, anti-American and anti-conservative bias of [[Wikipedia]]. The stated purpose of the site is to provide a family-friendly resource for homeschooled children from fundamentalist Christian homes. However, a few more adult topics such as [http://www.conservapedia.com/Homosexuality homosexuality] are also treated in depth from their viewpoint. | ||
==Technical shortcomings== | |||
Conservapedia cannot be edited during certain hours of the night, U.S. time, except by users with special "night editing" rights, to prevent vandals from striking when most if not all of the administrators are asleep. This is rather inconvenient since an editor may begin editing an article but not be able to save his edit if the deadline passes while he is working on his revision. He cannot even store it on-wiki for saving later, since Conservapedia doesn't have [[mw:Extension:Checkpoint]] installed; the only option is to hit the browser's Back button and copy and paste the the revision text into some other pastebin, for saving to Conservapedia later. The site does not even state why the edit is disallowed or when or if the restriction will end, but merely says "The action you have requested is limited to users in one of the groups: Administrators, edit", leaving the user to possibly think that his editing rights have been revoked or that editing Conservapedia is [[:Category:ByInvitation|by invitation only]]. | Conservapedia cannot be edited during certain hours of the night, U.S. time, except by users with special "night editing" rights, to prevent vandals from striking when most if not all of the administrators are asleep. This is rather inconvenient since an editor may begin editing an article but not be able to save his edit if the deadline passes while he is working on his revision. He cannot even store it on-wiki for saving later, since Conservapedia doesn't have [[mw:Extension:Checkpoint]] installed; the only option is to hit the browser's Back button and copy and paste the the revision text into some other pastebin, for saving to Conservapedia later. The site does not even state why the edit is disallowed or when or if the restriction will end, but merely says "The action you have requested is limited to users in one of the groups: Administrators, edit", leaving the user to possibly think that his editing rights have been revoked or that editing Conservapedia is [[:Category:ByInvitation|by invitation only]]. | ||
Conservapedia also has no email notification user preferences options available; this significantly limits potential for maintaining user engagement.[https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45022] It is no wonder, then, that the site has fewer than 200 users who have edited the site in the last 91 days. | |||
Conservapedia is frequently offline (sometimes for days at a time) and favors a very liberal deletion policy. At the start of November 2010, account creation was turned off and prospective users must now email the site owner to have an account created. This followed several months during which account creation was disabled most of the time and most new users were being blocked on sight. Account creation is still occasionally enabled, although most accounts created in this manner are immediately blocked. | Conservapedia is frequently offline (sometimes for days at a time) and favors a very liberal deletion policy. At the start of November 2010, account creation was turned off and prospective users must now email the site owner to have an account created. This followed several months during which account creation was disabled most of the time and most new users were being blocked on sight. Account creation is still occasionally enabled, although most accounts created in this manner are immediately blocked. | ||