RationalWiki (en)
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History
RationalWiki started in May 2007 after a group of editors at Conservapedia were banned over ideological differences with the authorities there. Their edits had consisted mostly of debating on talk pages, attempting to counteract what they perceived to be overwhelming anti-scientific and far-right political bias. Although the site was called RationalWiki to highlight the pro-scientific worldview of the founders, the content was largely weighted to the perceived lunacy of events at Conservapedia.
Rationalwiki today
While Conservapedia continues to be a major focus of RationalWiki, they have branched out into many areas of skepticism. Most articles focus on unfounded medical claims, pseudoscience and Biblical literalism. Despite a seemingly anti-religious stance, many editors are practicing Christians or Jews, tending towards the more liberal aspects of their religion rather than fundamentalism.
The site works to refute a range of faith based ideas and superstitions. They have material on Scientology, Creationism, Astrology, "New Age" philosophy, and many others.
Their stated goals are:
- Analyzing and refuting the anti-science movement, ideas and people.
- Analyzing and refuting the full range of crank ideas.
- Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism.
Despite this branching into other areas, most of their traffic is to the page What is going on at Conservapedia?. The situation is perhaps best described as on ongoing war between the two sites, discussed in more detail here.
The website has a rather unusual sense of humour, which includes widespread intentional misspellings and other peculiar phrases. There are many "inside jokes", particularly in the material relating to Conservapedia, and the writing often has the tone of a close-knit social group.
Example of RationalWiki’s perspective:-
As a site we have a point of view, and that point of view is that the scientific method and the information gained from its application is better than almost anything else humanity has come up with. We believe that the support of, profiting from and creation of pseudosciences is dangerous and wrong. [1]
Criticism
Many of the members, especially admins admit to having been vandals at many different wikis including Conservapedia. They have attacked Conservapedia in the following manners
- Fighting and picking fights;
- Trying to remove content;
- Blanking pages, including pages of admins;
- Using foul language against other editors;
- Showing outright contempt for the site, conservatism in general, Christianity, and family values;
- The insertion of objectionable content, such as porn images and links to porn sites;
- Lying, by either including deliberately false article content, or lying in their own conduct;
- Vandalism and cyber-terrorist tactics.
See also
- Atheism Wiki
- FreeThoughtPedia
- Iron Chariots
- RationalWikiWiki meta site for RationalWiki.
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