Conservapedia
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Description
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An encyclopedia with a politically "conservative" viewpoint, friendly to creationism and Christianity, and massively hostile to Liberals, homosexuals, and people who support or teach the theory of evolution. The site was started in November 2006 by Andrew Schlafly and a group of homeschooled children to provide an alternative to the perceived anti-Christian, anti-anti-Evolution, anti-American and anti-conservative bias of Wikipedia. The main purpose of the site is to provide a family-friendly resource for homeschooled children from fundamentalist Christian homes. However, some more adult topics such as homosexuality are also treated in depth, to explain all the myriad ways in which they are considered abhorrent.
As of 31 July 2008, Conservapedia has 22,091 registered users, of which 30 (or 0.14%) have Administrators rights. Of these registered users 11,086 were blocked (8691 for an infinite period). Roughly half the users are currently blocked and over a third are permanently blocked. It is unclear what proportion of unblocked registered users regularly use the site.
Criticisms
Conservapedia is widely criticised. Liberals dislike intensely the blatant Conservative bias and inaccuracies in Conservapedia. Other Conservatives fear that conservapedia is giving their cause a bad name. For a more detailed discussion see The Conservapedia RationalWiki war.
A few examples
- The sysops and admins arbitarily deciding whether or not to enforce the Conservapedia Commandments (see this and Commandment number 5, together with the fact 'Learn Together' is a sysop for one example).
- Administrators decide arbitrarily what is a blockable offense. Users get blocked without having done anything they knew is wrong. [1]
- Removing cited facts and calling it 'liberal bias' simply because these facts do not conform to the preconceived notions of the leaders of the site.[2].
- The management driving away experts from the site by, for example, demanding that they email a sysop proof of their qualifications before they continue to post on the site, after that sysop reverted edits on mathematics because they didn't understand them.[3]
- "Belabouring a point" is a blockable offense. It is unclear what this means but it is likely to discourage experts who can discuss a point in detail. [4]
- The selective enforcement of Conservapedia's "90/10 Rule", which, despite being "a guideline", is a popular way for the sysops to squelch debate on talk pages via blocking and threats of same. Users are not always warned in advance that 90% of their edits must be in articles. Users who did not know that they were breaking any rule can be arbitrarily blocked.
- On Conservapedia, 'vandalism' seems to include 'adding verified, cited facts that disagree with Fundamentalist dogma' makes 'vandalism' much easier than it should be. Many novice editors 'vandalize' the site without even realizing it, until they're blocked for it.
- Administrators decide arbitrarily what is a blockable offense. Users get blocked without having done anything they knew is wrong. [5]>
- Some pages, such as "Theory of Evolution" and "Homosexuality" being permanently locked and monopolized by one obsessed sysop.
- Amusingly, despite the fact that many Conservapedia sysops read it regularly, and even refer to it obliquely on talk pages and in comments, mentioning RationalWiki by name is taboo on Conservapedia. Doing so directly gets mere mortal posters banned.
- Near-total lack of oversight or any sort of appeals process for users who think a sysop is abusing their authority. Many sysops don't even have email enabled, making it impossible for someone they ban to even find out why.
- Extremely poor scholarship. Many 'articles' are one or two short paragraphs at most, except those relating to how awful liberals, homosexuals, atheists, or evolutionists are, which can run for many hundreds of lines.
- Totally unrealistic criticism of Barack Obama who has the overwhelming support of the American voters. Even other Conservatives feel things can go too far. [6] The user who complained has been blocked for it. [7][8] [9] [10] There is no free speech on Conservapedia.
- Some confusion between "Encyclopedia" and "Blog", as the sysops make many long, hilariously opinionated articles on various Conservative talking-points, such as how Liberals are incapable of real friendship. This is an old version of the page Liberals and friendship which may be changed. Note the writers claim that the liberals, Speaker Tip O'Neil and Senator Ted Kennedy were friends with Ronald Regan as were other liberals. This contradicts the main contention of the article. Liberals do not invariably refuse to be friends with conservatives. The more sensible conservapedians recognise this. [11]
- At least one sysop keeps deleting perfectly factual mathematics articles because he doesn't understand the concepts involved.
- The site's founder, Andrew Schlafly, apparently believes that "Imaginary Numbers" are part of a Liberal Plot.
The RationalWiki / Conservapedia War
There is an enormous project at RationalWiki to discredit, mock, and ridicule Conservapedia. They gleefully point out, on the "WIGO" page, instances of foolish behavior such as outlined above. This ridicule is perhaps the most popular part of RationalWiki.
See The Conservapedia RationalWiki war
Evaluation
The great strength of the Wiki format is allowing anyone to edit. This causes major problems for the management of Conservapedia, who are forced to spend much of their time scrutinizing every edit for deviation from their ideology. The site is sometimes characterized as "Andy's blog" because of his pervasive control over its content. A major consequence of making it a wiki instead of the usual (closed) blog is that it has the problems noted above.