RationalWiki (en)
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Description
| Wiki size: | 3,534 article pages see stats |
| wikiFactor: | 16 info / verify |
RationalWiki is an open wiki taking a critical look at the pseudoscience movement and extremist politics, through the use of side-by-side examinations and humour.
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.
RationalWiki has about 3,197 registered users, of which 359 (or 11.23%) have Sysops rights, which are awarded very liberally by the bureaucrats.
RationalWiki runs a large collection of specially customized extensions allowing a wide range of features such as; up-down voting, slider voting, a site wide intercom system, and easy bible quotations.
RationalWiki also has a namespace dedicated to Conservapedia.
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. Many articles focus on unfounded medical claims, pseudoscience and Biblical literalism. Despite a seemingly anti-religious stance, some 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 critical material on Scientology, Creationism, Astrology, "New Age" philosophy, and many others. It also comments critically on other Christian creationist wikis notably A Storehouse of Knowledge, see RationalWiki on A Storehouse of Knowledge.
Despite this branching into other areas, most of their traffic is to the page What is going on at Conservapedia?.
The website has a rather idiosyncratic 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]
Loss of service
As of Aug 22, RationalWiki and related sites such as RationalWikiWiki and the RationalWiki forum, are inaccessible [2]. Primary technical administrator for RationalWiki, tmtoulouse, commented on August 19, 2009:
"Pretty much worse case scenario As is obvious to most by now the site is inaccessible, however, the bot server appears to be working. This means it is not just an internet problem, but a potential issue with the server having shut down. If this is the case I doubt there is anything I can do for now."
Apparent insider, "Chris's" comment suggests the existence of nightly backups [3], thus the wiki should be recoverable eventually:
"I sent Mr. T an email about possibly shoving the last nightly backup on to one of my servers for the duration of the outage but haven't heard back. Don't know if he doesn't have access to an internet connection where ever he is or what. I guess y'all are stuck with it for the time being."
The most likely date when RationalWiki will return is ^th September,
I am arriving in Toronto at 3:45 pm EST on Sunday, September 6th.(...) If it is a simple solution the server should be back on by 7 pm EST September 6th. If there is something more going on I will post here by 7pm to let everyone know.[4]
Primary technical administrator for RationalWiki, tmtoulouse, will not have physical access to the server for two weeks. It is expected that the site will be back online shortly after he returns from his trip.
RAtionalWiki is offline as of 20th August, we don't know how long but the duration of tmtoulouse's vacation is possible. Meanwhile Liberapedia also has material critical of Conservapedia and users are more than welcome to read about Conservapedia or improve articles there.
Where RationalWikians are hanging out during the crisis
- Teflpedia It's claimed that this one is popular.
- Wikisynergy
- Liberapedia
See also
- Atheism Wiki
- Debatepedia wiki also discusses controversial topics -- but puts both viewpoints side-by-side on the same page.
- FreeThoughtPedia
- Iron Chariots
- RationalWikiWiki meta site for RationalWiki.
External links
- RationalWiki's most popular article RationalWiki's take on events at Conservapedia
- Conservapedia, RationalWiki’s Main article about Conservapedia
- The Conservapedia RationalWiki War, the RationalWiki interpretation of the "war" between Conservapedia and RationalWiki
- Category of articles RationalWiki’s large collection of articles about Conservapedia.
further tags: