Conservapedia
| Wiki size: | 46,300 article pages see stats |
| wikiFactor: | 154 info / verify |
(As of: 20 September 2018)
Conservapedia is an encyclopedia that is politically conservative, promotes young-Earth-creationism and conservative Christianity, and is 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 that are deemed contrary to christian ethics.[1]
The site was started in November of 2006 by Andrew Schlafly (presently the site's only active bureaucrat) and a group of home-schooled 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 home-schooled children from fundamentalist christian homes. Conservapedia also promotes judeo-christian doctrines regarding some sexual topics, including homosexuality.
Technical shortcomings
Conservapedia cannot be editted during certain hours of the night, U.S. time, except by users with special "night editting" rights, to prevent vandals from striking when most if not all of the administrators are asleep. This is rather inconvenient, since an edittor may begin editting 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to users in one of the groups: Administrators, edit", leaving the user to possibly think that his editting rights have been revoked, or that editting Conservapedia is by invitation only.
Conservapedia also has no email notification user preferences options available, which significantly limits potential for maintaining user engagement.[2] It is no wonder, then, that the site has fewer than 200 users (fewer than 80 of which have the coveted "edit" right)[3] who have editted 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.
In December of 2010, Conservapedia started to block certain ranges of IP addresses from even viewing the site. Many IP ranges in the UK, France, Germany, and other European countries now receive a 403 error when trying to load any page.
New Conservapedia has been set up to parody Conservapedia.
Statistics
As of 26 July 2013, Conservapedia had 55,000 registered user accounts, most of which are blocked, with 31 administrators. 348 users had made an edit in the preceding 91 days.
Suggested guidelines for prospective edittors
Some WikiIndex edittors have had negative experiences with this wiki, and offer the following precautions in order to prevent having your account blocked:
- As it says on Conservapedia's user-creation page, usernames that are based upon your real name or initials are preferred, but are not required. While some users with names like Lainy74 are blocked and told to create a new name, other users with names like "TK" and "Foxtrot", (both users who later gained blocking rights) were not.
- Conservapedia's "90/10 rule" states that "unproductive activity, such as 90% talk page edits and only 10% quality edits to Conservapedia articles, may result in blocking of the account". New users are often surprised to find out that these numbers are not strictly followed, and can sometimes be blocked before making 10 total edits, especially if their edits are argumentative or questioning of the wiki. It is best to first establish yourself by making constructive edits to articles before trying to delve into the more controversial subjects.
- Be wary of disagreeing with a sysop. They may block you for disagreeing, though this may be unlikely if you are following all the other rules (including 90/10). Reverting any edits by a sysop will likely result in a ban.
- Be wary of an abundant use of {{fact}} tags on articles, especially if you could add the citations yourself. This practice is often viewed as "ideologically-motivated tagging", and is frowned upon on Conservapedia.
- Conservapedia is a conservative, creationist encyclopedia. As such, it is best not to post anything that might be construed as "liberally biased" or "pro-evolution". Even if you notice that the Conservapedia arguments against evolution are flawed, saying so can lead to them blocking you. The drop-menu for admins with blocking power includes "Liberal vandalism, Liberal name calling, Liberal parodist" [4]
- Do not write rude or offensive material about another user, especially don't disparage a sysop. Do not imitate users in high standing who can be very critical. Ordinary users do not have the same freedom.
- If you get blocked for any of these reasons and you think that the block was unfair, do not create a new account. Instead, email the administrator or user who blocked you, and appeal for a second chance. Most users are granted leniency and are allowed to edit again. This applies especially to edittors who did not know that they broke a rule, since many edittors get blocked without realizing they broke a rule.
- If the sysop who blocked you does not have email enabled, you can appeal to another sysop. This is against their new policy, but try it anyway.
- Avoid posting using the same username as you use on any site that is critical of Conservapedia, and especially RationalWiki. That can be a banning offense, HelpJazz was blocked for this though Conservapedia claims not to do that (#15).
- If Aschafly accuses you of being a Liberal, don't bother denying it, as that's just Liberal Denial, Liberal Deceit, a Liberal Falsehood, Liberal Hypocrisy, and Liberal Obfuscation. All you can do at that point is apologize, and Andy may condescend to allow you to stay, as long as you never post anything else he disagrees with.
See also
- A Storehouse of Knowledge: a wiki that was created by a former Conservapedia edittor (Phillip J Rayment) who was dissatisfied with Conservapedia
- RationalWiki: a wiki that was originally founded to criticize and make fun of Conservapedia, but which now claims to criticize pseudoscience in general
- Liberapedia: a parody wiki of Conservapedia that has a liberal bias
- New Conservapedia: another parody that claims that Conservapedia has a liberal bias
- Metapedia: an anti-jewish encyclopedia
- Ameriwiki: a conservative encyclopedia