New World Encyclopedia

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New World Encyclopedia
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Founded by: unknown
Status: Active
Language: English
Edit mode: ByInvitation
Wiki engine: MediaWiki
Wiki license: Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike
Main topic: Encyclopedia
Wiki size: 16,221 article pages see stats

(Page count as of: 2023-07-28)


New World Encyclopedia (NWE) is a general-purpose encyclopedia that attempts to combine facts, which most encyclopedias such as Wikipedia and non-wiki published encyclopedias already have, with values, whether those values are moral, ethical, spiritual, or even aesthetic. New World Encyclopedia is an invitation-only wiki with administrators with an academic background, therefore this wiki often gets listed alongside sites like Citizendium and Scholarpedia when it comes to sites that have the wiki-style design but with only approved writers and academic admins. However, while sites like Citizendium are written by unpaid volunteers despite said volunteers going through an invitation process, NWE writers need to show a resume and two writing samples to the writing team before they can get an account, and once an article is finished and has the proper citations, the writer is paid.

The site was founded in 2005 by several members, including leader Sun Myung Moon, of the Unification Church, though despite the church affiliation, the encyclopedia isn't written from a completely religious point of view like Conservapedia or similar sites, though biases might come out a little when specifically researching Unification Church people. In many ways, NWE is even more academically professional than Wikipedia, in many ways resembling a professional published encyclopedia that just happens to be designed to look like a wiki. While most wikis, even invitation-only and read-only wikis, have a login button (though in these cases the login screen does not have a create account option), NWE may very well be the world's only wiki to not even have a button for logging in. This leads many users to wonder if the site really is a wiki, and if it is a wiki, how those paid writers get in. It turns out that there is a backend site, found by replacing the www in the URL with wiki, and on this site, there is a login screen, where you can enter the login info you received after the admins examined your resume and writing samples.

The site is supported by the Values in Knowledge Foundation (VIKF), and since there is no contact info on NWE's site, the VIKF site is the best place to go if you want to send over your resume and see if you are ready to do paid wiki editing, or if the wiki is ready for you. The majority of articles are revisions of Wikipedia articles but with even more academic professionalism; usually the References section in the original article is renamed to Notes, and a new section called References is created, consisting exclusively of academic-quality references, in other words, references a typical college professor would approve, and a credits template is added at the end to link to the Wikipedia article and even the specific revision that the NWE version is based on. Due to the values-based nature of NWE, some articles are in between what you would get from a Wikipedia article and a Conservapedia article; for example, while Wikipedia treats evolution as fact, and Conservapedia treats evolution like a liberal falsehood, NWE is more likely to write an article explaining both viewpoints, treating both evolution and creationist theories as valid. NWE says that many encyclopedias (likely including Wikipedia) have a scientific bias, but unlike conservative encyclopedias, they do not use this as an excuse to remove scientific information from the website; instead, the scientific information is balanced with religious information, so neither evolution nor creation theory are treated negatively, and believers of either one can get plenty of information from NWE. Therefore you can not say that the site has a right-wing or a left-wing bias, but that all viewpoints can be found; this makes sense if you know anything about Sun Myung Moon, who invented the word headwing to describe the acceptance of both conservative and liberal, scientific and religious ideas. Despite the church connection, Common Era notation is used for dates. This is rather popular, even among non-religious people, due to the academic way in which the articles are written, while still maintaining that wiki website design. It appears to be one of the best-known encyclopedias that is both free to read and carefully approved by professionals, since professional encyclopedias like Britannica often require a subscription to read everything. Frank Kaufmann, NWE editor in chief, released a book of the best NWE articles in 2008, but it has been long out of print. The site was likely most popular in the second half of the 2000s decade, when they had financial support from the Universal Peace Federation, one of the world's most famous world peace organizations, also involving Sun Myung Moon and Unificationism. After dropping support during the Great Recession, NWE was only supported by their own foundation, VIKF, which takes donations from readers. However, this may be the only wiki in history in which money donated to the wiki's foundation often ends up in the hands of the writers of the articles. This encyclopedia is very often cited by people with absolutely no Unification Church connections, which likely means that, no matter what you think of their tolerance of conservative views (without shoving such views in your face), they are apparently doing a good job when it comes to being academic and professional. Despite all the pay to edit wikis online, NWE may be the world's only paid to edit wiki.

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