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| + | <small>Were you looking for us? If so, see [[Editthis.info/conservapedia:about]]</small> |
| - | | style="text-align: center; padding: 10px 40px 10px 40px;" | [[Previous_Breaking_News/Conservapedia| Previous Breaking News:<br>Conservapedia]]
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| - | '''Conservapedia''', launched on November 21, 2006, is a [[conservative]], [[family-friendly]] [[Wiki]] [[encyclopedia]]. It was founded by [[teacher]] and [[attorney]] [[Andrew Schlafly]] with the help of several students from his fall 2006 World History class. In May 2008, Schlafly and some of his [[homeschooling|homeschooled]] students appeared on the [[CBC]] news program The Hour (see: [[Videos on Conservapedia]] ).
| + | <center>http://rationalwiki.org/w/images/thumb/7/7b/Conservlogo_late_april.png/100px-Conservlogo_late_april.png</center> |
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| - | When a student handed in her paper using the date-markers “[[BCE]]” and "CE” from [[Wikipedia]], Schlafly realized that Wikipedia, despite its claim of neutrality, contained bias against the achievements of [[Christianity]] and conservatism. Other occasions of [[liberal bias]], including the reversion of factual edits about the 2005 Kansas Evolution Hearings, led to the creation and launch of Conservapedia.
| + | ---- |
| | + | '''Conservapedia''' is a deceitful, heavily biased and willfully ignorant wiki-based blog project masquerading as a encyclopedia. It is written from a far right and extremist Christian point of view. It is better viewed as an online guide to understanding how a particular segment of the American fundamentalist Christian right "thinks" than as an actual encyclopedia, as the site's administrators see liberals, atheists, and homosexuals (along with whoever the "bête noire du jour" is, like Muslims) as being the cause of all society's ills. Their attacks on these groups are fueled by traditionalism and jingoistic pro-Americanism, and often make '''liberal''' use of ad hominem. This political alignment automatically considers somebody a liberal, should they fall anywhere on the left of Adolf Hitler. |
| | + | The site was founded on 21 November 2006 by [[ASclafly|Andrew Schlafly]], spawn of professional "pro-family" activist Phyllis Schlafly, in an attempt to offset what he perceived as an '''liberal''' liberal bias at Wikipedia. Conservapedia's goal is to try to create a version of Wikipedia that has a conservative bias, and a conservative version of the [[Conservabible|bible]]. |
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| - | Though Conservapedia originally contained mostly [[history]] articles, it has grown over several years to be a general reference, with information about history, [[math]], [[science]], [[politics]], [[religion]] and other topics. It also contains [[Conservapedia:Debate Topics|debates]], [[essays]] and [[Conservapedia:Index|educational resources]].
| + | ==Since then...== |
| | + | Currently, Conservapedia ("CP") is managed by [[Aschlafly]] and a group of homeschooled teenagers known as "The Panel". While there is a list of Conservapedia Commandments, they seem to be mostly honored in the breach, and their basic policy seems to be banning people for ideological differences, attempts at humor, or backtalking to them. The latest expansion on this is the "Scorched Earth Editing Policy", in which after banning someone, they undo all of that person's recent edits, just to make certain the filthy heretic doesn't feel like trying to get back on to vandalize the site further by posting more facts the sysops don't agree with. Users there have been warned not to delete content on threat of banning. |
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| - | In March 2007 it was picked up by the media, and faced a barrage of [[vandalism]] (See [[Essay:Examples of Moronic Vandalism by the "tolerant"|Examples of Moronic Vandalism by the "tolerant"]]). Ever since then, it has continued to grow, and now has [[Special:Statistics|tens of millions of page views]], and enjoys prominence on search engines.
| + | ==Theology== |
| - | == Rapid Expansion of Web Traffic Relative to Many Conservative Websites==
| + | Conservapedia holds a '''"American, Christian Point of View"'''. What this means exactly, is up for debate. Some core attributes appear to be: |
| - | [[File:March 2011-conservapedia-com uv 1y.png|thumbnail|right|300px|Unique monthly visitors graph from the web traffic tracking company Compete.com for a two year period.]]
| + | *A Young Earth Creationist [[Conservapedia and Psuedoscience|Viewpoint]] |
| - | Conservapedia was listed in May of 2009 as one of the 50 most popular conservative websites in terms of web traffic by the [[conservative]] blog Right Wing News.<ref name=popular50>[http://www.rightwingnews.com/mt331/2009/03/the_50_most_popular_websites_o.php The 50 Most Popular Conservative Websites], ''Right Wing News'', March 16, 2009.</ref> Considering that Conservapedia was only about 3 years old in May of 2009 and was doing better in web traffic than some veteran conservative websites, the rise in web traffic for Conservapedia during its existence has been quite favorable. In May of 2009, the website Right Wing News determined with the help of [[Alexa]] data that Conservapedia was ranked 37 out of 50 in terms of its website traffic relative to other popular conservative websites.<ref name=popular50/> Conservapedia is looking at the possibility of spreading awareness of Conservapedia via the significant expansion of its [[YouTube]] channel subscriber base at [http://www.youtube.com/user/conservapediavideos Conservapediavideos].
| + | *There is a homosexual plot out there to homosexualize america! |
| | + | *Global warming denialism |
| | + | *Anti Islam |
| | + | *Crackpot conspiracy theories |
| | + | *Pro Intelligent Design |
| | + | *Anti-Vaccines |
| | + | *Anti Sex Ed |
| | + | *Pro unregulated guns (Sounds real smart, if you consider that the average Conservapedian believes in corporal punishment for "obscenity" -read homosexuality) |
| | + | *Anti Minimum Wage |
| | + | *Pro Victorian England working conditions |
| | + | *Anti-CERN |
| | + | *Anti-Physics |
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| - | ==Leadership== | + | ==Reactions to Conservapedia== |
| - | Unlike Wikipedia, which bills itself as a [[democratic]] system and ends up functioning as a [[mobocracy]], Conservapedia employs a hierarchy based on a [[Meritocracy|merit system]].
| + | Much speculation has been made about Conservapedia's relative impact on both the internet and political culture. Whilst Schlafly claims that "liberal" sites are on the decline, as demonstrated by the fact The Social Network didn't win the Academy Award it was nominated for, conservative websites, such as Conservapedia, are surging ahead. |
| - | | + | Andrew Schlafly routinely states that Conservapedia gets lots of page views, and thus believes that people are using it as the encyclopedia it pretends to be. He is largely basing his page view statistics on the internal statistics of the MediaWiki software. However, these statistics are often misleading as they make no distinction between types of traffic, and can be easily manipulated by clickbots. Conservapedia routinely deletes and recreates articles that have inflated page view statistics as reported by the MediaWiki software, but the act of deletion alone confirms that the statistics have been manipulated and are thus unreliable. On top of this, Schlafly also says Wikipedia is deceitful for not using MediaWiki's statistics, even when these statistics are clearly unreliable and don't work in Wikimedia's heavily cached infrastructure anyway. |
| - | Andrew Schlafly is the chief administrator and is the most prolific editor, followed by bureaucrats, administrators, and regular editors. Editors who contribute substantial content may be promoted to administrator and bureaucrat, or gain extra user rights such as blocking power and uploading images.
| + | To give you an idea of what people are actually thinking about Conservapedia, googling Conservapedia yields more than half a million hits, though many are quite dubious. Ignoring the first three hits (which are for the site itself) nearly all the top results on google criticize or mock Conservapedia, with the exception, ironically, on listing #4, Wikipedia, which gives it about as fair an entry as one could hope for. |
| - | | + | {{conservapedia}} |
| - | ==Educational atmosphere==
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| - | Due to the existence of essays and debates on Conservapedia, and conventions such as the [[Conservapedia:Commandments|"90/10 rule"]] and the use of real names, Conservapedia successfully fosters an [[education]]al environment. Because liberal bias is not allowed, much information that would be elsewhere censored can be found on Conservapedia; often it is one of the only places to find such information in one place.
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| - | ==Promoting Original Scholarship ==
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| - | Many pages tagged as essays are really more like projects, or are otherwise thought-provoking, giving Conservapedia some characteristics of a [[think tank]]. See [[Essay:Best New Conservative Words|Best New Conservative Words]], [[Essay:The Coming Fifth Great Awakening in America|The Coming Fifth Great Awakening in America]], [[Essay:Top Causes of Rejecting Conservativism|Top Causes of Rejecting Conservativism]], [[Mystery:Why Do Non-Conservatives Exist?|Why Do Non-Conservatives Exist?]], [[Disputed Biblical Translations]], and [[Linguistic Analysis of Candidates]].
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| - | === Conservative Bible Project ===
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| - | On August 12, 2009, Conservapedia began an enormous scholarly enterprise, the [[Conservative Bible Project]], which endeavors to retranslate scripture into modern English while emphasizing Biblical insights and counteracting liberal bias. As of Oct. 29, 2009, this project has translated about 30% of it, or about 2400 verses.
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| - | The project has been the subject of extensive discussion and debate throughout television, radio, and print media, as well as on the internet, and has succeeded in encouraging even its most strident liberal critics to read the bible in their efforts to refute it!
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| - | ==Differences with Wikipedia==
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| - | Conservapedia strives to keep its articles concise, informative, family-friendly, and true to the [[fact]]s, which often back up conservative ideas more than [[liberal]] ones. Rather than claim a neutral point of view and then insert bias, Conservapedia is clear that it seeks to give due credit to conservatism and Christianity. Schlafly said in regard to the point of view issue, "It's impossible for an encyclopedia to be neutral. I mean let's take a point of view, let's disclose that point of view to the reader." <ref>Robert Siegel. [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8286084 Conservapedia: Data for Birds of a Political Feather?], npr.org, November 29, 2009.</ref> | + | |
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| - | Wikipedia articles may contain [[trivia]], [[gossip]], profanity, and even [[Pornography|pornographic]]/sexually explicit images. The latter three are prohibited on Conservapedia and trivia is largely discouraged.
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| - | The administrative hierarchy prevents Conservapedia from being hijacked by a faction, and thus preserves it from mobocracy, as discussed above.
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| - | ==Influential editors and users==
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| - | *[[User:Aschlafly|Aschlafly]] is the username of the aforementioned founder of Conservapedia, Andrew Schlafly. He has contributed massively to Conservapedia since the beginning, authored many articles including the [[World History Lectures|student lectures]], and is the final authority on article content and user conduct.
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| - | *[[User:Karajou|Karajou]] was one of the original three who joined at the beginning of the influx in February 2007, amid massive media attention, and has been an extraordinary contributor ever since. The cartoons and many of the military history entries are his superb work.
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| - | *[[User:Ed Poor|Ed Poor]], active at Conservapedia for many years, and at Wikipedia for more than seven years, was the first elected bureaucrat at Wikipedia and has been extremely influential at both sites. At Conservapedia, he has primarily aimed at accuracy, rationality, and user cooperation.
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| - | *[[User:Conservative|Conservative]] has contributed the majority of content to the extremely popular [[evolution]], [[atheism]], and [[homosexuality]] articles. The first two articles were featured as articles of the year at Conservapedia. In addition, Conservative created the Conservapedia resources [[Resources on becoming a Christian]] and [[Resources for leaving atheism and becoming a Christian]].
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| - | *[[User:Joaquín Martínez|Joaquín Martínez]] has contributed a large amount of content about the [[art]]s, such as pages on [[literature]], [[sculpture]], and [[painting]]. He created the [[Painting Masterpieces|galleries of artwork]] which are featured on Conservapedia's [[Main_Page|Main page]] as the "Masterpiece of the Week". His work has helped beautify the encyclopedia.
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| - | *[[User:Jpatt | Jpatt]] has more than 13,000 edits and 2,000 blocks, and is phenomenal in identifying good stories and posting headlines for them.
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| - | *[[User:TerryH | TerryH]], a fabulous writer and biblical scholar who graduated from [[Yale]], has broken big stories here in addition to translating some of the [[Bible]].
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| - | *[[User:Chippeterson]] has been a brilliant editor of numerous political entries.
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| - | *[[User:TK|TK]] has made many substantive contributions since coming to Conservapedia over two years ago, and is known for his vigilance against vandals (RIP).
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| - | *[[User:DeanS|DeanS]] helped found the Conservapedia news project, and he is its main contributor. He has also worked on articles related to [[Mormonism]].
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| - | *[[User:SharonS|SharonS]] has been an editor since the very beginning of Conservapedia, and was interviewed and quoted in a newspaper article to explain and defend the project.
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| - | *[[User:AddisonDM|AddisonDM]] works on maintenance, and in addition to neutral contributions has created the popular article [[Essay:Examples of Moronic Vandalism by the "tolerant"|Examples of Moronic Vandalism by the "tolerant"]], as well as the Conservapedia article itself.
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| - | *[[User:RobSmith|RobSmith]] Created some of Conservapedia's most acclaimed articles, and was a tireless vandal fighter and researcher on the [[Socialist]] and [[Communist]] agendas.
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| - | | + | |
| - | *[[User:RJJensen|RJJensen]] has a PhD in American Studies and has been a professor of history and political science at numerous schools. Professor Jensen has made significant contibutions to Conservapedia's historical articles.
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| - | | + | |
| - | *[[User:Iduan|Iduan]] has thousands of edits and his work on Templates has been particularly noteworthy.
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| - | *[[User:JacobB|JacobB]] is a gifted mathematician who has been invaluable to many of those entries; he also uploaded the [[KJV]] for easy comparison in the [[Conservative Bible Project]].
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| - | ==Impact==
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| - | Conservapedia has been praised and ridiculed in the [[media]], on [[blog]]s, and on rival sites. Critics claim that it contains fringe viewpoints, while supporters note that it simply provides another viewpoint and an alternative to liberal bias. | + | |
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| - | *Conservapedia provides information about the [[American]] people that liberal critics would rather hide: for example, nearly 50 percent of Americans reject evolution and embrace [[creationism]], and even more want creationism taught alongside evolution in school. <ref>Bootie Cosgrove-Mather. [http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/22/opinion/polls/main657083.shtml Poll: Creationism Trumps Evolution], ''CBS News'', November 22, 2004.</ref> Another example is the fact that atheists- often claiming to be more equipped to help their fellow men than religious people- actually give less to charity than believers, even when church giving is excluded.
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| - | *Search results for controversial subjects such as [[atheism]] and [[evolution]] contain Conservapedia links within a few searches and often on the first page.<ref>[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS293US293&q=atheism&btnG=Search atheism - Google Search]</ref><ref>[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS293US293&q=theory+of+evolution&btnG=Search theory of evolution - Google Search]</ref>
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| - | *Many biographical articles contain religious references and information about the person’s religion, much more so than Wikipedia. Editor and college student Tasha Jones, ([[User:Taj|Taj]]) said of this aspect, “It gives me a better understanding of how people feel religion relates to our lives.” <ref>Stephanie Simon. [http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jun/19/nation/na-schlafly19 A conservative's answer to Wikipedia], ''Los Angeles Times'', June 19, 2007.</ref>
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| - | *Conservapedia is active in political advocacy. For example, it [[charter]]ed a bus for the 2009, 2010, and 2011 [[March for Life]].
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| - | ==References==
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| - | <references/>
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| - | ==See also==
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| - | *[[Conservapedia:How to edit a wiki videos]]
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| - | *[[Conservapedia:Commandments|Conservapedia Commandments]]
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| - | *[[Conservapedia:About|About Conservapedia]]
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| - | *[[Conservapedia:Articles mentioning Conservapedia]]
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| - | *[[Videos on Conservapedia]]
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| - | *[[Conservapedia:How Conservapedia Differs from Wikipedia]]
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| - | *[[Special:ListUsers/Siteadmin|List of Site Admins]]
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| - | *[[Conservative Links]]
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| - | == External links ==
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| - | *[http://www.intellectualconservative.com/ Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy.]
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| - | * [http://www.thehill.com The Hill website.]
| + | |
| - | *[http://anncoulter.com/ AnnCoulter.com.]
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| - | *[http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2007/07/30/2008-top-conservative-political-websites Top Conservative Political Websites.]
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| - | *[http://hughhewitt.com/ Hugh Hewitt.]
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| - | *[http://www.csmonitor.com/ The Christian Science Monitor.]
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| - | {{Conservapedia}} | + | |
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| - | [[Category:Conservapedia]][[Category:Wikis]][[Category:Encyclopedias]][[Category:Reference Material]][[Category:Conservative]][[Category:Websites]]
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Much speculation has been made about Conservapedia's relative impact on both the internet and political culture. Whilst Schlafly claims that "liberal" sites are on the decline, as demonstrated by the fact The Social Network didn't win the Academy Award it was nominated for, conservative websites, such as Conservapedia, are surging ahead.
Andrew Schlafly routinely states that Conservapedia gets lots of page views, and thus believes that people are using it as the encyclopedia it pretends to be. He is largely basing his page view statistics on the internal statistics of the MediaWiki software. However, these statistics are often misleading as they make no distinction between types of traffic, and can be easily manipulated by clickbots. Conservapedia routinely deletes and recreates articles that have inflated page view statistics as reported by the MediaWiki software, but the act of deletion alone confirms that the statistics have been manipulated and are thus unreliable. On top of this, Schlafly also says Wikipedia is deceitful for not using MediaWiki's statistics, even when these statistics are clearly unreliable and don't work in Wikimedia's heavily cached infrastructure anyway.
To give you an idea of what people are actually thinking about Conservapedia, googling Conservapedia yields more than half a million hits, though many are quite dubious. Ignoring the first three hits (which are for the site itself) nearly all the top results on google criticize or mock Conservapedia, with the exception, ironically, on listing #4, Wikipedia, which gives it about as fair an entry as one could hope for.
