Heated debates at Conservapedia offer window onto civil war ripping apart conservative movement

[Ian David]

Politics and Power

* Right Wingers
Conservapedia: Bastion of the Reality-Denying Right
by Barrett Brown
April 23, 2009, 9:30 AM

Is Wikipedia a tool of left-wing propagandists? Some conservatives seem to think so. The “Bias in Wikipedia” entry at Conservapedia, a Web site founded in 2007 to serve as a right-minded alternative to the original user-generated encyclopedia, lists more than 150 such offenses.

Among other things, it is noted that Wikipedia “promotes suicide with 21,544 entries that mention this depravity” (which is to say that Wikipedia mentions suicide too often); that “Wikipedia's article on atheism fails to mention that atheism is a causal factor for suicide” (which is to say that Wikipedia does not mention suicide often enough); that Wikipedia is insufficiently respectful of Johnny Appleseed, owing to the fact that Appleseed was a Christian minister; that Wikipedia administrators deleted the entry on “Hollywood values,” which listed “examples of how the liberal ideology harms people”; that Wikipedia is replete with “Anglophilia,” a charge not often leveled at American liberals; and that Wikipedia “lies to exaggerate the credentials of atheist Richard Dawkins” by claiming that Dawkins was the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. Wikipedia's campaign of deception on this last point has been so pervasive that even the administrators of Oxford University believe that they conferred this title on Dawkins.

Of course, Dawkins was indeed the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, as Conservapedia's own entry on Dawkins now acknowledges to be true (although its Bias in Wikipedia page still accuses its editors of lying in service to liberalism for stating the very same thing). The process by which this simple fact finally made its way into the Dawkins article is recorded in full on the associated “talk page,” a feature of wiki entries wherein contributors discuss changes to be made to a particular article. On Wikipedia, such talk pages are often very interesting, particularly when the subject in question is controversial. On Conservapedia, they are often surreal, even if the subject in question is not particularly controversial at all.

The written debate over whether or not Oxford is better qualified than Conservapedia to decide who is and isn't a professor at Oxford lasted more than a year and involved tens of thousands of words. This is more time and energy than usually goes into such wiki-arguments. The chief proponent of the notion that Conservapedia is more authoritative than Oxford was Andrew Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia, son of conservative icon Phyliss Schlafly, and one-man metaphor for what ails the modern conservative movement. On the other side of the debate were several other Conservapedia contributors who argued in vain that Oxford itself had already made clear that Dawkins had held the professorship in question since 1996.


A special Earth Day-themed image from the good people at Conservapedia.

More:
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/04/conservapedia-bastion-of-the-realitydenying-right.html



See also:


it's not wiki it's wacky
Topic started by IanDB1 on Feb-24-07 02:00 PM (0 replies)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=280402


Conservapedia Already Ravaged by Libtards (Wonkette's headline, NOT mine!)
Topic started by IanDB1 on Feb-22-07 05:53 PM (1 replies)
Last modified by muriel_volestrangler on Feb-22-07 06:08 PM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=268855

[Somawas]

1. Conservapedia is my go to source for batshit craziness.

nt

[Dollface]

2. What an entertaining and disturbing site. Great look into the mind of the "base".

I can see using it for a party game. With drinking.

Debate: Is homosexuality responsible for totalitarianism?
If you answered "that is ridiculous" you are wrong! Do a shot of holy water.
If you answered yes, do a shot of sterno. Your mind is already a goner.

[SIMPLYB1980]

3. Not sure why. I probably shouldn't say this because

I know it's ment as an insult, but something about that pic of Al Gore is awesome!

[LeftinOH]

4. Conservapedia's list of "Most Viewed" pages from their own site:

As of today - its a continual rotation of the same few themes:

Atheism...............4,731,828
Main Page............4,706,329
Homosexuality......3,296,839
Barack Hussein Obama.1,061,933
Wikipedia..............709,265
Adolf Hitler...........589,147
Homosexual obsession...579,955
John McCain............568,147
Examples Wikipedia Bias..538,812
Liberal................535,559