Conservapedia

Conservapedia

Type of site	Internet encyclopedia project
Available in	English
Owner	Andrew Schlafly
Created by	Various
URL	www.conservapedia.com
Commercial	No

Conservapedia is a wiki-based web encyclopedia project written from a socially and American Conservative Christian viewpoint. Conservapedia was founded by Andrew Schlafly, son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly. Andrew Schlafly stated that he founded the project because he felt Wikipedia had a liberal, anti-Christian, and anti-American bias. Conservapedia's editorial policies are guided by what the site's administrators refer to as the Conservapedia Commandments. Unlike Wikipedia, only users logged in to registered accounts can make changes to articles. Every day between the hours of 1:00AM to 6:00AM (EST), editing is disabled for all users except those with special user rights.

As of February 9, 2008, the site estimated that it contained 21,503 "legitimate content pages". Conservapedia's earliest articles date from November 22, 2006.

History and overview

Conservapedia founder Andrew Schlafly

Conservapedia originated as a project for homeschooled students in New Jersey. Schlafly has said that he hopes for the site to become a general resource for United States teachers and to work as a general counterpoint to the liberal bias he perceives in Wikipedia. Conservapedia is not affiliated with Wikipedia or Wikipedia's umbrella organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, although both sites use the free MediaWiki software originally created for Wikipedia. Conservapedia is used by Schlafly's "Eagle Forum University" program with material for various online courses (e.g., American history) being stored on the site. Eagle Forum University is associated with Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum.

Conservapedia and Wikipedia - editorial conflicts

When it launched its online encyclopedia project, Conservapedia asserted the need for an alternative to Wikipedia due to editorial philosophy conflicts. Its "Conservapedia Commandments" differ from Wikipedia's editorial policies, which include following a neutral point of view and rules against original research. In contrast to Wikipedia's core policy of neutrality, Schlafly has stated that "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."

Schlafly has also said,

"Wikipedia does not poll the views of its editors and administrators. They make no effort to retain balance. It ends up having all the neutrality of a lynch mob."

In a March 2007 interview with The Guardian newspaper, Schlafly stated, "I've tried editing Wikipedia, and found it and the biased editors who dominate it censor or change facts to suit their views. In one case my factual edits were removed within 60 seconds — so editing Wikipedia is no longer a viable approach." On March 7, 2007 Schlafly was interviewed on BBC Radio 4's flagship morning show, Today, opposite Wikipedia administrator Jim Redmond. Schlafly raised several concerns: that the article on the Renaissance does not give any credit to Christianity, that many Wikipedia articles use non-American spellings even though most users are American, that the article on American activities in the Philippines has a distinctly anti-American bias, and that attempts to include pro-Christian or pro-American views are removed very quickly. Schlafly's statement that Wikipedia is "six times more liberal than the American public" has been referred to as "sensational" and criticized as a calculation which does not use a solid statistical basis.

Religion and science

Many Conservapedia articles support the Young Earth creationist point of view. An example of such article content differences is the subject of evolution. Conservapedia presents evolution as a scientific theory lacking support. It asserts that creationists, creation scientists and some secular science journals state that evolution is in conflict with the majority of evidence, whereas Wikipedia presents the mainstream viewpoint that evolution is an observable biological process explainable by scientific theory. Conservapedia also criticizes the theory of relativity, suggesting that academics who question the theory suffer for their beliefs.

In contrast to the mainstream viewpoint, Conservapedia's article states that all kangaroos descend from a single pair that were taken aboard Noah's Ark. Schlafly had defended the statement as presenting a valid alternative to evolution. Another claim is that "Einstein's work had nothing to do with the development of the atomic bomb." An entry on the "Pacific Northwest Arboreal Octopus" has received particular attention, a page which Schlafly has asserted was intended as a parody of environmentalism. As of March 4 2007, the entry has been deleted. Science writer Carl Zimmer points out that much of what appears to be inaccurate or inadequate information about science and scientific theory can be traced back to an over-reliance on citations from the works of home-schooling textbook author Dr. Jay L. Wile. On March 19, 2007, the British free newspaper Metro ran the article Weird, wild wiki on which anything goes articulating the dismissal of Conservapedia by the Royal Society (The British academy of science), saying "People need to be very careful about where they look for scientific information."

English Wikipedia's policy allowing both CE/BCE and AD/BC notation has been interpreted as anti-Christian bias.

Politics

Schlafly said that Wikipedia's article on the history of the Democratic Party is an "attempt to legitimize the modern Democratic Party by going back to Thomas Jefferson" and that it is "specious and worth criticizing."

The Conservapedia article about Barack Obama states that he "has no clear personal achievement that cannot be explained as the likely result of affirmative action." This statement has been criticized as "idiotic and despicable". Some Conservapedia editors urged that it be changed or deleted. Schlafly responded by asserting that the Harvard Law Review uses racial quotas and by stating: "The statement about affirmative action is accurate and will remain in the entry."

"Americanism"

Conservapedia originally maintained a policy that only allowed for American spelling on the site, which was later modified.

Licensing of content

Conservapedia allows users to "use any of the content on this site with or without attribution." However, the copyright policy also states "This license is revocable only in very rare instances of self-defense, such as protecting continued use by Conservapedia editors or other licensees."

Schlafly has indicated that Conservapedia has not adopted what he considers "Wikipedia's complex copyright rules," adding that Conservapedia "reserves the right to object to copying of its materials." Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has raised concerns about the fact that the project is not licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) or a similar copyleft license, stating that "People who contribute [to Conservapedia] are giving them full control of the content, which may lead to unpleasant results".

Conservapedia does not allow users to use Wikipedia content or mirrors as a reference, specifically listing the practice as a violation of its first commandment. The exception to this commandment is "It is appropriate to quote or cite Wikipedia to illustrate the liberal view of an issue."

Reactions and criticisms

Creationism, conservatism, and bias

Wikipedia's co-creator Jimmy Wales says that he has no objections to the project, stating "free culture knows no bounds," while acknowledging that sites such as Conservapedia are directly in line with Wikipedia's goals. Wales denied Schlafly's claims of bias on Wikipedia. The Conservapedia project has come under significant criticism by the general public for factual inaccuracies and factual relativism. Conservapedia has also been compared to CreationWiki, a wiki written from the perspective of creationism.

Tom Flanagan, a conservative professor of political science at the University of Calgary, has argued that Conservapedia is more about religion than conservatism and that it "is far more guilty of the crime they're attributing to Wikipedia [than Wikipedia itself.]" Its scope as an encyclopedia is limited: According to the founders, it "offers a historical record from a Christian and conservative perspective." APC magazine reports this to be representative of Conservapedia's own problem with bias.

The project has also been criticized for promoting a dichotomy between conservatism and liberalism and for promoting relativism with the false dilemma that there "often are two equally valid interpretations of the facts."

Bryan Ochalla writing for the The Advocate referred to the project as "Wikipedia for the bigoted."

Conservapedia and dissenting views

In April 2007, Dr. Peter Lipson, a doctor of internal medicine, attempted to edit the article on breast cancer to include evidence against Conservapedia's statement that abortion raises a woman's health risks, but found his medical credentials being questioned by the site's sysops and by Schlafly himself. His edits were deleted, and Schlafly and the other administrators ended the debate by blocking Lipson's account.

Attacks

After being blocked for his edits, Lipson and several other editors started a rival website, RationalWiki, from which they monitor and comment on Conservapedia, and—by their own admission—once engaged in vandalism of Schlafly's site.

Wired magazine reported that Conservapedia was "attracting lots of derisive comments on blogs and a growing number of phony articles written by mischief makers." Iain Thomson, writing in Information World Review, has written that "leftist subversives" may have been creating deliberate parody entries.

In November 2007, what is believed to be an automated click bot attack struck Conservapedia, driving many of their homosexuality-related articles into the top ten most viewed pages on the site.