Talk:Conservapedia

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Anti-American

Is the use of Commonwealth spellings really the best example of Anti-American bias that Conservapedia has? Given that anyone who's ever actually read wikipedia will know, something like 9/10 a neutral article will have US spelling which is obviously greater then proportion of American vs Commonwealth speakers (especially when the large number of non-native speakers are considered) it seems a bit of a silly example. I'm not saying we should remove it, obviously not, just wondering if this is really what they mean when they say anti-American bias. I would have thought they're more concerned about the way we don't suggest the US is the best country in the world and everyone else who doesn't agree with the US is evil (well obviously that's not how they will put it but you get the idea) Nil Einne 21:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

That does seem to be their best example, though IMHO it's not nearly as amusing as their complaint that Wikipedia allows the use of CE/BCE (emphasis added). I don't think this is really relevant to this article though. It might in principle be relevant to the countering systemic bias project, but I think not. Elliotreed 06:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Your right and it also appears to be the example mostly covered in the media so there's nothing we can change there. Seems silly but if that's the best example they have and the one they tell the media, well so be it. Personally if I was them, I could come up with better examples but if that's the example they want to go by... Nil Einne 08:04, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

By "anti-American" they mean "anything which isn't from a patriotic conservative Christian American perspective". They object to Wikipedia content not being implicitly in favour and supportive of America, or being written from an American perspective on what they believe should be an American site. British spellings seem to be their biggest bugbear, though. You'd think they could muster some more provocative examples, but that's what they list on their page of Wikipedia biases. Kronix1986 12:51, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

The fact that you just went and changed the article to Queen's English amuses me thusly :) mattbuck 13:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, could someone explain to this obviously naive brit, why expounding freedom of speech is seen as anti-American? I was under the impression that the founding fathers were mostly humanists who went to America to escape the religious conservatism of 15th C. Europe. After all it's us that have our Head of State as Head of the national church, and USA who have the secular constitution. Kestrus 2007 March 08, 22:58 (GMT)

It is not considered anti-American, in general, but only by the group of people who sympathize with Conservapedia. Note that these are people who think that using CE instead of AD is an example, not of neutrality, but of anti-Christian beliefs. Your point about the Founding Fathers is true and only shows just how far this brand of conservatism, which ostensibly stands for respect to the Western canon, is actually ignorant of the very history it claims to champion. Interlingua ^{talk email} 01:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Conservapedia blocks new accounts

One question. Why is an virulently pro "creation account" site blocking "account creation"?Ding. Myles325a 00:30, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I have no clue! I can't create one, and I can't e-mail anyone there because none of them have a flippin' e-mail address! Scorpionman 01:53, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe there are plans to reopen registration fairly soon. Tsumetai 01:56, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

In the meantime, if you email the Eagle Forum they will give you an account. JoshuaZ 01:57, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Autonomous account creation was temporarily disabled, because of a lack of Sysops for policing. If you or anyone else want an account now, I believe you can email the Eagle Forum. If that does not work, please email me and I can get the appropriate email address. Account creation is expected to be reenabled at a future date. Geo. Talk to me 02:00, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

"Account registration has been reopened until... 11PM EST, which was 7 mins ago, but I made one 3 mins ago. Yay me!. --Hojimachong^talk 04:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Awesome! I always wanted to monitor a site for a registration window around 4-5am local time!</sarcasm> (Yeah, yeah, I know it's my own fault for living in such an anti-American timezone :P) Oh well. Maybe next time. Or maybe I'll beg mail the Eagle Forums for an account. --Sid 3050 13:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Aw hell, I live in America and that's past my bedtime (I get up before dawn). Besides, I'm from a blue state so they don't really want my goat-smellin' atheist pinko commie evolutionist liberal ass posting on their blessèd website anyway. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149; 23:02, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Provided that youobey the rules, you're welcome. Geo. Talk to me 01:22, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

This website is hilarious

I can't help but laugh at the blatant hypocrisy, ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity that Conservapedia displays. Strider01 17:35, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it's great. The more we can divert people like this from edit warring on our project, the better. — Omegatron 18:20, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

This site is ridiculous

So basically, they claim that kangaroos got to Australia -- after originating in the Middle East -- by floating there. On rafts. Which were created by Noah's flood. I mean, seriously? SERIOUSLY? -- CCJ

Yes, Mr and Mrs Skippy bounced all the way to OZ, or floated there on rafts. Considering that all but a couple of the world's marsupials are in Australia, are we to imagine that Mr and Mrs Muddle-Headed Wombat, and Gum-Chewing Koala, and Tassie Tiger, and Peter Platypus ( a monotreme actually) all saw Mr and Mrs Skippy on their way to Australia and in a gesture of marsupial solidarity, decided that all the animals with pouches should show Marsupial Solidarity and band together for the trip. And what an expedition that must have been! In the Museum of Sydney there is the skeleton of an ancient wombat - it is about the size and shape of a Wolkswagen. I wonder what brave masupials travelled on that raft with Mr and Mrs Muddleheaded Wombat.Myles325a 10:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Copyright violations

The current version (as of right now) of Conservapedia's article on Iraq appears to be a direct copyright violation of the Wikipedia article on Iraq. While Wikipedia does release all content to the GFDL, the GFDL also provides that if someone does copy content, it must remain in the GFDL, which I don't think is the case with Conservapedia. Dr. Cash 00:49, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I just reverted that and blocked the offender for 4 months. Geo. Talk to me 01:43, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Conservapedia doesn't use the GFDL? Really? I wonder if Jimbo knows that? Surely he wouldn't have given this statement (cited in this article) if he did: "Free culture knows no bounds. We welcome the reuse of our work to build variants." Can someone please confirm whether Conservapedia uses the GFDL? · j e r s y k o talk · 14:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I tried looking for their copyright policy and learned almost nothing other than the site's a mess. I mean, the privacy policy linked at the bottom of every page is basically a red link, the FAQ is unhelpful, and their "commandments", which are their only policies as far as I can tell, do not even address copyright (I understand it's a work in progress, but these are basic issues). I see no evidence that Conservapedia releases its content under a GFDL license, nor do I suspect such a nuanced approach to copyright to be found upon further review of the site. I'm going to message Jimbo and see if he wants to stick by that quote. · j e r s y k o talk · 14:22, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

See here (full discussion). I added some info on this, but it got reverted as OR.[1] I'm going to work it back in, because I think the OR issue is borderline at most, while if someone reads Jimbo's quote and assumes that both Wikipedia and Conservapedia content are part of a "free culture" that "knows no bounds," and copies from one to the other, the copyvio will not be borderline. Thus, I think there is more harm in not clarifying a possible misimpression than in stretching a strict interpretation of OR. --Groggy Dice T | C 16:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

How is it borderline? Its unpublished synthesis of material from primary sources that are involved in the article, how is that borderline?Tmtoulouse 17:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Tmtoulouse in regard to the addition being original research (the fact that I happen to think the addition was probably correct is of no consequence). I think the best approach here is to encourage Jimbo to correct his previous statement, which we could then be mentioned here, and I've already asked Jimbo to do so. · j e r s y k o talk · 19:03, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

If the concern is OR, that doesn't strike me as any better. Personally contacting someone in an article to get a statement from them is classic OR. And, depending on what venue he issued his correction in, it could be argued whether it would be a RS or appropriate source to include.

I still see the OR problem with my edit as marginal. While use of primary sources is discouraged in favor of secondary sources, it is not absolutely forbidden, and Schlafly's comments fall under the SELFPUB exception for information about his own site. So I think his comment can come in.

So what about the "synthesis" issue? I can see why one would think that taking Schlafly's statement, comparing it to the GFDL, and declaring them to be incompatible, violates the "A and B, then C" prohibition. And someone familiar with the GFDL would immediately know from Schlafly's remark that content from one was not to be copied to the other. However, there are many casual Wikipedia users who aren't familiar with copyleft, for whom that would not be obvious. In the interests of preventing people from inadvertently violating copyright, we should be as explicitly clear as possible that they are incompatible, rather than counting on readers to draw the inference from Schlafly's remark. And although I hate to invoke IAR (which has created so many issues recently), I think this has a higher priority than OR concerns. Up above, even you (Tmtoulouse) consented to letting in some "potentially WP:OR items" because it was "only fair."

Or perhaps you feel that the OR came from using it as a counterpoise to Jimbo's quote, i.e., that it was a "synthesis" of Jimbo and Schlafly. Again, I think clarifying a potential misimpression should take precedence over a strict OR interpretation. But if that's the issue, it could be moved to a different paragraph and edited it so that it was not a direct response to Jimbo, rather than deleted entirely.

At any rate, if you're not going to accept a clarification of the licensing issue, it might be better to just remove the Jimbo quote as potentially misleading. People who go on to read the source might still be misled, but at least Wikipedia itself would not be propagating a misimpression.

I should note that the comment had already been removed from Schafly's talk page by the time I checked out Conservapedia (he didn't archive when he cleared out his old business). I was pointed to the link by a talkback on one of the blogs (which set off another round of "the GFDL is too complex for him? what a moron!" posts). However, even if I could find the blog again, citing it would replace the OR issue with a RS issue. --Groggy Dice T | C 23:15, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, give me time to digest all the various wiki policy pages and your edit again and I will see if my mind changes about it. I am sympathetic to getting as much factual information in article as possible. The weight of my opinion in this manner should be taken with a grain of salt since I haven't been editing wikipedia very long. Tmtoulouse 03:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of this (should have checked), but fyi. No reason to worry about WP:NOR if Jimbo has already corrected himself, supposedly multiple times. I'll look for such an instance. · j e r s y k o talk · 14:31, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I can't find one. Perhaps the criticism is being made but is not being reported. I'll ask him to clarify again. · j e r s y k o talk · 14:40, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps another approach would be to contact Schlafly and recommend that he should make a statement about his copyright licensing on his own site, for the sake of his own editors and potential contributors. --Groggy Dice T | C 03:51, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Protection

I think that this page she be protected. Although (and I agree) some people think the conservapedia is a idiotic, hypocratic pile of rubbish, that is not for me or any other to say on Wikipedia, and this page is becoming quite vandalised. Matt. P 17:48, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Its coming in and a very slow rate, there is plenty of people that have this on their watch list at the moment, we have managed to revert all the vandalism very quickly. I don't think protection is needed at all. Tmtoulouse 17:53, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks for looking out.Matt. P 13:30, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Relative quality of Conservapedia and Wikipedia

After reading Conservapedia's concerns about Wikipedia, I decided to do some measuring of their relative quality. The result is my Relative quality of Conservapedia and Wikipedia article on my own Wiki. I don't know if any of the info in that would be considered useful here, but I'm certain that adding it to the article myself would be a conflict of interest. -Harmil 16:33, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Note: I plan for this to be an ongoing article (hence the dates in the section headings). It's unfair to assume that Conservapedia will start off as high-quality as Wikipedia, so the real goal of the analysis is to see if it is catching up or not. The initial results are poor, as one might expect. However, if they open up account creation again, they might improve. Time will tell. -Harmil 16:36, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

• How about comparing Conservapedia with Wikipedia as it was when it had only 19,000 articles? Might be more interesting. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:58, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

That's a fine thing to do, but I don't see any particular reason that the two have to overlap. What I'm measuring is the quality differential over time to see if it converges or diverges. -Harmil 18:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, comparing Conservapedia with Wikipedia as of 2007 seems to me to be like comparing the baseball skills of someone in the Little League and someone in the National League. You can do it, but what's the point? They're not even in the same league. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:54, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

That might seem fair, but read what I wrote on that page. I call out two scenarios: random pages (sure, we expect a new effort to not do as well, there, but the results are rather dramatic, including one citation that's a link to a caricature of Hitler with no text, and out of my random sampling NO pages that have any citations that back up their content... NONE); and a second scenario where I compare one of the articles that Conservapedia calls out as specifically improving on the deficiencies of Wikipedia (Benjamin Franklin). It's not a comparison of article count or of overall capacity to deal with the "whole of human knowledge," as I think Mr. Wales put it, but a simple evaluation of their claim that they're including only factual and well-cited information that removes Wikipedia's biases. At this time, that claim appears to be false... my ongoing study aims to determine how that changes over time. -Harmil 16:07, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

• I would like to point out that the Conservapedia entry on Josef Stalin is rife with factual inaccuracies, not to mention the fact that the writing is awful. It sounds, actually, like it was written by a fifth grader.

--CCJ 16:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there are lots of errors there, and there are lots of errors here. But the difference is here, anyone can correct them; there -- not so much. Thus, the Conservatives are told King James I of England is still a "confirmed bachelor", and that Henry Liddell's relatives have "royal" titles, while Wikipedians are told the name of King James's wife, and recognize that peerage titles aren't "royal titles". So when Andrew Schlafly doesn't understand something, such as Catholicism's views on evolution, or what "royalty" is, there's no chance of Conservapedia getting it right. - Nunh-huh 01:57, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

New sources, including where this article is cited

http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2007/03/05/cq_2356.html may have some good material from Schlafly about the "why" of creation http://scienceblogs.com/authority/2007/03/conservapedia_howler_of_the_da.php Criticism of the lecture series and the homeschooled aspect of the wiki http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/conservapedia-the-word-says-it-all/ And NYtime sources this article bringing up the issue of the neutrality flag. Tmtoulouse 17:41, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

From the CQ article (http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2007/03/05/cq_2356.html) there is some new material that I think might worth working in,first is a couple quotes one from a wikipedia admin and a response by Schalfly about the perceived bias:

Schlafly says he also suspects anti-American sentiment fuels the many British spellings of words he’s found on the site. Wikipedia officials deny this, as well as Schlafly’s other charges of left-leaning bias. “Anyone who has edited a political topic can tell you that it has plenty of Republicans and conservatives, and they get their points of view represented in articles,” says Dan Smith, a Wikipedia administrator who is among the site’s most prolific editors. But Schlafly says Wikipedia makes conservatives feel unwelcome: “The mob rule on Wikipedia tends to drive out conservatives and tends to drive out intelligent contributors.”

And then some interesting quotes from Schalfly about recent vandalism:

And lately, Schlafly says, that same mob has turned up on his cyber-doormat. Maverick conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan directed his readers to Conservapedia last month. They promptly swamped it with parody entries, causing its servers to crash. Schlafly says the attack “shocked” him: “It’s one thing to disagree, another thing to try to destroy something you disagree with.” But he also appears to endorse the old-media view that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. “We’ve survived it,” he says, “and in the long run it might have helped us by attracting attention to our site.”

I will think about how to work it in, but if others see a way before me be BOLD! Tmtoulouse 19:19, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I'd suspect a major flux of parodists hit Conservapædia when it was featured on PZ Myers's blog Pharyngula [2]. Anville 20:23, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The wave of parody seems to have ebbed, but it has left some flotsam cast up on the Conservapedian beach, not all of which has been gathered and removed. I'm not exactly sure what's happening, but apparently new account creation is only enabled during new time windows and by application to the Eagle Forum. In effect new users are admitted in small groups, probably (guessing here) at a time when it's convenient for someone to watch and see what their initial behavior is like. Conservapedia's Alexa rank is now up to 59,587, but Alexa's "reach" and traffic charts look to me as if there was a peak around Feb 28/March 1st, which was when the liberal bloggers were having a lot of fun and there was a lot of parody vandalism.

The number of editors and amount of editing activity is considerably up from where it was a week ago. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:31, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

License?

Compare this quite interessting discussion: Aschlafly#CreationWiki. --Nemissimo II 19:15, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

US/UK date

Anyone know how to fix the third box at the top of the page? It says the article appeared on 3 August 2007 -- impossible, in this space/time continuum. At first I thought it was a spoof or vandal, but now I see it is just a cross-Atlantic miscommunication for 8 March. Please always write the month as a word, not just in xx/xx/xxxx format. BrainyBabe 22:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, the whole "MM/DD vs DD/MM" issue is weird. Changed it to "March 8, 2007" :) --Sid 3050 02:02, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia vs. en-wiki

Obviously, Conservapedia equates "Wikipedia" and "English Wikipedia", but we should not. NPOV policy holds for all WP projects, but the era notation and spelling issues, being English-specific, are restricted to en-wiki. dab (𒁳) 12:19, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Editing Conservapedia

I'm getting the impression that Conservapedia doesn't accept edits from non-American IPAs. At all events, it rejects mine, and won't log me in either. Would other non-American contributors care to check? If so, the fact ought presumably to figure in the article -- and might suggest a case of 'please don't threaten my little island of ignorance'! --PL 17:53, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Last I checked, it wouldn't let me register or edit as an IP, and I live in the U.S. Apparently, you can go to Eagle Forum and request an account. --Transfinite 18:13, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Anonymous editing is not allowed. We have reopened registration until 11PM EST tonight. Geo. Talk to me 02:28, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Why not beyond? And why does the site in that case say (top RH corner) that registration isn't necessary? This is Saturday, and it still won't accept me. --PL 09:58, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

User Names

The site does not have any rules for user names. However i created a user name entitled "The Devil" and I posted very conservative Christian Ideas includding the beliefs of christianity and salvation. Both were very pro-Jesus and pro conservative Christian. I suggest you read my edits on the site if you think otherwise. However i was blocked for my user name. This goes along with the block for non american IP addresses as mentioned above. They will block you for your username even if there is no rule against it, and even if you post info siding with their beliefs.

I don't think evangelical Christians have the best sense of humor when it comes to Satan :P. --Hojimachong^talk 04:12, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Can we separate discussion about conservapedia from discussion about this wikipedia article? Andjam 04:23, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Conservapedia prohibits all IP editing, be it domestic or foreign. You were most likely blocked for

having an obscene username. I am creating a page to handle complaints. Geo. Talk to me 05:20, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Uh.... if people can't edit pages, how are they supposed to use a page to complain?