Feeling Entitled To One's Facts
By Nicole Belle Sunday Feb 25, 2007 6:30pmIf you haven't heard about Conservapedia yet, you've missed the biggest story of internet hackery since Malkin's last diatribe.
It may sound like a resource for fans of jam but Conservapedia is an attempt to redress the supposed liberal bias in Wikipedia. Not content with having their own news channel, America's conservatives want their own facts too. Soon they'll be breaking off and forming their own country.
Among the criticisms the founders of Conservapedia make of their better-known rival are its use of BCE/CE for dates instead of BC/AD and the fact that it sometimes uses British rather than American spellings.
I've mentioned before two major problems all wikis must face: inaccuracy and vandalism. The fact that Conservapedia is openly partisan amplifies both problems.
[..T]he site is a massive target for anyone with a contradictory point of view. Bill Clinton's page, for example, contains a very obvious dig at President George W Bush: "Bill Clinton managed to serve two terms without botching the prosecution of two wars, manipulating intelligence, engaging in a systematic program of torture, or mishandling the federal response to flooding of a major American city. Obviously, he is the devil incarnate."
The website that results is very odd indeed. Some entries are clearly fake. There is no such thing as a tree octopus, obviously.
Elsewhere it gets harder to tell what's real and what isn't. For some entries, the author may have been a little too enthusiastic in their beliefs or barking mad or a malicious liberal. It's really impossible to be sure.
Jack and Jill blog found some interesting discrepancies in Conservapedia's entries and calls them on their racist agenda. Blogenfreude finds his own little gem. For those of you who missed its inclusion in the Blog Round Up, Jon Swift covers some of Conservapedia's own special learning.
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...Conservapedia would be at least as funny as the Onion -- certainly their entries are more transparently false than anything the Onion turns out.
Seeing the link to "Stone Age" at Blogenfreude, I followed it to see what the current status of that entry is -- and there isn't much there. Three short paragraphs; one of which deals with the beliefs of "young Earth creationists." Best of all, one of the five "references" is to "Fox News." I didn't bother following the link.
Anyway, while I was on the Conservapedia site, I decided to check out "Ice Age." What a treat. I learned that there is such a thing as "secular geology." During my own education, I missed the part where "secular scientists" did battle with "creationary scientists." Huh? "Creationary scientists?" They're kidding, right?
I also learned that because the study of ice ages is so "remarkably interdisciplinary" there "are no real experts." Clever strategy. Since it's obvious that creationary scientists have no meaningful background in anything remotely pertaining to science, they demote real scientists by claiming the impossibility of expertise. Now, it's just a fight between their non-experts (secular devils) and our non-experts (God-fearing saints). And, of course, "we" have the Bible on our side. Game. Set. Match.
I'm surprised Conservapedia doesn't champion illiteracy since reading threatens to expose people to the evils of "secular science."
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