Conservapedia

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.

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 an evolution case, led to the creation and launch of Conservapedia.

Though Conservapedia originally contained mostly history articles, it has grown over two years to be a general reference, with information about history, math, science, politics, religion and other topics. It also contains debates, and educational resources.

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"). Ever since then, it has continued to grow, and now has tens of millions of page views, and enjoys prominence on search engines.

Leadership

Unlike Wikipedia, which bills itself as a democratic system and ends up as a mobocracy, Conservapedia employs a merit system and a hierarchy.

Andrew Schlafly is the chief administrator and is the most prolific editor, followed by bureaucrats, sysops, and common users. Users who contribute substantial content may be promoted to sysop and bureaucrat, or gain extra user rights such as blocking power and uploading images.

Differences with Wikipedia

Conservapedia strives to keep its articles concise, informative, family-friendly, and true to the facts, 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.

Wikipedia articles may contain trivia, gossip, profanity, and even pornographic/sexually explicit images. The latter three are prohibited on Conservapedia and trivia is largely discouraged.

The administrative hierarchy prevents Conservapedia from being hijacked by a faction, and thus preserves it from mobocracy, as mentioned above.

Influential editors and users

• Ed Poor, active at Conservapedia for over as year, and at Wikipedia for 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.

• Conservative has contributed the majority of content to the extremely popular atheism, evolution, and homosexuality articles. The first two were articles of the year at Conservapedia, and the evolution article is one of the first results for a search on “evolution” in major search engines.

Testimonies and Impact

Conservapedia has been praised and ridiculed in the media, on blogs, and on rival sites. Critics claim that it contains fringe viewpoints, and supporters note that it simply provides another viewpoint and an alternative to liberal bias.

Conservapedia also 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. 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.

Search results for controversial subjects such as homsexuality and evolution contain Conservapedia links within a few searches and often on the first page.

Many biographical articles contain religious references and information about the person’s religion, much more so than Wikipedia. User and college student Tasha Jones, (Taj) said of this aspect, “It gives me a better understanding of how people feel religion relates to our lives.”

See Also

• Conservapedia Commandments
• About Conservapedia
• List of Site Admins