RationalWiki:How I found RationalWiki/2012

=2012=

December 2012

 * I was googling Hutchison Effects for researching Dr.Judy Wood's theories related to 9/11 dustification involving clean nuclear generating radio waves of many frequencies that when done in a static field like a hurricane or thunder storm provides a way to demagnetize nuclear forces to cause cold pyroclastics. PhT (talk) 03:56, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I saw it on my friend's computer screen in the middle of class.
 * I was researching some delusional beliefs a mental health patient under my care has expressed; things relating to Judge Judy as a kind of "queen of the Illuminati", the 2012 Mayan Apocalypse and Freemasonry. --ProjeKtWEREWOLF 12:07, 12 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I was searching on Google for an article to try to explain to my daughter the crackpot theories regarding water fluoridation, when I found your article on same. I had a good long laugh at the gif describing the evidence for those theories - I think I love you. :-D
 * Found tvtropes's article on youse guys. Good stuff.
 * Stumbled on Conservapedia during a random Google search, read it for awhile, laughed myself into severe chest pain from how insanely nutty it was, heard this website exists to make fun of Conservapedia's insanity, so I decided to join up Arcane (talk) 02:19, 21 December 2012 (UTC)Arcane

November 2012

 * I found it on a trolling forum, someone said what a piece of shit RattionalWiki is and how fun it is to troll. Angela Blake (talk) 15:26, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * David Gerard's Dreamwidth. Hydrogen and Time (talk) 14:49, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Got a "tip" from a regular reader of my Vermont Secession blog. ThomasRowley (talk) 18:53, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Found through repeated citations on Reddit (usually during discussions involving alternative medicine or scams)ikinone
 * Wikipedia's article on CE/BCE lead me to its article on Conservapedia, and it mentioned RationalWiki, so I decided to check this place out. ShadowFan-X (talk) 01:28, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

October 2012

 * I came across the debating technique Gish Gallop while doing my usual browsing, which I half-intend to attempt in a school debate. The site caught my attention and I browsed through material on creationists, gay marriage and the like until I decided to join up. I think that this is a decent place to test my ideas and keep up with the crazier side of politics. The  Islander   14:11, 2 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I actually came across this site a while ago. I don't remember what I was looking up at the time. I enjoyed reading the articles, and often come here to read random articles when I get bored at work. I first made an account when I came across a minor typo in one of the articles, and decided to correct it. Mcnamara12 (talk) 15:09, 3 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I was researching the 'Gish Gallup', the argumentative fallacy employed by Mitt Romney against Obama last night (not that I watched a debate between two corporate megahorns). I shortly discovered the article on 'Red-Letter Christians', surfed to the article on Mormons and discovered your wonderful sense of humor!  ````


 * While responding to a Youtube troll someone referred me to Gish Gallop


 * That was a long time ago, maybe while searching information about a logical fallacy or a crank, something I usually do since eons. At that time I didn't think of registering, but the article on Zakir Naik,being so small, I decided to practice my English a little (I'm French) and write something to rebuke all his nonsense. Tough job, there's so much. There's a good chance that I will fail miserably by procrastination. Sultan Rahi (talk) 13:00, 6 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I was directed here by a pro-Creationism troll (I'll leave him unnamed to protect what is left of his dignity). After spending a few minutes giggling about it I spent the next two hours hitting random page and giggling some more, and decided it would be silly not to be part of the community. Foxytastic (talk) 02:05, 11 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I came across the article Conservapedia:Conservapedian relativity from the RationalWiki main page, while looking for information about the notorious Gish Gallop. I thought it described special relativity poorly, and I got hooked. Zaslav (talk) 04:27, 13 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I popped in to see what the Wiki is about after reading some posts by an admin here in the MediaWiki-l mailing list. My first exploration was the Conservapedia:Conservapedian relativity article, I then went to the mentioned Conservapedia page and got some belly laughs over their idiocy, then returned here for a few hours of great mirth over the absurd things some folks wish to believe.Wzrd1 (talk) 02:31, 14 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I found RW when I was doing some research on chemtrails because I was doing a lot of research into conspiracy theories (mostly for lulz). I got hooked instantly, and I sometimes spend all my free time at work hitting "random page", or I'll look up something specific, and just follow related links in the article.  RW has really helped me with my understanding of logical fallacies, which I understood as a concept (I knew when an argument didn't make sense), but until RW I couldn't identify the fallacies and know how to properly rebutt them. Reverend Lucifer (talk) 19:18, 18 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Was searching for a debunking of the Freeman of the Land movement after someone showed me the "It's An Illusion" video.

Lowell Aldridge Grainger Cox Lowell Weasley 04:17, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Someone provided a link to you at the political blog | Little Green Footballs. - Phage (talk) 23:42, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Classmate pointed it out one day (in class, no less) Percival

September 2012

 * I was browsing Twitter and saw this tweet. Thus the first article I read was Poe's Law. From there I went to the main page, then to RationalWiki, and then straight to the "Add RationalWiki (en)" option in my search engine sources. Sure, it may be a wiki, but it seems more trustworthy than certain other places... 86.15.236.184 (talk) 08:49, 9 September 2012 (UTC) (registered as TQM (talk))
 * Trusworthy? Scream!! (talk) 08:55, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I would never accuse RationalWiki of being trusworthy. Mostly because I have spell check. :P TQM (talk) 07:56, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Fuck, I wouldn't even call RW trustworthy, I know because I wrote half of it! Scarlet A.pngsshole silverbrain.png 14:55, 10 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I was doing research on "revealed religion", trying to determine whether there is or is not such a thing as an "unrevealed religion" or would those more properly be called a "philosophies" or something. Googled "revealed religion" and this wiki was the 2nd hit (the 1st was a dictionary definition).  Pretty impressive that you guys have the #2 hit for "revealed religion"! Marteau (talk) 06:00, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

August 2012

 * I was browsing TVTropes, when I decided to look up Conservapedia's article, which lead me to a link here. I greatly enjoy the site, and even though I am Roman Catholic, I relate more to a humanist viewpoint (and certainly don't agree with Fundamentalist beliefs). I'm studying in Electrical Engineering, and want to move into Aerospace or Aeronautical Engineering (which doesn't help me here, given that article with the Engineers who think they are experts on all sciences and tend to be hardcore fundies...). Thanks for reading, hope I didn't bore anyone. DavidBascombe (talk) 07:19, 3 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I was using a procrastination tool and saw a link on another user's page. The first article I read was RationalWiki, because it seemed the rational thing to do. I registered and started editing within minutes of discovery, and my first one involved lobsterish zoomorphic deities . --Peter Talk 05:29, 16 August 2012 (UTC)


 * I was on Facebook, and was linked to some dumb conversation by a bunch of Creationists, and they mentioned how rude, vulgar and wrong about "God's Creation" Evowiki and RationalWiki were, so I had one of my "sounds legit" moments and found my way here. I liked what I saw. Many thanks! --Rob 15:37, 16 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I was trying to explain to someone just how big of a flake Mike Adams is, and RationalWiki had the most succinct summary of the woo-slingin' dingbat I could find.


 * I first discovered Rationalwiki when searching for articles about the claims made by conspiracy theorists that there would be a fake alien invasion at the London Olympics, which of course didn’t happen, and was never going to, to see what sort of response they would have in view of this non-event. Curiously, or perhaps not, they seem to have gone rather quiet on the subject, but one can presume that instead of feeling slightly foolish many of them are probably congratulating themselves on foiling the evil and fiendish plot instigated by the evil Illuminati, NWO, Freemasons, Lizard People, Women’s Institute or whatever ( I can imagine the evil high command sulking in their secret base under Denver airport muttering in a manner reminiscent of the cartoon villains in Scooby Doo that they’d have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling kids with their laptops).  Whilst doing this web search wading waist deep through conspiracy drivel I found a link to the Rationwiki page on Ian R Crane, one of the leading proponents of the fake alien invasion idea, amongst many other loopy theories he endlessly expounds upon out there in the realm of the paranoid, the deranged and the deluded.  Finally I’d found a site that cut through all the rubbish being spouted with intelligence, insight and the occasional hilarious put down.  So thank you for some sanity in the face of so much irrationality.

July 2012

 * I was scouring the internet for a relatively left-wing (I loathe such terminology I must add), rationalist encyclopædia (gotta love the pretentious ligatures xD) that would satisfy my philosophical, scientific and psychological interests. Stumbling across this site, I found it pleasingly noetic and suitable for my requirements, hahaha. I hesitated to inaugurate myself for years, but I feel I have some decidedly idiosyncratic ontological and.poetical contributions to make. Peace and love. Kalokagathia (talk) 03:09, 2 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Angel Gabriel directed me here to witness to the heathens. Ratwiki (talk) 23:20, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

– — … ° ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → • §
 * I used Dogpile to look up "prayer" and found you. eknhok Eknhok (talk) 04:11, 3 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Saw a friend use it. Winter Whisper (talk) 01:25, 13 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I was reading an article on the New York Jewish community's cover up of child sex abuse when one of the article comments directed me to check out the incredibly absurd Conservapedia. If I had had a gun in my hand I would have ended my life because of the content and loss of faith in humanity that that site brought me.  But in Googling it, I found this site and my faith was restored.  So thank you RationalWiki for saving my life...albeit I still would have had to find a gun. CounselorUSN (talk) 14:51, 18 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Saw this site was full of butthurt atheist lefties who can't think critically to save their lives, so I thought I'd try to make the place a little more rational and a little less retarded. Information (talk) 11:38, 29 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I was Searching Hard for the longest time for a place to Express such Creativity And Wit that I produce inside my own Autistic head and I believe this is now the place where Truthful, Honest, REASON can be shown to the world. Thank you!!! Christian Weston Chandler (talk) 17:25, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

June 2012

 * Google. Desmond (talk) 03:56, 14 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Westonbirt (talk) 20:52, 15 June 2012 (UTC) : By Conservapedia. Then I found it was a good compromise between Uncyclopedia huge *ssholes and Wikipedia tight-*sses.


 * I found out about RW from Pharyngula, which many of my friends read. I've been reading this site for over six months, and I decided to join this morning. TheLateGatsby (talk) 13:25, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Long time lurker forgot where originally. TheShade (talk) 02:01, 20 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Found this via National Atheist Party website! Derfboy (talk) 06:45, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I googled for "esowatch", because I couldn't reach esowatch.com and wanted to know why. Consequently, the first article I read was EsoWatch. 79.245.108.168 (talk) 22:28, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

May 2012

 * I found it through a forum post on the Citizendium. I first looked at the RationalWiki articles on astrology and theosophy. Scireigns (talk) 20:30, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I found it via a Facebook post that pointed to this article: "The Heartland Institute Sinks to a New Low", Discover Magazine Jdavis ls (talk) 00:04, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I found it several months ago on Encyclopedia Dramatica on an article about the Gish Gallop and finally decided to hop aboard. ...your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle. (talk) 09:09, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Came here from a post on JREF. Don't remember the topic.  My goal is to keep from going crazy, apply Strunk & White, and end apostrophe abuse. Nowhere Man (talk) 03:24, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I followed a link from the reference list at the bottom of the Skeptoid.com article on the Rothschild conspiracy. Colincbn (talk) 02:41, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I saw Conservapedia discussed on, I think, rpg.net. Like any good troll, they got me angry so I was very happy to find a place to bash them... Dr. Nöthigenfalls (talk) 15:38, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I was searching for info on William Lane Craig after watching some of his debates on youtube.Madscientistjaidev (talk) 12:21, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I have been visiting this site for about two years, after a Google search for Conservapedia's "kangaroo" article. I had heard about Conservapedia when Andy Schlafly was on NPR.  I finally joined up when I saw an outdated reference to Graptolithinia.  Ckozeluh (talk) 16:58, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I legitimately can't remember how I found RW, but it was via something to do with Conservapedia, and I quickly found WIGO:CP and the rest of the WIGOs, and then I started reading other articles. This is maybe... a year, year and a half back? Ochtonaprinceps (talk) 05:04, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

April 2012

 * TIM E C  UBE  Dr Cow (talk) 12:06, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
 * By following the (lack of) progress on the Citizendium site and then increasingly on here. RW's coverage is quite impressive given that CZ looks likely to sink within months. Lurked for a while and finally registered an account. Obvious (talk) 15:24, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I landed here because of TimeCube and started pissing around. Working on cleaning up some of the economics articles. Longnameislonger (talk) 13:38, 16 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Found a link on the Wikipedia talk page about Conservapedia. Thank God I am glad that this site exists. Alan Liefting (talk) 01:32, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * After discovering Conservapedia, I searched for opinions, reviews, etc of the "encyclopedia". (I think this happened by Googling "Conservapedia"). --Radoslav Georgiev (talk) 21:16, 17 April 2012 (UTC)
 * One word: Google. I've sort-of followed Conservapedia for a while and this site kept coming up in relation to it, so I decided to create an account. Prodigal (talk) 20:40, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I didn't find this site with Google. I found it with DuckDuckGo. But I'm not really new. Actually I have been here for quite a while. Under another name. Can you guess which one? SteveQuigibo (talk) 20:43, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

March 2012

 * I am an eternal critic, and I thought I was safe when I took a Great Books of Asian Literature class... but when the professor began trying to prove to us that humans have plant telepathy, that eating or transplanting cardiovascular tissue would give one the memories of the tissue's previous owner, that pyramids focus energy fields, that churches are built to channel space vibrations and resonate one's frontal lobe into thinking religious feelings, that NASA was somehow connected to the word 'Nazareth,' that western medicine was evil and yoga can cure anything... well you can imagine my reaction. To distract myself from trying to argue him in-class (futile; he'd use 'holding the class captive' as an excuse to move on to the next woo) and the fact that everybody else was clueless and just accepting his ramblings as fact, I began fact-checking him via internet in class. It was in this way I found RationalWiki. I left the professor a scathing review and moved on with my life and forgot RationalWiki for a while... until my human biology professor this year began rambling on how the government was trying to kill us with food, homeopathy is the only good medicine, how stem cell research would 'cause little girls to get pregnant and then get abortions to sell the dead babies,' and how 'cheap white wine grapes are sprayed with antihistamine so they retain water and can be sold at a higher weight, but the wine you drink will make you stuffy because it contains medicine in it," all of which are just Not Even Wrong. Although he's had some (read: maybe one or two) valid points about health, a lot of his ramblings have been plain ridiculous and a fair share of them are already on the site. He's even showed us a horrible documentary that, after some homework of my own, I found misrepresented data, historical context, and even the diets it was promoting. So I figured it was about time to contribute and put to death some of this madness one and for all. --KnightOfTL;DR (talk) 16:15, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh man, you have to watch out for that governmental food, stuff be potent. Arlo James Barnes (talk) 20:12, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
 * One morning after my daily injection with purified kombucha (made from kombu the seaweed, not russian yeast), I experienced a spiritual journey-vision wherein my totem-guide lead me to a vast, grassy field. There, perched atop a turnip, I met a parrot with the face of a Kevin Bacon. The Bacon Parrot instructed me to go forth and introduce the internet to the glories of kelp juice and scientific sarcasm. I woke up in a pool of my own sweat and drool on the floor of my kitchen, my injection paraphernalia scattered across the floor. When I went to clean up the paraphernalia I found, scrawled in my various bodily fluids, a single message: "rationalwiki.org". So here I am. If you're a boring person you could preferentially believe that I stumbled across a blog article making fun of conservapaedia regarding the Lenski Dialogues, and wound up here after trying to get my lulz from CP and getting too frustrated to handle it undiluted, but come on, how boring is that. Erk (talk) 18:24, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Sometime in 2008 I found Conservapedia, which I resented greatly from the start and quickly earned myself a 5 year ban. I forgot about it until I bumped to it again in TVTropes.org. From there I was linked to RationalWiki and here I am. I have been lurking around for a few months, pretty much read every single article on this Wiki until I now registered to correct errors and perhaps write something about my country, Finland. Hilavitkutin (talk) 09:24, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Looking for definitions of "right-wing activist" and lists of those considered to be same. From the main wikipedia was directed to RW, which gave me just what I was looking for!(unfortunately, no epiphanies like Erk above, not even a man standing in the midst of a flaming apple pie screaming "you shall rationalise your wikiness")122.61.6.130 (talk) 03:06, 14 March 2012 (UTC)Kevin Ward
 * I found conservapedia 1st, and assumed there must be some sort of "rational-pedia". So I typed in variations of that theme and crash landed here. Afterwards I started editing conservapedia. This confirmed my belief that nonsense > fact as far as they are concerned, and would be a source of fun were my insane contributions not widely accepted. Now it's more worrying than fun, but I keep it up 194.176.105.150 (talk) 16:29, 14 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I went to conservapedia from a link in wikipedia....from there i found ref's to rationalwiki, from here i found uncyclopedia(I edit there occasionally)...I think it was the conservapedia article on atheism that actually led me here...so I do owe them a certain amount of thanks...until rationwiki, I was unable to truly articulate my reasons and validation for a lack of belief in gods(+1, thank you Mr. Dawkins...)...I find the level of education here superior to mine, but i hope i can help out....Dorianin (talk) 01:03, 23 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I came across the radiation hormesis link, seen rather soberer description than that on the wikipedia, but less complete, and decided to contribute some citations to make the article more complete and more accurately debunk the relevant pseudoscience. Something that is not very doable on wikipedia given the commercial interest of anyone who is selling e.g. radioactive healing stones, tickets to radon springs, or the like, to obfuscate and confuse the issue. Dmytry (talk) 10:19, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Think I found it by a comedy website called Conservapedia Bevo74 (talk) 15:14, 26 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Through a link in a conversation about induction on the Discuss mailing list of the Santa Fe Complex. Arlo James Barnes (talk) 19:59, 28 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Have been aware and reading for a while, came here specifically from Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True Blog for the rebuttal to the 101 YEC Arguments NoAstronomer (talk) 14:56, 29 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I happened upon the site some years ago, though by now I don't remember how. I hadn't visited in quite some time, but that (obviously) changed recently.   Due to my interest in the darker parts of Wikipedia, I've been exploring other Wiki-ish sites as well.  A link to RationalWiki popped up on twitter, and it hit me that I hadn't been here in ages (and when I was I never did more than lurk).  Registered because this way it'll remind me to stick around and contribute.  Q0 (talk) 01:57, 31 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I came across the site a while ago, but I can't remember how I found it. Then a friend got an account here, and I came back more often to read more articles because I found them fun and interesting. Eventually, I was urged to stop lurking and create an account.Goggie Knight (talk) 00:00, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

February 2012

 * Saw a discussion of conservapedia on wikipediareivew.com that mentioned rationalwiki. As I've recently become specially interested in Cold fusion, I read your article, and some other articles where I have unusual knowledge, and decided to make some contributions. I was user Abd on Wikipedia, banned for ... for ... you want the real story? For following policies and guidelines and successfully challenging admins who did not follow them. 'Nuff said, not really relevant here, but I will mention I'm Abd ul-Rahman Lomax, and Martin Gardner once referred (approvingly) to my work. I sat in the two years of lectures by Richard P. Feynman at Cal Tech that were used to create the well-known physics text, and consider Feynman to have been one of the most important influences in my life. <--- Shameless name-dropping. Don't fool yourselves. --Abd (talk) 20:58, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * A friend posted a link to Natural News on facebook and I thought it seemed like woo.

January 2012

 * Stumbled onto the site while using a search engine to look up info about major-seventh chords, which led me to a user's Talk page; from there I began browsing through the more-regular set of articles. Odd since I'm neither a musician, nor do I know a whit about music theory. Also because I'm a lifelong skeptic who somehow hadn't encountered the wiki before. Note that I also have deeply-held spiritual beliefs. This tends to result in my being mocked by skeptics as a religious fanatic, and mocked by the faithful as an atheist.Drone5 (talk) 08:01, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hanging out in an unrelated IRC channel, someone mentioned Conservapedia. Hours of frenzied research ensued, and by the end of it all I'd figured "sure why not" and signed up here. Plus I get mad at people that don't have a clue what they're talking about, especially with things like pseudoscience... anyways, that's my brief intro done. Telnaior (talk) 16:33, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I had a vision where I walked into a green valley, and came upon a team of horsemen who were arguing about where to buy a hammer. Their argument was disrupted by a small blue ferret named Lionel, who kept shouting "Yea verily, for I shall corrupt their seed and smear dung upon their faces". At that moment the heavens opened and God spake unto me, saying "thou shalt not continue to eat that nasty stuff at the back of the fridge, it causes hallucinations". Then I googled. Voxhumana (talk) 04:24, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Looked up "H20m new age bullshit" Copperhead (talk) 19:18, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Uncyclopedia, really. I was reading some seriously random stuff, and ended up here.Z3100x (talk) 05:35, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * writing a sociology paper, looking for bizarre examples of Political Correctness, which is where i landed.Egwalker (talk) 03:36, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Found through the article on Lubos Motl Pewfly (talk) 08:56, 11 February 2012 (UTC)