User:Marty/Debate:Do we put enough emphasis on homosexuality

NOTICE: This is non-encyclopedia and will be deleted soon.--Aschlafly 13:01, 29 October 2008 (EDT)


 * This is marked as a debate, & is no more non-encyclopedic than the rest of the entries in the debate topics. As I understand it, debates are for the free exchange of opinion & are not considered encyclopedia entries.  Deleting this discussion sounds a lot like censorship.  Sideways 13:07, 29 October 2008 (EDT)
 * Indeed Conservapedia:Debate Topics contains several debates about homosexuality, as well as debates about Conservapedia content & focus. This debate relates to both, & I see no reason for it to be singled out for deletion.  Sideways 13:10, 29 October 2008 (EDT)
 * As compared to Essay:Women wearing pants? Corry 13:17, 29 October 2008 (EDT)

Debate
I was arguing with someone on IRC, and they linked to this page:

http://moronality.blogspot.com/2008/09/conservapedia-seems-to-have-obcession.html

I have to admit our critic has a point. Conservapedia does seem to be a bit fanatical about the issue of homosexuality... it's like we just can't get enough of it, filling article after article with related material. When is enough enough? NewCrusader 17:22, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * It's emph a sis, & yes there there is too much. Sideways 17:28, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * Heh... that's what I get for writing while listening to the radio. Forgot to sign my comment too... sorry about that! I agree that it's too much - it was convenient of Moronality to draw up a list, really drives it home to see them all one after another. Now perhaps we need to ask... why? What is it about this one topic that provides the drive to write so much? And, of course, what shall we do about it if anything. NewCrusader 17:39, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * Re Moronality drawing up the list: they probably just compiled it from the Homosexuality category here. (Sorry I don't know the proper way to link to a category, but if you click on the category at the bottom of the homosexuality page, you'll see all the articles in it).  Re taking action: the only thing I can suggest would be merging some of those articles.  I believe quite a lot of content is duplicated in more than one of them.  Sideways 17:46, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * I like to just do "random" in my editing, unless something grabs my attention. But for a site that has issues with "medical terms" when discussing things like FMG, it seems odd how much rather explicit info is on here about homosexual sex.  I mean, it's pretty bad what you can find out, that goes beyond just the biology and morality of the matter.   I also thing many of the posts forget to love, and step off into something more like "hate".  homosexual people may live in sin, may even be unrepentant (much as alcoholics, drug addicts, tv addicts, atheists, etc.) but they are not, themselves, as humans unworthy of love and pity.--JeanJacques 17:47, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * Regarding how many gay-related articles there are, & my comment above about merging them, if you look at the enormous homosexuality article, every section of it is duplicated virtually word for word as a separate article (follow links at the beginning of sections). Surely this is unnecessary.  With a bit of work we could either cut down the unnecessary number of articles on the subject or (preferably) abridge the main homosexuality article to a more concise overview which can be read in one sitting.  Sideways 17:52, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * I did a quick survey of the homosexuality sub articles that I personally created which connect to the main conservapedia homosexuality article. Generally speaking they often have a Google PageRank of 2 or higher.  This tells me that the articles have generated some public interest as they are being linked to from webpages outside of Conservapedia.  For example, Homosexual Couples and Domestic Violence has a Google PageRank of 3.   In addition, I have some information that leads me to believe that several conservative groups will be made aware of Conservapedia's homosexuality related articles in the not too distant future.  Incidently,  I also have information which leads me to believe that the conservative community will be made much more aware of the Conservapedia evolution article - MUCH more aware :)   conservative 18:25, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * We can all say we have information about things, but surely the point of an encyclopedia is to share knowledge. Why keep all your secrets up your sleeve?  Sideways 18:47, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * That is compelling evidence that the articles will be seen by many people. But it doesn't address the original question: are they needed in the first place? --WPalmer 18:52, 28 October 2008 (EDT)


 * This discussion isn't about whether or not the articles are popular or if they have a high Google rank. But hey, I'll play your game.
 * The good news is that to me, Homosexual Couples and Domestic Violence as a search term gives Conservapedia as the number one result. The bad news is that this is an extremely over-specific search term (which just happens to match the article title), and a check for what actually links to this article gives four results:
 * CP's Category:Homosexuality
 * KevinKnows, a blog which mocks the homosexuality article. It also quotes parts of the main article, preserving the links, which explains why it shows up in this search.
 * A Spanish blog repeating the Boing Boing story about all those Homosexuality articles being in the Top Ten Pageviews list. Which pretty much mirrors the point being made here - that CP apparently puts an incredible focus on homosexuality.
 * A MyChurch blog comment which actually uses it (and two other sites) to cite the subject: Domestic Violence in the "gay community".
 * So... one person on the Internet actually links to the article in a favorable way, one openly mocks CP based on your articles, and one just reports about how some mysterious force pushed pageviews for your articles through the roof.
 * Also, judging by your articles about low-traffic, non-notable Anti-Atheism blogs (which all just happen to feature your Atheism article in their link lists), your "I have some information that leads me to believe" sounds a lot like plain and simple marketing agenda to me. Either tell us your plans or don't mention them. Announcing that you got ominous feelings and hunches only makes you look like a schemer who has to rely on secrecy to make sure that his plans come together. Hardly someone I would trust.
 * But hey, I don't mind if you tell other sites to link to your articles. That's cool. But a high Google rank doesn't mean that the articles are actually popular, good, or needed.
 * And last but not least, this is supposed to be a collaborative encyclopedia. Not a platform for you to market articles (and their obscure child articles) you practically control alone. --AlanS 19:59, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * AlanS perhaps before you make claims that you cannot support you should do a little investigation. For example, Atheism is Dead has a Google PageRank of 4.  By the way,  I have reason to believe that the atheism blogs that you refer to will significantly be made more well known to conservatives who have some interest in examining atheism.  :)  conservative 20:50, 28 October 2008 (EDT)


 * (I fixed your indent level for the sake of readability.)
 * ...wow. I made a point of how Google Rank isn't an indicator of quality or pretty much anything else and criticized you for bragging with your secret agendas mysterious hunches about future events... and you reply by citing the Google Rank of a blog and by bragging with yet more secret agendas mysterious hunches about future events.
 * And you just happened to pick the most notable of the non-notable blogs, right? Well, I'll play your game again, but I'll pick "Dan Barker - One of America's Leading Atheists" since I once did a check for that one already:
 * Zero followers.
 * Not in the Alexa Top 100,000 for Reach, Rank or Pageviews for any date range I tried.
 * The entire blog has ten comments in total (check the comment RSS feed).
 * Checking which sites link to it shows that - other than the other Mariano blogs - very few sites link to it. I get ten results, including his other blogs. (Comparison: 811 sites link to CP's main page.)
 * And yet, this blog has its own dedicated CP article, created by you. In completely unrelated news, that blog (as well as the other Mariano blogs CP for some reason has dedicated articles about) links to your Atheism and Atheism Quotes articles in the webroll. Hmmmmm... ;)
 * I take your ironic post as an admission that you have nothing of substance to say about the actual points. I note that you did not comment at all on the fact that only one website links to "Homosexual Couples and Domestic Violence" in a favorable light. You also didn't explain what relevance a search engine rank has when you narrow down the search term to match the article/site title. A blog named "Atheism is Dead" has a high Google rank for Atheism is Dead? Shock and awe! You also failed to justify your apparently shady marketing tactics (I assume they are shady because you refuse to say anything beyond a Miss Cleo prediction: "Ohhhhh I have a feeling that something might happen in the future involving certain sites I won't name..." But hey, prove me wrong!).
 * Oh, and you still missed the point of this discussion: Why does CP have so many articles about homosexuality, many of which are incredibly obscure and overly specific? Why do we have to prove the people right who claim that conservatives have an unhealthy obsession with homosexuality? CP apparently spends more time and energy on demonizing certain concepts and people than on building an proper, educational resource for students (you might argue that the enormous main articles could be of some value, but what about articles like Homosexual Public Indecency Tolerated in San Francisco, to pick a random example?) or on promoting conservative virtues. And no, "Let's demonize homosexuals!" is not a conservative virtue. And it's most definitely not a message I would want to market all over the Internet. --AlanS 21:49, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * I think you are three-quarters right about this: half right that "conservative values doesn't mean demonizing homosexuals" but half wrong in that conservative values DOES mean pointing out that homosexuals have demons (as in sin). You get an extra one-quarter of correctness because you agree that conservative's articles are sloppy and all over the place. --WPalmer 23:37, 28 October 2008 (EDT)

Cuil and Conservapedia's homosexuality article
Although it has it's share of problems that it is working out, the new search engine Cuil users often appear to find its results more relevant than the search results for Google and Yahoo and thus spend more time in the articles they find through Cuil.  I am happy to report that Conservapedia's homosexuality article is ranked in the top 22 of the 264,400,951 articles at Cuil for the search homosexuality. I personally like Google best, but I do think that Cuil can be a useful search engine. If the marketshare study I cited is valid, perhaps people spend more time in Conservapedia's homosexuality article than they do in the vast majority of homosexuality articles that are found on the internet! By the way, all 3 of the search engines I have mentioned highly rank Conservapedia's homosexuality article. I would also add that liberals seem far more obsessed about Conservapedia's homosexuality article than conservatives. I guess they do not like it when their sacred cows are tipped. Often it is the cats that get hit with the shoe that yelp the loudest.

By the way, based on some information that I possess, I have a hunch that the information contained in Conservapedia's evolution article is going to be disseminated far more widely on the internet. I can almost hear the yelps already.conservative 19:42, 28 October 2008 (EDT)


 * OK, but getting back to the subject of this debate: I believe you are one of the main authors of a large proportion of the homosexuality articles. Why do you think Conservapedia needs to put so much emphasis on the subject?  Sideways 19:51, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * Rereading your post, I noticed your comment that "liberals seem far more obsessed about Conservapedia's homosexuality article than conservatives". You seem to be acknowledging that conservatives, by & large, aren't all that interested in the article, & its main function is to irritate liberals.  Is that really what you're saying?  Sideways 20:22, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * Sideways, Concerned Women of America (CWA) which I believe is America's largest women's public policy group (bigger than NOW I believe) cited Conservapedia's homosexuality article. However, I don't think CWA is obsessed with the homosexuality article. Regardless, I do have reason to believe that the information contained in Conservapedia's homosexuality article will be more widely known to conservatives. conservative 20:40, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * Conservative, you are still not answering the question of the debate, as sideways just reasserted to you. Is there too much emphasis on homosexuality on conservapedia? In relation to all the other topics that articles could be written on, is it really necessary to continue adding more demonizations of homosexuality that add little to what is already on conservapedia? Rather than answering based on google ranks or that conservative groups are going to find out about your articles, could you answer the debate question? ToJones 23:59, 28 October 2008 (EDT)
 * I don't believe there's too much emphasis on such a pressing issue of our times. --Foxtrot 01:37, 29 October 2008 (EDT)

If you think there is too much emphasis
The way this site is set up means that it is bound to contain articles in proportion to the interests of its editors: the reason there are a lot of pages about homosexuality is because it's a topic that interests the people here. If you think it's overrepresented, the solution is to create and improve pages on other topics to redress any perceived imbalance.--CPalmer 07:30, 29 October 2008 (EDT)
 * CPalmer, that's an intelligent answer, but I don't think it's going to work. Unfortunately, we're dealing with the perceptions of liberals, who have narrowed their views of the knowledge available on this site. They accuse us of being obsessed with homosexuals, yet they are the ones in hysterics over the homosexuality articles, saying they're disproportionately large. They fail to see that the articles make up only a fraction of the total articles on the site and there are many other "narrow" subjects which have more articles than homosexuality: e.g. the Catholic saints (great job, Jpatt), military vehicles and ships, and Lord of the Rings (Tolkiendil's forte). I'll also throw in my own pet area: math. They don't accuse us of being "obsessed" with saints or plane geometry, do they? They've ignored most of the site and there's little we can do at this point to dislodge their loud and stubborn perceptions of CP. All we can do is offer them pity. -Foxtrot 12:27, 29 October 2008 (EDT)
 * CPalmer- by "articles in proportion to the interests of its editors" I think you might more accurately mean "editor." One editor- Conservative.  Of course there's a lit of interest in homosexuality, but in cp:Gay Bowel Syndrome?  How about ?  This is an obsession by Conservative, who uses this webpage as a platform for boosting his ego.  Corry 12:34, 29 October 2008 (EDT)
 * Foxtrot: I agree with most of what you've said, but I'd just say that some of the people who see the long list of homosexuality-related articles will come to the site and see for themselves. Our job is to make sure that what they find is broad, balanced and informative, and I think that can be done simply by writing about what interests us, rather than responding directly to the criticism.
 * Corry: I wasn't aware of that, but if it's true, it's just a consequence of the way the site is set up, and probably outweighed by the advantages of the wiki system. As the site grows, these imbalances should become less of a problem, and again, the way to make sure it does grow is to improve it.--CPalmer 12:42, 29 October 2008 (EDT)