Conservapedia:Best of Conservapedia/0708

This Conservapedia-related article is of largely historical interest and is no longer the focus of RationalWiki today. Conservapedia (and religious fundamentalism to an extent) was a major focal point in the early history of RationalWiki, but long ago ceased coming up with new ways to appall and amuse. Our energies are now spent debunking other, fresher examples of pseudoscientific claims, authoritarianism, and deceit. For RationalWiki's less ancient content, try the Best of RationalWiki.

August 2007 Winners

• Nominated for permanent favorite: this seed of "truth".
• Poor old Ed put his own slant on the Iraq War.
• Islam, not so much a faith as a geographical location. RobS is truly an idiot. Update: Rob tries to go for the save and well and truly blows it. "Islam" means "submission" (as in to God). What Rob wants it to say, "realm of Peace," would be Dar-el-Salam (like the city). Closer would be "Dar-el-Islam," "the realm of Muslims." Still an idiot, Robbo. 2nd Update: Rob gets PWNED. Another update: Alleged human being TK thinks "Islam" and "Dar-el-Islam" mean the same thing, too.
• BREAKING: Conservapedia starts using GFDL! "Their use here does not imply that you may use them for any other purpose other than for the same or a similar informational use as contemplated by the original authors of these Conservapedia articles under the GFDL licensing scheme." This miracle was brought to you by "Copying from Wikipedia". Update: After a bit more than half a day, CP is once again without GFDL goodness
• TK shows his poor grasp of mathematics and science by claiming an 8.0 magnitude earthquake is 10 times strongerthan a 7.9 magnitude (it is in fact about 25% greater).
• How many Conservapedia editors and sysops does it take to spell "Conservapedians?" (Scroll down to "Prayer" section...) [1] Update: It's kind of like watching the clowns pile out of a Volkswagen at the circus. [2]
• TK makes a major edit to the Woody Allen article. This of course means copypasting (at least he rephrased the things he grabbed from IMDB), this time combined with apparent laziness: The list by the Washington Post doesn't look quite that great when copy-pasted into a wiki - I love how the list suddenly ends, as if somebody went "Oh, whatever" after eight items. (And before TK calls me a psychopathic liar again, note how the missing linebreak before "Celebrity" (writer) magically makes it into the article.
• Is Ed's deletion of the Probability article admitting that conservatives aren't terribly bright? [3] Of course, Conservapedia still has mathematics articles like these: [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]. I wonder what topology book they were cribbed from? (Late news: He put the probability article back.)
• Ed Poor has decided that Andy's ridiculous, rambling, essay made up of whatever crap popped into his head now has enough unsourced fictitious idiocy to be included in an article.
• Andy uses a non-sequitur stating that "liberals often argue in non sequiturs" [9] to dispute a user's issues with the "Liberal Style" essay.
• Because Wikipedia is full of junk the Assfly claims intelligent editors are moving from Wikipedia to higher quality sites and suggests Citizendium is one of them. A closer look reveals something unsettling. The Assfly then realises he's been defending Liberal bias. Rather than admit a mistake he removes further evidence. Is he hoping silence will ensue and all will be forgotten?
• Finally, I can fully agree with TK! "email link is required! check your preferences page. I have dogged persistence on this." Great! You da man! Now please tell that to all the sysops who don't have the mail link enabled: Admin, BenjaminS, BethanyS, Bohdan, CPAdmin1, CPWebmaster (not in profile, but on user page), CPanel, ChrisS, DeborahB., Elamdri (also user page only), Karajou, SharonS
• Andrew Schlafly, master psychologist. Added: Read it and discover Andy's rather unique take on what constitutes sanity. Apparently wanting to kill Christians is one sign of it. More proof that conservatives are insane, as they don't want to kill Christians.
• In a break from the TK-related madness, applications for Ashlfly's Supreme Court Class are booming. That's right, of the three people who have signed up, one is Aschlfly himself, and the other two are blocked.
• "We don't wikify month names because we don't want articles on years." Yeah, that makes perfect sens-... wait, what? Update: TK accuses Bohdan of things he never did. Well, at least it's nice to see that TK gives non-sysops and sysops equal treatment.
• In many ways, this brief communication between Conservative and RobS perfectly sums up why Conservapedia is the work of paranoid lunatics on the fringe of society [10].
• You don't take the word of the Bible as solid scientific evidence of a young Earth? You're a liberal!
• It's true, TK is plotting to take over. Here is an example of a godspeed, TK style. UPDATE: The coup has begun![11] _{Those pages got deleted, but the deletion log shows that the user's page consisted of the "This user supports X as the rightful leader of Conservapedia" template... with TK's name as "X"...} Update: TK doesn't appreciate me pointing out that Jallen was sloppy with the deletion and decides to make things personal: The user page was restored, edited to read "This user knows Sid is a psychopathic liar" and then deleted again... unfortunately, restoring the page didn't clear the deletion log. Oops.
• Andy welcomes a new user[12] criticizes a user for trying to clean up the team contest fall-out. Hilarity ensues. Finally, a helpful user who made some perfectly reasonable edits [13] is hunted down and humiliated by the TKHammer [14]. Some of the links above won't work, because CP has attempted to burn the evidence, of course, but we have saved it here.
• RobS, taking his anti-gay agenda to another extreme, bans a new user for daring to suggest that straight is considered normal. Rob's reasoning is that since his first edit and only edit as yet was to a talk page, he is in violation of the 90:10 rule, followed, in his trademark non-sequitur style, by: "science has proven gay lifestyle has highest suicide rate & shortest life expectancy" (and he's got the mass graves to prove it).
• TK gets all warm and fuzzy, and certainly doesn't snipe. And after the (August 13) talk page revert war and this lovely exchange between TK and PJR, is there still any doubt whether or not TK is a bit more equal than the other sysops? Update: TK engages in complete information destruction and implies/suggests that PJR should resign as sysop. More update: talk page history restored by PJR. Even more update: TK vaped it again. But you know what, guys? Whatever. History screencap and discussion screencap. There you go. I got better things to do than doing a live commentary ;). Bonus! TK accuses PJR of airing their dirty laundry for us at Rationalwiki (this little revert war is just as fun anyway). PJR, much like St. Peter denied Our Lord, denies his RW friends.
• Along with the above, TK reinstates an error that PJR already pointed out (probably because it was TK's comment to begin with). The UK is now made up of England, Ireland and Whales (sic). There is no mention of when Scotland seceded or when Ireland was re-conquered.
• TK uses the night time to get rid of some annoying stuff... like Talk:American Football Conference, a talk page where people pointed out his copy-pasting. See here for the issue where TK "didn't know" that answers.com is a WP mirror. I guess that cp:Talk:National Football Conference will be next on TK's list.
• OK, fine, this one is from July, but Andy should never, ever, ever criticize others' grammar after this. I can't even guess what he meant to say.
• Why is WP "filled with so much junk?" Easy, it's because a site tells companies to whitewash their entries (effectively breaking WP's rules). Of course, whitewashing to hide or delete the bad things never happens on CP. At all. For example, CP would never "push negative content" down or create a diversion by including many pictures
• Take a step forward if you know what magnitude[15] means. You liberals, stay where you are.
• The problem with copy-pasting paragraphs is that people may not understand the context of or references in the copied paragraph.
• In completely unsurprising news, TK first moves an article to "align [it] with CP Manual of Style" and only then inserts that rule into the Manual of Style. This may also (retroactively) explain the Cellulosic Ethanol case, in which TK effectively said "Ah yes! It had something to do with making it easier to link... as in... not making it easier to link." UPDATE: PJR decides to stomp around on a landmine and reverts TK's new rule and a hilarious rule that said it's okay to refer to the United States as U.K.
• Bob Dole, Phil Gramm, and Pat Robertson were all winners in the Iowa Straw Poll. All three of them won in 1995. This voting miracle had been in the article since its creation and lasted for almost 40 edits by sysops or quasi-sysops by now. Update: Finally fixed by GregLarson after more than 50 edits.
• If you look about...3...4...5...6 entries down, you'll read about a contributing, not-apparently-liberal user blocked in a meritocracy. Andy, instead of feeling sorry for losing a potentially useful contributor, celebrates getting to kick him out of his class.
• Talk too much? You are a liberal.
• Sick days? Not for a hemorrhage!
• It actually took me a moment to realize what is weird about Ed's post here. But then I realized that it goes against the letter and spirit of the whole "Provide your sources for your claims" gig. What good is CP as an encyclopedia or teaching resource if the standard approach to sourcing is "We'll do it on demand... unless we consider it to be obvious"?
• Andy makes up some statistics and then complains about them, and how they haven't been made public. Sorry, Andy. Not going to wait an hour this time: "You don't see how sometime can estimate when the truth when someone else conceals it????" is how he explains this process. Update: Surprise surprise, Andy's made up numbers prove to be far from accurate!
• Suggesting you're not so impressed with the Word of The Great Educator gets MissInfo banned on her first post.
• Andy's ongoing fight to prove that Christians and conservatives don't practice deceit. And again: [16] And again: [17] Plus Andy's explanation and justification of removals from this "high-quality page" is classic.
• Hovercraft are a silly alternative to wheels, but bicycles are not. CPAdmin1 to the rescue!
• Propaganda doesn't come much more thinly veiled.
• Ranting about Kevorkian. Wonder if the same rant would be there if the person in question was Kent Hovind, who is serving a ten year prison sentence?
• Is Fox News conservative enough? They seem to be worried that it isn't. We distort, you comply!
• In an unusually severe case of what-the-fuckery, even for him, alleged human being TK classifies THE ENTIRE DEMOCRATIC PARTY as deceitful. In a similar vein, Conservative, replying to the question who is more deceitful than a modern liberal, can only think of the devil. Apparently, no other human being comes to his mind as being more deceitful.
• It's ok to put a completely unverified, unsourced claim into an encyclopedia as long as "a fifteen-year-old girl" says it. Apparently, this is what CP means with "we require authoritative support" and "[w]e do not allow gossip".
• Conservapedia says that a high school student's right to free speech was violated when his school disciplined him for making a parody site about his principal. And yet it is completely okay to waive a student's free speech rights and discipline him when he is waving a "bong hits 4 Jesus" banner...?
• The SAT and AP exams are, of course, filled with liberal bias. Update: CLEP is also "SUSCEPTIBLE TO LIBERAL BIAS".
• Conservapedia's treatment of Math, Science and History are "much clearer & easier without liberal bias".
• The United Nations is a "comunist" [sic] plot with the sole aim of 'completely frustrat[ing] the British and Americans in every effort to introduce order, peace and security'.
• CP's main page lambasts a public school for violating a student's free speech rights by disciplining him for creating a parody of his high school principal on the internet, when they routinely impose infinite bans for doing the same thing.
• Aschlafly's edit to the main page opines "50 years ago schools, like churches, inspired respect". How quickly they forget.
• This edit by Andy is pure gold. It's been featured twice already, but it's still going strong. Andy disses a new guy who posted this OMGWTF-long analysis (and, naturally, got banned for trolling because of this) for assuming that this post by Conservative asks for feedback on how to improve CP's Google rank. And no Andy-reply would be complete without at least one of the following: [x] Mocking of one typo, [x] an "In Christ" or "Godspeed", [x] pretending that editors can actually (fully) recover from a permanent ban, [x] coming up with bad analogies, metaphors, etc.
• Conservapedia's take on Google: "We don't like google driving traffic to the site"; "Then again, maybe we do."
• TK shows: It's "American custom" to name an article "Cellulosic Ethanol" and not "Cellulosic ethanol", even though the word "ethanol" loses the capital letter (which apparently is "global custom") in the article itself. Guess that a retroactive Manual of Style update is in order.
• The Boy George biography, including his official website.
• What are conservative points in "Team America: World Police"? That "actors support dictators" for example.
• A hacker shows how an apparently photoshopped image released by Al-Qaida fooled the media - in the eyes of Crocoite, this of course is an example of Liberal Deceit.
• Is this really "better wording"?
• Ed loves animals. Yes, he does.[18]
• Takin' on tha Googles and endangerin' their profits soon, yessirree Bob.
• Sysop powers they don't want us to know about: The ability to speak with porn.
• TK blocks cp:User:AungSein, because he mistook a talk page for an article. Standard defense when confronted:SOCK!!! (Update: Unbanned)
• Removing cited material is only cool when it says nice things about atheists.
• When Andy sets goals, he certainly sets high ones.
• The new "Godspeed"? (only when it also starts to mean "F. Off" as well as "kiss me")
• Andy, upset with the anti-intellectual atmosphere at Wikipedia, greets a new doctor with open arms. There is no way to verify his credentials, but then again there is no way of verifying other users credentials either. The good doc takes it in stride with some sweet pwn4g3.
• Andy gets pwn3d then tries to say that JoshuaZ's direct reply to his comment is off topic. JoshuaZ points this out and Andy, in classic fashion, completely ignores what JoshuaZ said and repeats his failed argument, knowing he has been bested.
• The "Critical Thinking in Math" course has 3 aims: 1) sharpen analytical skills, 2) awaken an interest in mathematics, 3) encourage adults to keep their mind sharp, 4) help parents who would like to teach math. Well, this math course sure had a rocky start. (After two hours, the error was finally fixed by a helpful editor)
• Aschlafly creates a new page AP from a redirect and fails to embolden the subject name, provide a category or put the references in a small font as well as putting in a new red-link to a non-extistent page (Special:Wantedpages. Please help us reduce this list by inserting entries into each page). Not even to mention the lack of a disambig link to the Associated Press (which can't even be found at Associated Press, but at Associated Press (AP) - tough luck for people who need information on the largest news source on the planet.)
• TK is hosting a discussion on categories in his sandbox to try and establish some order. However he makes this edit to Winston Churchill that takes him out of an established category and puts him into a non-existent category!
• So farewell then Pacific Northwest Arboreal Octopus[19], you were too popular for your own good. Gone but not forgotten [20]
• Conservapedia: The self-labelled "top family-friendly general encyclopedia on the internet!". It's OVER 9000!
• British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, leader of the Conservative Party, was a liberal[21].
• "Consistent format" - revealing who is in charge of CP. The entire conversation is incredibly surreal.
• CP sysops still unaware of basic punctuation, many attempt to help but to no avail [22] Related since this was his only edit: Lurkers have no editing right and should be banned to make sure they keep lurking, especially when they break their silence to point out such truths.
• The fall-out from the team contest continues. After a few plebs have tidied up all the uncategorized pages they now want the dead-end pages dealt with[23] - most of which were created by cutting and pasting from other websites without thinking.
• C'mon, guys, no sense of humor? [24]
• Apparently, supporting equal rights for lesbians is Russian. Who knew?
• What's up with Creation and evolution compared? "That is a template, info box, whatever." Imitation, by the way, is the sincerest form... if you can figure it out.
• Yet another step in the "Reduce the rights of non-sysops" program: "[W]e especially don't allow new editors to take the work of an Administrator and gut it." But it gets better: "[S]peedy posting, asking questions and then making even more massive changes, without allow 24 hours for others to respond, is deceitful." (And this is an issue in which a sysop already gave green light - it just wasn't TK...). Finally, TK explains that changing the record on Talk pages isn't allowed [25]. Apart from when it is, of course {add your example of choice}.
• Roger Schlafly has been hit with teh Godspeedz!!!!.
• Remember back during the contest when the {{welcome}} template was so valuable? That sysops even fought over who would be able to welcome new editors? (No link for that since it was deleted with Offeep's talk page, but take my word for it. Picture of TK telling Offeep not to use it because of the contest) Well, have a look at cp:Special:Log/newusers now--everyone either has a red talk page link or has been welcomed by Learn together. I guess big stars like Andy the Fly and TeamKiller can't be bothered to welcome new users when there is no chance of recognition involved.
• Potential case of TK applying rules before they exist: When writing about L. Ron Hubbard, "avoid gossip and focus on his work as an author, and run religious additons by a sysop"
• Classic case of TK applying rules before they exist: "Users are not allowed to create redirects! Read the rule... which I only wrote later on..."
• TK doesn't like evidence of his copy-pasting. He also doesn't like finer categorization of his copy-pasted articles.
• "Appealing to Gays - Democratic candidates to attend debate on issues appealing to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community." Apparently, this is supposed to be shocking.
• TerryH's campaign of lie, stonewall and deny, deny, deny continues. [26]
• Conservapedia "smears" politicians with the same "guilt by association" as Wikipedia, but in their articles it doesn't count for some reason. [27]
• Aside from being banned for disagreeing, discussing, inserting facts or questioning FBI investigations, editors now also get ban warnings for lack of quality (making typos and such). Of course, copy-pasting one-line stubs still counts as making quality edits.
• Niandra pulls off a bit of censorship here, in a discussion about deleting talk page discussions, no less, and then blocks the guy to boot.
• One would think that (after multiple long discussions about the subject) the CP sysops were able to distinguish between Wikia and Wikipedia. But nope. (And don't even get me started on the usual "National Enquirer of the Internet" bullshit.)
• Nothing important happened on August 1, throughout all of history.