Conservapedia:Examples of Bias in Wikipedia

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.

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Examples of Bias in Wikipedia is an ever-changing list of what Conservapedia considers "liberal bias, deceit, silly gossip, and blatant errors on Wikipedia". While some cases on that list are indeed credible, a great majority of them are hypocritical, baseless attacks on Wikipedia.

Examples

Wikipedia promotes suicide

For some reason editors of Conservapedia believe that Wikipedia promotes suicide.

Wikipedia promotes suicide with 21,544 entries that mention this depravity, including many entries that feature it (Conservapedia will not provide citations to the more depraved entries on this subject at Wikipedia as Conservapedia affirms the sanctity of life).

The only real evidence they offer in support is the number 21,544. When divided among the roughly 10 million pages on wikipedia that is one mention of suicide for every 464 pages. Conservapedia has roughly 200 mentions of suicide on their entire site and 40 thousand pages which leads to one mention of suicide for every 200 pages. The hypocrisy of this is laughable; Additionally, discussing suicide does not mean that you promote it.

Guilt by YEC association

The number two entry on the list of perceived biases is:

Liberal Wikipedia leads with a falsehood in describing Conservapedia: "Conservapedia is a wiki-based web encyclopedia project with the stated purpose of creating an encyclopedia ... supportive of ... Young Earth creationism.

One would wonder why this is an example of bias at all (an example of idiocy would be closer to the truth), as the wikipedia lists the primary ideas why should they not list young earth creationism? Are they denying that they support the young earth idea? They must not have been thinking correctly when they typed this, CP is blatantly YEC; it was started by a YEC, its articles claim numerous times that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, and it accuses all believers of an old earth to be deluded. How can they honestly think that describing their beliefs correctly is an example of bias?

This is also an example of quote mining. Nowhere does Wikipedia describe CP as supportive of YEC, but rather as containing articles supportive of YEC.

Anonymous I.P. editors

According to editors of CP, allowing people to edit Wikipedia anonymously is liberal.

Wikipedia welcomes and allows edits by anonymous IP addresses, which results in rampant vandalism that is overwhelmingly liberal. Credible wikis, including Conservapedia, do not permit editing by anonymous IP addresses.

The lack of logic in this statement is astounding. Besides failing to offer any citations for the vandalism being liberal, an IP address is actually less anonymous that a username, as only certain Sysops can view the IP addresses of registered users, and IP addresses can have their physical location tracked very easily. Also, it is contrary to the nature of a wiki to allow only registered users to edit. Furthermore, no known public school teacher would allow Conservapedia to be used as a "credible source." Finally, not allowing IP addresses to edit has not stopped Conservapedia from frequently being targeted for vandalism.

Excuses for conservative/creationist failures

William Kristol, influential neoconservative columnist and editor of Weekly Standard magazine, once said: "The liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures." And so: Conservapedia also deals with failures by creationists/fundamentalists to knock into "the truth" by slamming the "liberal" Wikipedia on certain issues. Thus, it's a sin to label any creation-related topic "pseudoscience".

Mythology and religion

Also, it's a bad idea to consider Biblical stories (e.g. the Great Flood from the book of Genesis) "mythology" even though Conservapedia's article on mythology provides two of three possible definitions of the word as "a narrative and expression of the sacred" and "[a] traditional story or legend, usually concerning some superhuman being or some alleged person or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially those concerned with deities or demigods and the creation of the world and its in habitants.". So if Conservapedia, in its fundamentalist stance, considers the Bible to be oh-so-sacred, then why does it fret over Wikipedia considering traditional Biblical tales that dreaded M-word? It's a bit hypocritical to claim that when the another definition of "mythology" provided in the entry asserts that myths are associated with religion.

A closer look at some Conservapedia articles shows that CP would rather use that word to describe blatantly untrue claims, such as for the article Homosexuality in animals myth and essay "Greatest Myths in American History".

Nazism

“”Twice in the second paragraph of the page on Nazism, Wikipedia proclaims the movement as a far-right form of politics, "says a majority of scholars". Back in reality, Nazi's are actually radical leftists.

Ignoring the obvious failures of this statement, "Nazi's"?