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Conservapedia:In the media
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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. |
| Trus me Conservapedia |
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| Introduction |
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The latest sightings are at the top. All dates are Common Era unless otherwise noted.
2019[edit]
January 2019[edit]
January 15, 2019: FM1Today's article Wikipedia wird volljährig (translated) notes that Conservapedia was created by Andrew Schlafly, is for Christian conservative Americans, has strict rules, is a site where anyone who engages in too much online discussion is rejected, and where editors accuse Wikipedia of being too left-wing and liberal.
2018[edit]
November 2018[edit]
November 2, 2018: The Daily Dot: Why Trump and conservatives want to rebrand the Democratic Party
“”From mainstream right-wing media sites to letters to the editor in local newspapers, the term “Democrat Party” is all the rage.
“Candace Owens announces “Blexit” – the Black Exit from the Democrat Party” blares a headline on Breitbart, referring to the popular conservative activist; while a letter to the editor from Wayne Shrover of Fredricksburg asks “What happened to the Democrat Party I once knew?” while lamenting its takeover by the “socialist left.” Even the “trustworthy encyclopedia” Conservapedia tells its not-inconsiderable readership that “Democrat Party is the grammatically correct term for the Democratic Party. The Party is not “democratic,” and proper nouns like “Democrat” are not converted into adjectives by adding “ic” as a suffix.” |
October 2018[edit]
October 29, 2018: The Forbes article The Myth Of Moral Equivalence: The Battle For The Soul Of America includes Conservapedia's definition of "moral equivalence".
September 2018[edit]
September 6, 2018: The Hill: If a conservative Facebook is such a good idea, why hasn't it happened?
“”Recall back in 2006, conservative activists created online encyclopedia Conservapedia in reaction to allegations of liberal bias on Wikipedia. Conservapedia hasn’t exactly caught on. It’s dominated by fringe religious issues to the point Christian conservative thought leaders like Rod Dreher and Damian Thompson scorn it (Thompson said in his book Counterknowledge that Conservapedia was there to “dress up nonsense as science”). What happened?
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August 2018[edit]
August 27, 2018: Alternet: McCain Was Never a Moderate: Here Are 8 Right-Wing Republicans Who Were Labeled ‘RINOs’ Because They Weren’t Insane Enough for the Far Right
“”The notion that Sen. Jeff Flake is a leftist is ludicrous; in 2014, the Arizona senator received a 95% rating from the American Conservative Union compared to, for example, only 6% for Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Regardless, Lahren considers him a RINO for being an outspoken Trump critic. Conservapedia.com (a far-right website with a Wikipedia-like format) has devoted an entire page to Flake’s alleged RINO positions, which included being overly sympathetic to gays, abortion and immigrants.
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August 9, 2018: NBC news: Right-wing platforms provide refuge to digital outcasts — and Alex Jones
“”Gab is not the first company to try to find success as a right-wing niche. Codias launched as an alternative for conservatives fed up with Facebook. Conservapedia offers a right-leaning version of Wikipedia. Hatreon provides a crowdfunding service to replace Patreon. And there’s even TrumpSingles for those who lean too far right for Tinder. None have managed to approach their rivals’ popularity, though victimhood has proven a powerful fundraising tool.
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June 2018[edit]
June 30, 2018: In the Patheos article A FL School Board Nearly Rejected Science Textbooks After Creationist Complaints, Hemant Mehta notes that:
“”Another complaint referred to “many very credible scientists” who say there’s a legitimate alternative theory to evolution. Where can we learn more about those scientists and this alternative theory?
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June 23, 2018: Naples Daily News: One of the Letters to the Editor, Sunday, June 24, 2018 was titled "Textbooks should contain science".
“”The “supplemental evidence submissions” challenging the scientific theory of evolution are the same for two of them. Each cites a recent article by Benjamin Arie on a partisan news website, titled “New Genetic Discovery Turns ‘Settled’ Evolution Science on Its Head.” The article is fraught with bias and errors; additional sources cited by the challengers include Wikipedia, Conservapedia and the Institution for Creation Research.
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June 19, 2018: Naples Daily News: Evolution, climate change skeptics lose battle over Collier science textbooks
“”Keith Flaugh, co-director of the Florida Citizens’ Alliance, a conservative group that is suing the school district over social studies textbooks adopted last year, wrote in his objection that there are “many very credible scientists” who have proved the impossibility of evolution.
Flaugh cited the following websites as sources for his pro-creationism stance: Godandscience.org; Creation.com; Christiananswers.net; and Conservapedia.com. |
May 2018[edit]
May 29, 2018: Creative Loafing's article Why Creative Loafing Tampa is dancing in our offices after ABC cancels Roseanne notes that Conservapedia describes Teletubbies as follows: "This British program indoctrinates young audiences into environmentalism as well as LGBT-related material, as Tinky Winky is purple and carries a purse (the character famously became a target for anti-homosexual activists during the series' original run). Even worse, Tinky Winky's actress is a lesbian pornographic actress." As for All in the Family, Conservapedia tells us Norma Lear "inaccurately depicted Archie Bunker, a blue-collar conservative and head of the Bunker family, with liberal traits like bigotry and ignorance." Regarding 30 Rock, Conservapedia says it's a "front for the left wing agenda" that's "appealing to the liberal elites", whereas Conservapedia describes 2 Broke Girls as a "garbage sitcom [that] glorifies homosexuality and feminism while directly insulting conservative ideals and leaders."
March 2018[edit]
March 1, 2018: Haaretz: Without Women or Evolution: 'Ultra-Orthodox Wikipedia' Is Literally Rewriting History
“”For all its benefits, Wikipedia and the profusion of similar wiki-sites online are the best example we have of a world in which competing systems of truth live side by side. In the U.S., there have long been competitors to Wikipedia, for example Conservapedia, which excises from Wikipedia all of its “liberal lies,” on everything from science to the Bible, and even Metapedia – the so-called alt-right Wikipedia. In China, the government is apparently toying around with developing its own online encyclopedia, one that may not be open to public editing, and in Turkey, Wikipedia is still banned.
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2017[edit]
December 2017[edit]
December 11, 2017: Deutschlandfunk Kultur: Wahr ist, was gut für uns ist! (translated: What is good for us is true!)
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Although Wikipedia is not Git-based, today there is Conservapedia, a Wikipedia fork with different views on abortion, gun laws and climate change. And there is Infogalactic, the Wikipedia clone of Alt-Right, in which they capture all their "alternative facts". |
December 6, 2017: Boing Boing: How Momentum UK learned from the Sanders Campaign to make Jeremy Corbyn Prime-Minister-in-Waiting
“”Back in the days of the Howard Dean campaign, it seemed that the political left had a near-monopoly on brilliant, technologically sophisticated "netroots" activists, a situation that carried over to the Obama campaigns. But by 2016, the Pepe-slinging alt-right showed that earlier right-wing cybermilitias weren't just warmed over jokes with an unhealthy appreciation for Conservapedia -- they, too, could fight effectively by forming decentralized open source insurgencies that allowed autonomous activists and groups to change the political landscape.
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December 5, 2017: In the Patheos article Conservapedia, Reliability, the Genetic Fallacy, and Induction, Jonathan MS Pearce, the author of Not Seeing God: Atheism in the 21st Century, responds to a certain Mark Jones, who had cited these three Conservapedia articles when commenting on the book:
With revision histories that look like these, it remains a mystery — even to RationalWiki users — who Mark Jones really is. See also: Genetic fallacy#Bayesian.
December 1, 2017: 동아일보: [세계 뉴미디어 전문가를 만나다]<3>미 컬럼비아대 타우센터 (translated: Meet the World's New Media Experts: Tau Center, Columbia, USA)
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Last November, Albright, who taught data-driven storytelling at Elon University, produced a network map of the fake news that spread throughout the presidential campaign during the presidential election. It collected and analyzed 1.3 million URL traffic from over 300 news distributors. In addition to social media sites and mainstream media sites, it was found that there were powerful hubs that drive fake news-related traffic. Conservapedia (Wikipedia for the right-wing) and Rense were among these right-wing propaganda media sites. |
November 2017[edit]
November 9, 2017: Le Nouvel Économiste: Les réseaux sociaux, d’abord une bénédiction, désormais un handicap pour la démocratie (translated: Social networks, at first a blessing, now a handicap for democracy)
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To have an influence on the entire population, campaigns of this type can not remain isolated. They need mechanisms to amplify online messages, give them a semblance of objectivity, and validate the opinions that people already have. Analysis of sharing on Twitter and Facebook, and direct links between broadcast messages, show that this was the case for the American "alternative right". Centered on Breitbart, an online publication directed by Steve Bannon, who briefly advised Trump, as well as Fox News, this ecosystem includes hundreds of other so-called information sites that only exist online, such as Conservapedia, a right-wing Wikipedia, as well as Infowars, which specializes in conspiracy theories. There is also a left-wing media ecosystem, but it is much less diversified and remains dominated by traditional media such as the New York Times and CNN. |
November 4, 2017: The Economist: Once considered a boon to democracy, social media have started to look like its nemesis
“”To work at the level of the population as a whole, such social-media operations cannot stand alone. They need mechanisms which can amplify messages developed online, provide the illusion of objectivity, and validate people’s beliefs. Analysis of sharing on Twitter and Facebook, and direct links between stories, shows that a specific subset of America’s media now performs this role for the country’s right wing. Centred on Breitbart, a publication now again run by Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, and Fox News, a cable channel, this "ecosystem" includes hundreds of other online-only news sites, from Conservapedia, a right-wing Wikipedia, to Infowars, which peddles conspiracy theories. There is a left-wing media ecosystem, too, but it is much less diversified and dominated by mainstream publications, such as the New York Times and CNN.
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October 2017[edit]
October 8, 2017: Zing: Everipedia: Bản sao xấu xí và tội lỗi của Wikipedia (translated: Everipedia: The ugly and sinister copy of Wikipedia)
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Everipedia is not the only site that aims to become a counterweight to Wikipedia. In 2006, Andrew Schlafly, a lawyer and Catholic activist, created Conservapedia. |
October 4, 2017: The Outline: Everipedia is the Wikipedia for being wrong
“”Everipedia isn’t the first would-be Wikipedia competitor. Andrew Schlafly, the son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, created Conservapedia in 2006 as a counterpoint to what its founders called widespread liberal bias on Wikipedia.
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August 2017[edit]
August 29, 2017: fun offbeat: विकिपीडिया से जुड़े कुछ ऐसे इंटरेस्टिंग फैक्ट्स जो आप नहीं जानते होंगे (translated: Some interesting Wikipedia-related facts you may not know)
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21. A website called Conservapedia had accused Wikipedia of article theft and factual inaccuracy. But there was no effect; Wikipedia is still used as much as ever. |
August 9, 2017: Deutschlandfunk Kultur's article Wikipedia-Kopie mit rechter Weltsicht (translated: Wikipedia copy with a right-wing worldview) considers Conservapedia, Metapedia and Infogalactic as alternative, mostly English-language, right-wing versions of Wikipedia. The article quotes blogger and publicist Michael Seemann, who notes that Conservapedia is dissatisfied with how Wikipedia deals with the topic of abortion.
July 2017[edit]
July 3, 2017: BreakingTech's article Esiste un’alternativa a Wikipedia? Arriva Infogalactic, la proposta della destra americana (translated: Is there an alternative to Wikipedia? Here comes Infogalactic, the proposition of the American right) describes Metapedia as a website that is mostly loved by the white supremacists of Europe, and Conservapedia as a website that had been created by Andrew Schlafly for religious conservatives.
July 1, 2017: la Repubblica: Infogalactic, la Wikipedia dell'estrema destra americana (translated: Infogalactic, the Wikipedia of the extreme American right)
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Hence what the Boston Globe daily defines as "the rise of the altcyclopedia" (merging the terms alt-right and encyclopedia in English). Infogalactic, in fact, is not the only work of the genre born to adapt itself to the ideas of the right-wing public. For the "white supremacists" there is Metapedia - popular in Germany and Hungary - where the holocaust was a genocide only for "politically correct history" and Obama is a "former mixed race president". For conservatives, there is Conservapedia, created by Andrew Schlafly. |
June 2017[edit]
June 27, 2017: L'Expansion: Infogalactic, Metapedia, Conservapedia: l'extrême droite aussi a ses "Wikipédia" (translated: Infogalactic, Metapedia, Conservapedia: the extreme right also has its "Wikipedia").
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Because they consider Wikipedia to be unreliable and contaminated by "social justice warriors" (i.e. progressives), several extreme right-wing figures have invented their own online encyclopedias. Their names: Metapedia, Infogalactic, and Conservapedia. | |
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On the home pages of Metapedia and Conservapedia, there are two columns relaying negationist, supremacist, antisemitic, racist, Islamophobic, anti-feminist, conspiracist, and homophobic theses and theories. | |
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For the time being, these platforms remain less popular than Wikipedia. While the latter is the fifth most visited site in the world, Infogalactic is only the 14,710th, and Conservapedia the 18,066th in the United States, according to Alexa's ranking. But their traffic would not stop increasing, boosted by an "anti-Wikipedia revolt". |
June 23, 2017: The Boston Globe: The rise of the online altcyclopedia
“”Take Metapedia, an altcyclopedia “which focuses on culture, art, science, philosophy and politics” and sports a distinctively white supremacist bent. The Metapedia entry on “Slavery,” for example, leads with “slavery has existed in numerous other cultures and was very common globally until White countries prohibited slavery and enforced this globally.”
There’s also Infogalactic, the “planetary knowledge core,” heralded by Breitbart as an “alternative to biased Wikipedia,” which refers to #Pizzagate in an oddly earnest entry as a “crowdsourced investigation by independent researchers and commentators” rather than, say, a “hysterical mass white dude freakout episode.” |
June 21, 2017: Wired's article Welcome to the Wikipedia of the Alt-Right describes Conservapedia as "a version [of Wikipedia] aimed at religious conservatives and created by Andrew Schlafly, son of the conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly" and as "the 18,066th most popular site in the US".
“”Today, however, an alternate but influential cultural consensus exists in opposition to that of Wikipedia. Conservapedia, for example, has a rundown of the top examples of liberal bias on Wikipedia. "Articles on genocide, murder, and homicide have no mention of abortion," is a major complaint. Another common gripe is that "Wikipedia changed the Bradley Manning article to Chelsea Manning and gave the article subject female attributes".
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March 2017[edit]
March 28, 2017: Hipertextual: Conservapedia: La ridícula alternativa de Wikipedia realizada por conservadores (translated: Conservapedia: The ridiculous Wikipedia alternative run by conservatives)
March 10, 2017: संवाद live's article विकीपीडिया के रोचक तथ्य (translated: Interesting facts about Wikipedia) points out that despite Conservapedia disputing Wikipedia's factual accuracy, there was no effect, and Wikipedia is still used as much as ever.
March 6, 2017: Westword's article Tom Tancredo on His Team America PAC Being Called a Hate Group mentions Conservapedia's criticism of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
January 2017[edit]
January 23, 2017: Inverse's article How Will Wikipedia Navigate the Trump Era? mentions "Post-truth Politics". There is a picture of Andrew Schlafly in the article.
“”A decade ago, conservative activist Andrew Schlafly, son of famed anti-Equal Rights Amendment campaigner Phyllis Schlafly, launched Conservapedia, a site very much intended to "fix it." Conservapedia was modeled on Wikipedia, but its mission was to present an alternative to what Schlafly perceived to be the original site’s liberal bias. According to Schlafly, traffic to the site grew 50 percent over the course of 2016. He told Inverse that Conservapedia hosted 20 million visits in November (though the source cited for those figures was, inevitably, Conservapedia).
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RationalWiki users reflect on the article.
2016[edit]
December 2016[edit]
December 5, 2016: Southern Poverty Law Center: President-elect Donald Trump has tapped U.S. Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) to be the administration’s nominee for director of Health and Human Services mentions Conservapedia.
“”Andrew Schlafly is also a homeschool advocate and a founder of the website Conservapedia, which has promoted ideas like public schools make homosexuals; atheists tend to be fat, which impedes brain function; liberals don’t think lying is wrong and evolution is racist and fundamental to Nazism and communism, as well as the idea that evolutionists no longer debate creationists because, the site says, creationists tend to win the debates.
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December 5, 2016: The Register's article Take that, creationists: Boffins witness birth of new species in the lab links to RationalWiki's article on the Lenski affair:
“”Lenski demonstrate[d] that over time the bacteria could evolve into a new type that could grow using entirely new food sources. This angered the creationist editor of Conservapedia and led to an exchange of letters with Lenski that resulted in one of the most epic scientific smackdowns in history.
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November 2016[edit]
November 29, 2016: Fortune magazine's article What a Map of the Fake-News Ecosystem Says About the Problem describes Conservapedia as one of the "largest hubs" that were found to "propel a lot of the traffic involving fake news". A Chinese version is released a day later on 财富中文网: 假新闻传播路线图：特朗普当选全靠俄罗斯段子手？.
November 29, 2016: Termometro Politico: Mappe: da dove vengono le notizie false? (translated: In maps: Where do the fake news come from?)
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Among those identified by Albright the main ones are Conservapedia (a sort of ultra-conservative Wikipedia), Rense, and Breitbart News, which earned the limelight in the news after the appointment of its chairman Stephen Bannon as the senior adviser of President Trump. Another similar site called Dailycaller was also identified, as was YouTube, which was easily expected. |
November 27, 2016: Medium: Data is the Real Post-Truth, So Here’s the Truth About Post-#Election2016 Propaganda. Conservapedia's role as "a wiki-informational resource" is mentioned.
November 26, 2016: The Topeka Capital-Journal: America's Conservative Road to Destruction - Our Last Chance
“”An entire compendium of the right wing, religiously-influenced alternate reality can be found on Conservapedia, the right wing’s answer to Wikipedia. You owe yourself a look. The opposition to this conservative alternate-reality onslaught does not exist. There was no such organization, and no such plan to debunk the new "reality" on a large scale. Nobody was dissecting the right wing media and providing a globally accepted, focused, truth-based voice of opposition.
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November 16, 2016: The Forward's article How Steve Bannon and Breitbart News Can Be Pro-Israel — and Anti-Semitic at the Same Time mentions Conservapedia.
“”Some on the alt-right, the emerging group of racist activists who support Trump, oppose the close U.S.-Israel relationship as part of a broader critique of U.S. interventionism abroad. Yet they admire Israel as a "model for white nationalism and/or Christianism," according to the right-wing online encyclopedia Conservapedia. Some also see Jewish immigration to Israel as helping their cause of a Jew-free white America.
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November 1, 2016: The Conversation's article On HIV, Tiananmen Square and science describes Conservapedia as "a website that not only argues against any link between CO2 and temperature, but also that Einstein’s theory of relativity has never been properly verified".
September 2016[edit]
September 6, 2016: In the article Conservative Phyllis Schlafly cut her own pathway, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Andrew Schlafly "founded Conservapedia as a conservative alternative to Wikipedia, which he said was too liberal", as well as "compiled news items from conservative Internet sites and sent them to his mother daily".
September 6, 2016: Basler Zeitung's article «Männer, datet keine Feministinnen» (translated: "Men, do not date feminists") reports the death of Phyllis Schlafly.
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From 1949 until his death in 1993, the conservative activist was married to the lawyer John Fred Schlafly Jr., with whom she had six children. From her husband, whose grandfather had emigrated from Switzerland to the United States, she owed her German-Swiss-looking surname. One of the sons, Andrew Schlafly, is founder of the right-wing wikis Conservapedia. In the current election campaign, Schlafly came in early behind Donald Trump. The Republican presidential candidate praised Schlafly as a "conservative icon that has redesigned the conservative movement". |
July 2016[edit]
July 29, 2016: Patheos: The Sheer Audacity of Conservapedia
July 27, 2016: Télérama: Conservapedia, l’Internet parallèle et inquiétant des ultra-conservateurs américains (translated: Conservapedia, the parallel and disturbing Internet of American ultra-conservatives). Ken responds.
June 2016[edit]
June 17, 2016: In the article Trump’s #AskTheGays Misfire Prompts Call for Conservative Twitter, Politicus USA quotes Conservapedia that "Trump seems to be on the side of the homosexual agenda."
February 2016[edit]
February 23, 2016: Neue Zürcher Zeitung: Schafft drei, vier, viele Wikipedias! (transleted: Create three, four, many Wikipedias!)
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Conservapedia, an online platform run by Christian fundamentalists in the US, accuses Wikipedia of being left-wing. In an interview, Wales described his political position as "center-right". He claims to be a big fan of the anti-communist, atheist, libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand, who worshiped in a cult-like manner in the US on the right side of the political spectrum. |
February 2, 2016: Jagruk.in: विकिपीडिया के बारे में 6 ऐसी बातें जो आप नहीं जानते होंगे (translated: 6 things you might not know about Wikipedia)
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6. A website called Conservapedia had accused Wikipedia of article theft and factual inaccuracy. But nothing happened; Wikipedia is still used as much as ever. |
January 2016[edit]
January 19, 2016: Business HT: Wikipedia hakkında bilinmeyenler (translated: Things not known about Wikipedia)
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Wikipedia is not just an online encyclopedia; it has had seven different variations: Wiktionary, which serves as a dictionary, Scholarpedia for academic articles, Citizendium, which also serves as encyclopedia, but will be controlled by expert editors, Uncyclopedia and Encylopedia Dramatica, Conservapedia for US conservatives, and Lostpedia for the series Lost when it was released in 2004-2010. |
January 16, 2016: Playtech: „Salvatorul" tuturor elevilor și studenților: lucruri pe care nu le știi despre Wikipedia (translated: "Savior" of all students: things you did not know about Wikipedia)
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Disappointed by Wikipedia's widespread tendency toward liberalism, conservatives created Conservapedia in 2006. The articles on global warming, evolution and Obama are edifying, but probably not as the authors intended. |
January 15, 2016: Time's article These Are Wikipedia's Top 15 Moments describes Conservapedia as:
“”But perhaps the most amusing alternative wiki may be Conservapedia, which defines itself as "a conservative, family-friendly Wiki encyclopedia" and whose contributor guidelines are cast as "commandments."
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2015[edit]
September 2015[edit]
September 8, 2015: Kyle Kulinski releases a video titled Conservapedia, Stop Embarrassing Yourself on the Secular Talk YouTube channel.
September 2, 2015: Kyle Kulinski releases a video titled Fact Checking Conservapedia's 'Secular Talk' Entry on the Secular Talk YouTube channel.
August 2015[edit]
August 18, 2015: The National Catholic Reporter's article On Conservapedia rewriting the Bible states:
“”It seems that Andy Schlafly, son of Phyllis Schlafly, is the founder of the web site Conservapedia. One of Conservapedia’s tasks is the rewriting of the Bible, or at least the editing of it. Andy Schlafly and his cohorts are deleting suspect verses and replacing words with a socialist ring to them with close-enough synonyms that recast the meaning to be more in keeping with a capitalist ethos.
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May 2015[edit]
| "אני רק חנון שאוהב את המחשב שלו" | : | ישראל היום | (translated: "I'm just a geek who loves his computer") |
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A few years ago there was an experiment called "Conservapedia" (a conservative encyclopedia) that did not really work out, mainly because it was a bit silly and people laughed at it. |
March 2015[edit]
March 3, 2015: In the book A Storm, A Message, A Bottle: A Road Map to American Redemption, Cary Gordon describes Conservapedia as "the right-wing Internet response to what is alleged to be the left-wing propaganda produced by Wikipedia".
2014[edit]
October 2014[edit]
October 30, 2014: LinuxEXPRES: Wiki není jen Wikipedie (translated: Wiki is not just Wikipedia)
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Some do not agree with the Wikipedia's values or believe that Wikipedia does not adhere to its proclaimed values and thus have a competitive general encyclopedia. The most professionally led "deforwikipedia" is about Conservapedia. | |
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The English-language encyclopedia Conservapedia is written from the viewpoint of American paleoconservatives. Conservapedia praises the values of the political right, highlights issues related to the US, describes various theories in which the authors use religious texts as an authority to correct the findings of the natural sciences (e.g. creationism), and claims to be Christian. For example, it seeks the causes of pathological phenomena in atheism (see the articles on Atheism and Obesity, Atheism and Cowardice, Atheism and Bestiality, etc.). |
July 2014[edit]
July 31, 2014: Gizmodo's article Conservative Alternatives to the Internet's Most Popular Sites recommends Conservapedia's pages on "Barack Hussein Obama," "Homosexuality," "Worst College Majors," "Evolution Liberalism, Atheism, and Irrationality," and last but certainly not least, "Liberalism and Beastiality." in particular, noting that "[t]here is a lot about beastiality".
June 2014[edit]
June 3, 2014: Finnish Helsingin Sanomat newspaper: Keskiajan paluu on aiempaa lähempänä (translated: The Return of the Middle Ages is nearer than before) mentions Conservapedia and its denial of the theory of relativity.
April 2014[edit]
April 29, 2014: Houston Press: 5 Most Bizarre Kids Show Entries on Conservapedia
March 2014[edit]
March 13, 2014: OhmyNews: 보수와 진보는 뇌구조부터 다르다? (translated: Do conservatives and progressives differ in brain structure?)
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If there are problems, conservatives would react in a closed-minded manner, even if their beliefs are not factual. As an example, the author mentioned the conservative Internet encyclopedia "Conservapedia", which was created to oppose scientific facts. This website, filled with their version of "truth", claims that "homosexuality is a mental disorder" and ignores scientific discoveries, including relativity. In addition, it attacks global warming and evolution by citing supporting Bible verses. "I don't have to live with what's printed in the newspaper, I don't have to take what's put out by Wikipedia. We've got our own way to express knowledge and the more that we can clear out the liberal bias that erodes our faith, the better," said conservative Andrew Schlafly, who created the site. According to the author's analysis, it is not important for conservatives to tell what is true. If they can retain their beliefs, they are willing to accept and follow any distorted information. The conservative way of thinking gets fear and uncertainty out of the picture more quickly than reality does. |
January 2014[edit]
January 21, 2014: Metro's atricle So you think the internet is just a law unto itself? mentions DeMyer’s Second Law.
2013[edit]
December 2013[edit]
December 20, 2013: AlterNet's article Right-Wing Group Seeks Help Rewriting the Bible Because It's Not Conservative Enough begins with:
“”Liberal bias in the media pales in comparison to what you’ll find in your standard-issue Bibles, according to Conservapedia.com, a kind of Wikipedia for the religious right. The King James Bible, not to mention more recent translations like the New International Version (NIV), are veritable primers of progressive agitprop, complains Andy Schlafly, the founder of Conservapedia.com. (His mother, Phyllis, is an activist best known for her opposition to feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment.)
But not to worry. Andy Schlafly’s group is on the case, and they have invited you to pitch in. Well, maybe not you, exactly, but the "best of the public," whose assistance is solicited in proposing new wording for left-leaning Bible verses. |
August 2013[edit]
August 24, 2013: Phil Mason releases a video titled Why do people laugh at creationists? (part 39) on the Thunderf00t YouTube channel. He comments on the suggestion that small creatures could have been dispersed great distances after Noah's flood due to volcanoes.
August 1, 2013: Donald R. Prothero publishes a book titled Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten Our Future.
“”Mooney (2012) contrasts the upstanding behavior of Emanuel with a very different kind of Republican: conservative activist Andrew Schlafly. He is the son of antifeminist and homophobic activist Phyllis Schlafly, and the editor of Conservapedia, which is modeled on Wikipedia but has a strong conservative bias. Andrew Schlafly is not uneducated: he has an engineering degree from Princeton and a law degree from Harvard, and he has worked for Intel and Bell Labs. However, he has no training in any of the sciences that might challenge his conservative ideology, and it plainly shows when he writes about subjects beyond his expertise. His is a classic case of the smart idiot, someone educated enough to sound convincing but not educated in areas of expertise that would allow him to realize he is wrong.
Naturally, Conservapedia denies global climate change and evolution, denies much of astronomy (especially Big Bang cosmology) and geology, (rashes environmentalism, lionizes capitalism and even the robber barons, trashes labor unions, claims that homosexuality is a mental disorder, claims that abortion leads to breast cancer, and makes many other demonstrably false claims about science and reality. It even obliquely supports the idea that the earth is the center of the universe, and implies that Copernicus and Galileo and modern astronomers are wrong! One would expect Conservapedia to push the idea that the earth is flat, but apparently those ideas are too retro even for Conservapedia. (Instead, it asserts that the "Flat Earth myth" about the past was cooked up by evolutionists to slander creationists, even though the idea is found in the Bible in many places!) |
June 2013[edit]
June 4, 2013: Sports Kyunghyang: 극우 누리꾼, 해외 사이트에서도 "광주 폭동…" (translated: Right-wing netizens, even overseas sites cover "Gwangju uprising ...")
June 1, 2013: The Telegraph's article Hay Festival 2013: Steve Jones on science and religion mentions Conservapedia and contains a link to The Conservative Bible Project.
April 2013[edit]
April 3, 2013: Le Monde: Des conservateurs américains nient la relativité d’Einstein (translated: US conservatives deny Einstein's relativity)
March 2013[edit]
March 24, 2013: Daily Kos's article Conservapedia Disproves E=mc² discusses Conservapedian relativity.
2012[edit]
December 2012[edit]
December 29, 2012: Swedish IDG.se blog: Conservapedia bjuder på ett och annat gott skratt, eller? (translated: Conservapedia offers an occasional good laugh, right?")
October 2012[edit]
October 5, 2012: Rachel Maddow mentions Conservapedia in the opening segment of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Full transcript: "When we are horrified by the real information in the world, and we want to wall ourselves off from it and create a more comforting fake truth for ourselves... in America when we have that impulse it looks like this:" (commentary on Republicans' take on polls) "It was the same dynamic at work when they invented Conservapedia. Remember Conservapedia? If something that you read about the world on Wikipedia makes you uncomfortable as a Conservative, Conservapedia is guaranteed to only contain information that makes you feel OK. So, if you are discomforted by the idea that the human species is the result of millennia of biological evolution, for example, Conservapedia has you covered, don't worry. On Conservapedia not only has evolution been debunked by the obvious fact that humans and dinosaurs coexisted... not only did we coexist, but in fact, according to Conservapedia, dinosaurs are actually still here: dinosaurs have been seen in Papua New Guinea twice since 1990. It says so on Conservapedia. So, if you don't like the real world, invent your own." The video includes an example of Ken's Mainpageleft art.
September 2012[edit]
September 21, 2012: Joseph M. Reagle and Lawrence Lessig publish a book titled Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia.
“”In 2008 the front page of Conservapedia, an ideological competitor of Wikipedia, recommended its "article of the year" to readers so they might "Discover what Wikipedia, the public school systems, and the liberal media don’t want you to know about atheism." This reference to the "Atheism" article clearly indicates Conservapedia's intention of opposing a perceived liberal and materialistic bias in Wikipedia. Indeed, its "Examples of Bias inWikipedia" article lists 160 instances. And Conservapedia is but one of the first of many ideological user-generated encyclopedias likely to be started – though many soon fall into disuse. (The facetious headline of an article in the Register recommends that if you find "Conservapedia too pinko? Try Metapedia." Metapedia's stated purpose is to serve as an encyclopedia "for Pro-European activists," recalling the much discussed "neo-Nazi" attack/fork of Wikipedia.) Because reference works are popular, used by children, and understood as representing what is known, we should not be surprised to see these works at the center of larger social controversies.
And because of visionaries like Otlet and Wells one might mistakenly infer that reference works are necessarily progressive. While this has often been the case, particularly since the Enlightenment, it need not be so. In the history of reference works one is more likely to find opposing forces, cycles of predominance, and surprises. As an example of the diversity of purpose for reference works, historian Tom McArthur claims the Greeks wanted to know everything so as to think better, the Romans to act better, and the Christians to glorify God and redeem their sins. As evidence of the latter Johann Zedler wrote in his eighteenth-century encyclopedia, the Universal-Lexicon: "the purpose of the study of science … is nothing more nor less than to combat atheism, and to prove the divine nature of things." In Conservapedia's "Atheism" article of the year, we see the cycle has completed a turn. |
September 21, 2012: 경향신문: 보수는 사실보다 신념을 추종한다 (translated: Following faith rather than fact)
|
Let's look at the absurd ideas of American conservatives, consisting of the Tea Party movement and Christian right-wingers. They believe that Obama is a Muslim who was not born in the United States. Some even think that Obama is a brainwashed puppet of the international leftist movement. They claim that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer and mental disorders in women. They still believe in the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was the cause of George W. Bush's invasion, although are none have actually been discovered. They deny evolution and global warming. The theory of relativity, which is regarded as established knowledge, is also seen as contradictory to the verses of John and Matthew. They are more interested in "faith" than "fact". "I don't have to live with what's printed in the newspaper," said Andrew Schlafly, the founder of Conservapedia, a site that was established to counter Wikipedia. "We've got our own way to express knowledge and the more that we can clear out the liberal bias that erodes our faith, the better." |
September 1, 2012: Raw Story's article Phyllis Schlafly calls for Rove resignation over Akin ‘murder’ remarks covers Phyllis Schlafly and Karl Rove in the Todd Akin affair. Her son is mentioned, and his project is described as "a wildly inaccurate 'conservative alternative' to Wikipedia."
August 2012[edit]
August 31, 2012: Slate's article Internet ne démasque pas toutes les impostures (translated: The Internet does not expose all frauds) reports that refuting myths is not always simple. As an example, it gives a translation of Conservapedia's article on Barack Obama, which contains many ideas supporting birtherism.
August 10, 2012: The Sydney Morning Herald's article What cars do conservatives buy? has a look at what Conservapedia has to say about various car manufacturers.
August 6, 2012: Houston Press: 10 Funniest Sentences on Conservapedia
August 2, 2012: Mike Lofgren publishes a book titled The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted.
“”Science and religion have for a long time had a bumpy cohabitation. One has only to think of Galileo and the Inquisition, or the nineteenth-century clergy's reaction to Darwin's Origin of Species. But up until recently, most Americans appeared to have accepted the basic principles of science taught in high school biology or chemistry class. That is unfortunately no longer the case. The influence of science skeptics is now so pervasive that in 2006 a conservative activist created a knockoff of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia called Conservapedia. Its creator, an offspring of the venerable family values agitator Phyllis Schlafly, believes the earth is six thousand years old, Einstein’s theory of relativity is a hoax, and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins shares certain characteristics with Adolf Hitler.
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April 2012[edit]
April 10, 2012: Steven Gimbel publishes a book titled Einstein's Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion. Its sixth chapter is titled "Einstein's Liberal Science".
“”We find a modern version of "One Hundred Authors against Einstein" in the entries for 'Theory of Relativity" and "Counterexamples to Relativity" on the conservative wiki site, Conservapedia, designed as an alternative to Wikipedia in which articles are written from a conservative point of view. Its treatment of the theory of relativity is an extended anti-Einstein and antirelativity polemic reminiscent of the wide range of voices and approaches marshalled against the theory in the 1920s and 1930s in which any argument against relativity was thrown onto the stage. We find four themes running throughout the treatment: (1) Einstein is not deserving of any credit for its discovery or successes. should there be any; (2) the theory is not about the world but about formal symbols; (3) the theory is unsupported by empirical data; and (4) competing theories are suppressed because of a concerted political effort on the part of pro- relativity supporters. All are reminiscent of arguments seen between
the world wars.
|
March 2012[edit]
March 30, 2012: Mother Jones: Diagnosing the Republican Brain
“”We all know that many American conservatives have issues with Charles Darwin, and the theory of evolution. But Albert Einstein, and the theory of relativity?
If you’re surprised,allow me to introduce Conservapedia, the right-wing answer to Wikipedia and ground zero for all that is scientifically and factually inaccurate, for political reasons, on the Internet. |
March 30, 2012: The Georgia Straight: Conservapedia: American conservatives have their own batshit crazy Wikipedia
March 22, 2012: Conservapedia earns a mention in the introduction to Chris Mooney's The Republican Brain, where they are described as "the right-wing answer to Wikipedia and ground zero for all that is scientifically and factually incorrect, for political reasons, on the Internet."
January 2012[edit]
January 30, 2012: Schlafly quoted for comment in New Jersey news article "Secular, liberal 'hippie' NJ parents buck homeschool trend": "The public schools have become a battleground in the contest over values, particularly sexual-related issues, and that’s unfortunate. I think a lot of homeschooling parents, conservative and liberal, would prefer their children not be pawns in these cultural wars."
January 17, 2012: In response to Wikipedia's decision to organize a blackout on January 18, 2012 to protest against SOPA and PIPA, ExtremeTech's article Surviving the Wikipedia blackout: Mirrors, caches, alternatives, apps, and more suggests that one can instead "[u]se an alternative encyclopedia".
“”Of course, if you’re fairly right-wing in your beliefs, there’s always Conservapedia — and likewise, if you’re a raving liberal loony, there’s Uncyclopedia (but again please don’t use it for writing reports).
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January 17, 2012: Conservapedia earns a passing, but scathing, comment in Larry Womack's column in the Huffington Post, The Real Problem With Media Today? The Audience. Womack says the following about Conservapedia and Andrew Schlafly: "Even Fox News isn't a safe enough haven for some lunatics on the right side of the aisle. One "Christian" felt so threatened by Wikipedia's arrangement of fact that he had to develop his own Conservapedia. When he eventually realized that the Bible didn't agree with him any more than science, history or the arts, he decided to re-write that, too. I imagine this man does a lot of angry crying. I also imagine that somewhere a teacher is reading a paper that cites a Conservapedia article, sighing and thinking it's just not worth the fight with the parents."
2011[edit]
November 2011[edit]
November 8, 2011: Skeptoid lists Conservapedia as one of the Top 10 Worst Anti-Science sites, who says of it, "If you want to know about dinosaurs, geology, radiometric dating, the solar system, plate tectonics, or pretty much any other natural science, Conservapedia is your Number One resource to get the wrong answer."
October 2011[edit]
October 28, 2011: Conservapedia's articles on counterexamples to relativity, evolution and fat atheists are mentioned in the Huffington Post article Bad Science Leads to Bad Policy, No Matter Your Political Beliefs, which has a very fitting description of Conservapedia: "a kind of Wikipedia for ideologues on the right who want their facts and definitions to line up with their political beliefs".
October 10, 2011: ThinkProgress: It’s Anti-Flat-Earth Day, and Conservapedia Still Thinks the Theory of Relativity Is a Liberal Plot
October 4, 2011: John Grant publishes a book titled Denying Science: Conspiracy Theories, Media Distortions, and the War Against Reality.
“”In the field of astronomy/cosmology, there are large areas still under active discussion. How does one differentiate denialism from worthwhile debate? A certain number of professional astronomers – notably including Halton Arp, Eric Lerner, and Hermann Bondi – have disputed the Big Bang theory. These scientists have still been operating within science. Compare and contrast any of their writings on the subject with the "Big Bang" entry in Conservapedia®, which spends more wordage promoting Creationist dissent than it does on the theory itself. Here is the entirety of that article's "Scientific Criticism" section:
It should be noted that the Big Bang theory has received criticism because it ignores the theory of an oscillating universe. Also, no first cause from the Big Bang has ever been successfully identified. Furthermore, critics of the Big Bang point out that not everything in the universe is actually moving apart from everything else as some galaxies have collided with other galaxies in the past, although this could be explained through understanding of classical mechanics. |
“”Naturally, Conservapedia® is full of articles deriding evolution, which it regards as still "just another theory" that must seek to prove itself against the established default explanation, Creationism. Since this is a perspective that doesn't play too well in the greater world, Conservapedia’s editors have had to resort to some soghisticated arguments in support of their position … such as that old kindergarten favorite: "You’re fat!"
Hence the appearance of articles like "Evolutionists Who Have Had Problems with Being Overweight and/or Obese" and the special feature "Atheism and Obesity," with sections like "Lesbianism, Atheism, and Obesity" and "Picture of an Overweight Atheist Christopher Hitchens." |
August 2011[edit]
August 11, 2011: The New Scientist article E=mc2? Not on Conservapedia laments how Conservapedian relativity operates.
“”Coming from a physicist who authored the book The Physics of Christianity, in which he claims that without Jesus’s resurrection, our universe couldn’t exist, I am forced to question the meaning of "crackpot". It’s no matter, though, because Tribe’s grasp of general relativity is irrelevant – he was not writing a scientific paper, he was merely creating an analogy. But for Andy Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia and son of anti-abortion activist Phyllis Schlafly, the analogy was apparently enough to turn him off Einstein for good.
|
June 20, 2011: Penn Jillette releases a video titled Penn Point - Conservapedia or Troll Site? - Penn Point on his YouTube channel pennpoint.
July 2011[edit]
July 10, 2011: The New Jersey Star Ledger publishes a feature titled New Jersey home schooling: The Wild West of education on home schooling in New Jersey and Conservapedia in specific. The article highlights many of the oddities on Conservapedia, as well as Andy Schlafly's bizarre exam questions, whilst hinting that if home schooling were regulated, Schlafly wouldn't get away with this kind of teaching. Conservapedia reacts. On July 12, Conservative columnist George Berkin followed up with a defense of Conservapedia: Public high school group-think.
June 2011[edit]
June 20, 2011: Penn Jillette releases a video response titled Penn Point - Are you a Fat Atheist? - Penn Point on his YouTube channel pennpoint. Predictably, Ken has this to say.
June 7, 2011: Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff publish a book titled Groundswell, Expanded and Revised Edition: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.
“”Wikis (from the Hawaiian word for quick) are sites that support multiple contributors with a shared responsibility for creating and maintaining content, typically focused around text and pictures. The largest and best known, of course, is Wikipedia, the non-profit people-generated encyclopedia with over 2 million articles. There are plenty of other, more specialized wikis, including Conservapedia, a conservative version of Wikipedia, and wikiHow, a collection of how-to articles ("How to win at Monopoly," "How to do a Shove It on a skateboard"). Anyone can edit a wiki, which you’d think would result in chaos. However, in all but the most controversial cases (for example, articles on political figures like Barack Obama), the collective contributions represent a consensus view, based on a shared set of conventions (in Wikipedia, for example, the main convention is "neutral point of view"). The community of contributors notices changes and acts to preserve or reverse them based on the ideals of the community.
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May 2011[edit]
May 8, 2011: The Irish Times's article Thor is a conservative film. comments on Conservapedia's essay on the greatest conservative movies.
“”As I may have mentioned before, I am a great fan of the eccentric right-wing website Conservapedia. Established by one Andy Schlafly, son to well-known liberal-bashing blowhard Phyllis Schlafly, the site sells itself as a Conservative alternative to the notoriously Trotskyite Wikipedia. As Mr Schlafly sees it, Wikipedia is worryingly in thrall to such pseudosciences as Darwinism and dangerously enamoured by militant "socialists" such as Comrade Barack Obama (who seems to be simultaneously a secret Muslim, an atheist and inclined towards leftist Afro-centric Christian sects).
Conservapedia does occasionally move from kicking liberals to bigging-up rare examples of right-wing incursion into the leftist-dominated media. One such case is their attempt to detail great "Conservative Movies".
|
January 2011[edit]
January 15, 2011: Conservapedia earns a passing mention as the "most amusing alternative wiki" in Time's article on the Top 10 Wikipedia Moments.
January 14, 2011: ENTER.CO: 9 sitios que se inspiraron en Wikipedia (translated: 9 sites inspired by Wikipedia)
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To remedy the situation, in 2006 he founded Conservapedia, a replica of Wikipedia but with an evident inclination towards the political right. Unfortunately, it seems that those of us who are not in the United States - or who connect from Colombia, at least - are too liberal to deserve access to the website. Upon entering it, an error message appears; to see a sample of what Conservapedia offers, it is necessary to see the cached version by Google, or access through an anonymous proxy, which allows a slow navigation of the site).
However, if it was believed that Conservapedia was 'very conservative', not everyone was happy with it because it was 'too liberal'. That is why the site New Conservapedia was created, which calls itself 'the truly conservative encyclopedia'. According to the article on mathematics of New Conservapedia, the number 0 does not exist and those who believe that it does are heretics. |
January 12, 2011: Wired lampoons Conservapedia's articles on "Atheism and obesity," "Hollywood values" and their list of "examples of bias in Wikipedia" in an article entitled Ten Impressive, Weird And Amazing Facts About Wikipedia. Predictably, Conservapedia sees this coverage as a good thing.
“”5) US Conservatives believe that Wikipedia has a liberal bias, so they've started up a competing Conservapedia
If you reject the scientific consensus on climate change, aren't keen on gun control or feel safe in the knowledge that the Universe was created by a supernatural being, you might find Wikipedia has somewhat of a liberal bias. No problem. Conservapedia will welcome you with open arms. |
January 8, 2011: A parallel online universe by Emma Jane of The Australian describes Conservapedia as "a disturbing parallel universe where the ice age is a theoretical period, intelligent design is empirically testable, and relativity and geology are junk sciences."
2010[edit]
December 2010[edit]
December 6, 2010: The Discovery Institute's Evolution News and Views website describes Andrew Schlafly's foray into L'affaire Lenski as "misguided" in the article Michael Behe’s Quarterly Review of Biology Paper Critiques Richard Lenski’s E. Coli Evolution Experiments.
November 2010[edit]
November 17: In an article entitled From Conservapedia to Brooklyn Rock, The Indypendent mentions Conservapedia's list of "greatest conservative songs." It takes note of the "virtually anything by Toby Keith" comment, having previously labeled him "jingoistic" in the introduction. The article goes on to say "some of its selections are quite a stretch."
November 11: Professor emeritus of physics at the University of Virginia Paul Fishbane writes about Conservapedia's take on the Theory of Relativity, in the Tablet Magazine article Time Warp: On Right-Wing Rejections of Science, which says "Recent right-wing rejections of Einstein’s theory of relativity echo Nazi dismissals of what they called ‘Jewish Physics’".
November 1, 2010: Ms. Magazine quotes Conservapedia's "article" on "Richard Dawkins and the women and minority population" (written by none other than Conservative) as a source in their Will "New Atheism" Make Room For Women?" article. Blag Hag responds with the article Does the media really care where the atheist women are?.
October 2010[edit]
The October 2010 issue of Scientific American's Science Index lists Conservapedia as a complete fallacy (scoring it 0 on a 0 to 100 'fallacy-versus-fact' scale), and describes Conservapedia as "the online encyclopedia run by conservative lawyer Andrew Schlafly, [which] implies that Einstein's theory of relativity is part of a liberal plot."
September 2010[edit]
September 27, 2010: Conservative pundit Rowan Scarborough's article Wikipedia Whacks the Right references Conservapedia in an article decrying Wikipedia's treatment of conservative and liberal election hopefuls. Hilarity ensues as Karajou and Ed Poor take to the comments section, to enforce the impression Conservapedia is run by thugs and bullies. Quote of the day so far: "That's a major difference between Conservapedia and Wikipedia that anyone could see immediately: we will not tolerate a liar on the site."
September 20, 2010: HP/De Tijd's article Wakkerpedia, de wiki voor onderbuikend Nederland (translated: Wakkerpedia) mentions Conservapedia.
September 3, 2010: TerryH volunteers to be the head of agitprop, writing a propaganda tract insightful journal article on Andy's American Civics class (and how Conservapedia is growing rapidly!) for The Examiner. He also neglects to mention that he is a sysop on Conservapedia, and forgets to mention that by linking to his blog from Conservapedia, he is using it to earn an income.
August 2010[edit]
August 20, 2010: The Maclean's article A Botox backlash in Hollywood, Alanis Morissette on Alanis Morissette Day, and is Wyclef Jean shafting Haiti’s poor? lists Conservapedia in it's Newsmakers section, saying "The site attempts to answer such vexing questions as, 'Why do non-conservatives exist?'"
August 18, 2010: Discover: Are We Alone: Conservapedia relativity denialism
August 18, 2010: Slate: Are We Alone: Conservapedia relativity denialism
August 17, 2010: Jewish Telegraphic Agency's article It’s all relative: You say Einstein is ‘Jewish science,’ I say ‘liberal conspiracy’ picks up on Conservapedia's "Relativity is liberal conspiracy" nonsense. Schlafly takes a hammering, from statements including "replace ‘liberals’ with ‘Jews’ in [that] sentence," the words might as well have been written by a Nazi circa 1930s-era Germany" and "Scientists looking at the list [of counter-examples to relativity] say many are irrelevant, some misinterpret the science and many are flat wrong. Additionally, Schlafly did not respond to repeated efforts to interview him for the article.
August 13, 2010: The Young Turks releases a video titled Conservapedia: The Right Hates Science on their YouTube channel.
August 11, 2010: Talking Points Memo: Rachel Maddow: ‘The War On Brains Is Still Being Waged Every Day’ (VIDEO)
“”Maddow notes that rejecting tenets of science and even history in defense of faith is becoming more and more popular among GOP candidates — and Schlafly’s rejection of physics is just one piece in a much larger puzzle.
|
August 10, 2010: The Atlantic: E=mc2 Is a Liberal Conspiracy Against Jesus
August 10, 2010: The New York Times's article titled First They Came For The Climate Scientists briefly explains Conservapedian relativity.
“”Everyone knows that the American right has problems with science that yields conclusions it doesn’t like. Climate science — which says that we face a huge global externality that requires not just government intervention, but coordinated international action (black helicopters!) has been the target of a sustained, and unfortunately largely successful, attempt to damage its credibility.
But it doesn’t stop there. We should not forget that much of the right is deeply hostile to the theory of evolution. |
August 10, 2010: ThinkProgress: Conservapedia: The theory of relativity is a liberal plot
August 10, 2010: Riverfront Times: Andy Schlafly Strikes Again: Einstein's Theory of Relativity a Liberal Conspiracy
August 9, 2010: Talking Points Memo: Conservapedia: E=mc2 Is A Liberal Conspiracy
August 3, 2010:In an article entitled Is Wikipedia biased against Israel? in Emunah, Conservapedia gets a passing mention when the author says, "Indeed the bias was pronounced enough to prompt the creation of the conservative wiki called Conservapedia with its article called 'Examples of Bias in Wikipedia'." Bonus points for Karajou turning up in the comments, bleating about how liberals tries to edit his site "and discovered the hard way that we’re not going to put up with their behavior."
March 2010[edit]
March 18, 2010: Huffington Post: Conservative Bible Project Cuts Out Liberal Passages
February 2010[edit]
February 24, 2010: Princeton Alumni Weekly: A moment with ... Andrew Schlafly '81, on 'Conservapedia'
February 17, 2010: A French translation of the Rolling Stone magazine article Obama's Big Sellout on Courrier International, Wall Street continue à faire la loi (English translation on Google), references Conservapedia's article about Barack Obama in a sidebar:
“”Le portail Conservapedia, le Wikipedia de la droite américaine, explique dans son article consacré à Obama que les banques de Wall Street qui ont bénéficié du plan de sauvetage ont figuré parmi ses meilleurs soutiens pendant la campagne électorale.
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In English, according to a local French speaker:
“” According to Conservapedia, an American right-wing version of Wikipedia, the Wall Street banks which benefited from Obama's bailout were among his strongest supporters during the electoral campaign."
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January 2010[edit]
January 9, 2010: In his New York Times article Of Individual Liberty and Cap and Trade, Cornell economics professor Robert H. Frank referenced Conservapedia's article "conservative parables" to praise University of Chicago economics professor and 1991 Nobel laureate Robert H. Coase, whose "extraordinary insight was that the free market always reaches the most efficient level of productive activity, in the absence of transaction costs." Chinese website 凤凰网 translated it two months later: 限额、交易和个人自由.
January 6, 2010: Local newspaper article "Conservapedia founder: We're fighting Wikipedia's liberal bias" by Rob Jennings, Parsippany (NJ) Daily Record, summarized in the Star-Ledger "Morris County resident, son of famous activist, runs 'Conservapedia' website." The article is reprinted on this right wing message board.
2009[edit]
December 2009[edit]
December 24, 2009: Creation Ministries International: Politicizing Scripture
December 10, 2009: Michael Muhammad Knight publishes a book titled Journey to the End of Islam.
“”The conservative wiki site "Conservapedia" offered a list of proofs that if Obama won the election, he would be our first Muslim president: his middle name referenced Husayn, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson; he described the adhan as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset" and could recite the opening lines with a "first-class [Arabic] accent"; he cited Malcolm X’s autobiography as a personal inspiration and took part in Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March; he converted to Christianity only after becoming "politically ambitious"; he pronounced "Pakistan " the "Muslim Pakistani" way, rather than the "common American one." Even Obama’s denials could be contextualized within Islam, the site argued, since "the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya encourages adherents to deny they are Muslim if it advances the cause of Islam."
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December 8, 2009: Conservapedia founder Andy Schlafly appears on fake conservative pundit Stephen Colbert's television show and giggles nervously.
December 7, 2009: The Christian Science Monitor's opinion piece Translating the Bible is no joke. But what's in a political 'translation'? slams the Conservative Bible Project.
December 3, 2009: The Conservative Bible Project makes the Associated Press: Conservative Bible Project aims to rewrite scripture to counter perceived liberal bias (New York Daily News link).
November 2009[edit]
November 15, 2009: In an article on the 40th birthday of the 'net, Conservapedia is described as "unintentionally hysterical" under a heading describing Wikipedia.
November 4, 2009: The Riverfront Times: Hallowed Be Thy Name: A member of the Schlafly clan figures to do the Lord's work by cleansing the Bible of its "liberal bias"
October 2009[edit]
Conservapedia strikes it big on the blogs with the Conservative Bible Project (see further references in the main article). The news has even made it to television and print (though not in America).
October 23, 2009: The Telegraph: Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe
“”6. Danth’s Law (also known as Parker’s Law)
States: "If you have to insist that you've won an internet argument, you've probably lost badly." Named after a user on the role-playing gamers’ forum RPG.net. |
“”8. DeMyer's Laws
Named for Ken DeMyer, a moderator on Conservapedia.com. There are four: the Zeroth, First, Second and Third Laws. |
October 22, 2009: In his article Now 'Conservatives are Twisting Scripture', even Joseph Farah at WorldNetDaily thinks the project "is incredibly stupid and misguided".
October 22, 2009: Religion Dispatches:The Conservative Bible Project: Looking for Conservative Diamonds in a Liberal Dung-Hill.
October 20, 2009: Christianity Today: Conservapedia's Bible Removes Passages
October 19, 2009: The Baltimore Sun's article Jesus Of Nazareth As Dick Cheney discusses the Conservative Bible Project.
October 19, 2009: Evangelical Textual Criticism: Conservapedia Bible Project - Free of Corruption by Liberal Untruths?
October 18, 2009: The Tennessean's article New Conservative Bible will eliminate 'liberal' text quotes Biblical scholar and Wheaton professor Doug Moo, "Silly is probably as kind as I could be about it".
October 13, 2009:
| البشاير: مشروع لإنتاج"كتاب مقدس"بدون ليبرالية | (translated: A project to produce a "holy book" without liberalism) |
October 10, 2009: Salon: Salon fixes the Bible’s liberal bias
October 9, 2009: Salon: Actual verses from the "Conservative Bible"
October 7, 2009: Andy appears on Fox News, being interviewed by Alan Colmes, discussing the liberal bias in the Bible. He comes off second best.
October 7, 2009: News Junkie Post: Top 50 Conservative Websites Reveal Alarming Patterns
“”37. Conservapedia
This one is rich. Since reality has a well know liberal bias, many on the right needed something else to get their ‘information’ from, so they created that place. "Conservapedia is an encyclopedia project written from an Americentric, conservative Christian, and predominantly young earth creationist point of view." They have been in the headlines recently for rewriting the Bible to cut out passages that are deemed too ‘liberal’. There are some real gems of ignorance found in Conservapedia, including the following: |
October 6, 2009: New York Daily News: Conservapedia.com's Conservative Bible Project aims to deliberalize the bible.
October 6, 2009: ScienceBlogs: The Conservative Bible Project
October 6, 2009: New Republic: Fixing the Bible
October 6, 2009: The Atlantic: The Bible: Conservative Edition
October 6, 2009: Hot Air: Do Conservatives Need Their Own Bible Translation?
October 5, 2009: Time: Coming Soon: the New International Free-Market Bible
October 5, 2009: Harper's Magazine's article titled From the Department of Self-Parody comments on the Conservabible.
September 2009[edit]
September 29, 2009: Episcopal Café: The Bible is too liberal
September 3, 2009: Richard Dawkins publishes The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, which makes a passing and disparaging reference to Andy and the Lenski affair in Chapter 5, Before Our Very Eyes:
“”There is a comic sequel to this triumphant tale of scientific endeavour. Creationists hate it. Not only does it show evolution in action; not only does it show new information entering genomes without the intervention of a designer, which is something they have all been told to deny is possible (‘told to’ because most of them don’t understand what ‘information’ means); not only does it demonstrate the power of natural selection to put together combinations of genes that, by the naïve calculations so beloved of creationists, should be tantamount to impossible; it also undermines their central dogma of ‘irreducible complexity’. So it is no wonder they are disconcerted by the Lenski research, and eager to find fault with it.
Andrew Schlafly, creationist editor of ‘Conservapedia’, the notoriously misleading imitation of Wikipedia, wrote to Dr Lenski demanding access to his original data, presumably implying that there was some doubt as to their veracity. Lenski had absolutely no obligation even to reply to this impertinent suggestion but, in a very gentlemanly way, he did so, mildly suggesting that Schlafly might make the effort to read his paper before criticizing it. Lenski went on to make the telling point that his best data are stored in the form of frozen bacterial cultures, which anybody could, in principle, examine to verify his conclusions. He would be happy to send samples to any bacteriologist qualified to handle them, pointing out that in unqualified hands they might be quite dangerous. Lenski listed these qualifications in merciless detail, and one can almost hear the relish with which he did so, knowing full well that Schlafly – a lawyer, if you please, not a scientist at all – would hardly be able to spell his way through the words, let alone qualify as a bacteriologist competent to carry out advanced and safe laboratory procedures, followed by statistical analysis of the results. The whole matter was trenchantly summed up by the celebrated scientific blogwit PZ Myers, in a passage beginning, ‘Once again, Richard Lenski has replied to the goons and fools at Conservapedia, and boy, does he ever outclass them.’ |
May 2009[edit]
May 11, 2009: Humeur site Cracked includes Conservapedia among its 5 terrifying bastardizations of the Wikipedia model. The article leads to a flurry of new (and probably doomed) user registrations at Conservapedia.
May 10, 2009: Little Green Footballs: Conservapedia’s New and Improved Non-Commie Bible
April 2009[edit]
April 23, 2009: Vanity Fair carries a scathing report titled Conservapedia: Bastion of the Reality-Denying Right.
February 2009[edit]
February 17, 2009: Pravmir, the Russian Orthodox Church web site, mentions Conservapedia in an article discussing Christian "clones" of popular web sites in its article Атака церковных клонов, или о христианизации популярных интернет-брендов (translation).
January 2009[edit]
January 23, 2009: A post on Wonkette titled Conservative Wiki Offers Helpful List of Senate Democrats To Assassinate, So Republican Governors Can Appoint GOP Replacements attacks a parody article posted on Conservapedia: Senate Democrats from States with Republican Governors on the grounds that it constitutes a hitlist. The offending article, which had been edited by several Conservapedia administrators prior to deletion, disappeared when Conservapedia's server crashed a couple of days later, and has since been protected from recreation.
2008[edit]
December 2008[edit]
December 15: San Francisco Weekly's article Point of (a Great) View uses Conservapedia's stance on the Truth as an illustrative example to introduce a piece about adults disagreeing.
December 3, 2008: In its article Mejia: User-generated content: A fad, or here to stay?, the Yale Daily News uses Conservapedia as an example of "...the tendency toward groupthink. This is easy to see on political Web sites like Huffington Post or Conservapedia that are largely ideologically homogenous". Andy thinks they are complimenting Conservapedia (since his reading comprehension is so poor), because in the previous paragraph they write: "But user-generated content needs to be taken more seriously by the regular media in order to remain relevant."
September 2008[edit]
September 23, 2008: Skeptoid: The World According to Conservapedia
September 23, 2008: In Chapter 2 (Creationism and Counterknowledge) of Counterknowledge: How we surrendered to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science and fake history, Damian Thompson writes:
“”‘Free culture knows no bounds,’ says Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. ‘We welcome the reuse of our work to build variants. That’s directly in line with our mission.’ Wikipedia itself is, by its nature, unreliable; a fair amount of counterknowledge creeps into its database every day. But, so long as its users are aware of its serious limitations, it is a useful resource. The purpose of CreationWiki and another anti-evolution rival, Conservapedia, is to dress up nonsense as science.
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August 2008[edit]
August 1, 2008: The Washington Times: SHEFFIELD: Conservatives miss Wikipedia’s threat
“”Faced with such bias, many people on the right seem willing to retreat from the Wiki Wars, resorting to legal maneuvering to block particularly noxious entries and crying foul about Wiki unfairness. Still others on the right have withdrawn to their own site, Conservapedia.
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July 2008[edit]
July 1, 2008: L'affaire Lenski is getting Conservapedia some mockery press attention in the Guardian article Conservapedia has a little hangup over evolution.
June 2008[edit]
June 30, 2008: Ars Technica: Bacteria evolve; Conservapedia demands recount
June 25, 2008: New Scientist Blogs: Creationist critics get their comeuppance
“”However, a far more amusing response came from Andrew Schlafly, the boss of Conservapedia. This, you may recall, is an alternative version of Wikipedia that aims to "correct the biases" of the original site - it has, for example, a young-Earth creationist viewpoint on evolution.
Schlafly wrote a brusque open letter to Lenski, expressing "skepticism" about his claims and demanding to see the data. Lenski replied, saying that the data were publicly available in the paper, and correcting a major misunderstanding in Schlafly's letter (he misread our article as saying there were three new proteins in the mutant culture, which we didn't say and was not the case). Schlafly wrote back, in shirty tones, demanding the data in their raw form for "independent review" - meaning that Conservapedia should be allowed to reanalyse it, without it being mucked about by corrupt evolutionist scientists. And at this point Lenski must have had enough. |
June 24, 2008: In the article Of Bacteria and Throw Pillows, science writer Carl Zimmer writes about the Lenski affair on ScienceBlogs.
June 15, 2008: Stars and Stripes: Faith takes strange forms on the Web
“”Parody religions misappropriate religious tenets in premeditated acts of parody.
Take, for example, Last Thursdayism. The idea is a spinoff of "young-Earth" creationism, a belief that the universe was created by God 6,000 years ago with the appearance of being more than 13 billion years old. |
June 14, 2008: Not only does Stars and Stripes mock Conservapedia in an article about strange religious beliefs in its article Faith takes strange forms on the Web, but Andrew Schlafly decides to publicize the embarrassment.
May 2008[edit]
May 21, 2008: The Hour features Andy Schlafly.
May 17, 2008: Ben Caleca at the Michigan Daily unwittingly joins in the Ides project with some commentary and disgust on his blog.
January 2008[edit]
January 12, 2008: Thom McCombs of the Vallejo Times-Herald responds to an anti-ACLU editorial in the article Defending the ACLU (archived & not found). When referring to the writer of the opinion piece, McCombs says "Do they really believe the garbage that they get from Conservapedia and spew onto these pages, or do they just hate the Constitution, and think that swiftboating the ACLU is a way to bring it down?"
January 1, 2008: Damian Thompson's book Counterknowledge: How We Surrendered to Conspiracy Theories, Quack Medicine, Bogus Science and Fake History mentions Conservapedia on one page, right next to CreationWiki. He didn't like either of them.
2007[edit]
December 2007[edit]
December 25, 2007: Haaretz's article Your Wiki Entry Counts features an interview with a hardcore Wikipedian - resulting in a very pro-Wikipedia article. Conservapedia is mentioned in the article:
“”Conservapedia, for example, sprang up last year as a reaction to what the conservative-Christian Web encyclopedia calls Wikipedia's "liberal bias."
"You have to start with a baseline when dealing with knowledge, and Wikipedia does air on the side of science," Shankbone retorts, referring to the fact that many of Conservapedia's articles support the creationist point of view. |
December 13, 2007: In a video titled How Ridiculous are Conservatives? released on their YouTube channel, The Young Turks discusses the pages that have the most views on Conservapedia.
December 6, 2007: In an article about GodTube, a sane writer for the Michigan Daily refers to Conservapedia as a "propagandist endeavor" (4th paragraph).
November 2007[edit]
November 20, 2007: The Atlantic reveals What Conservapedia Is Really About. Conservapedia is really not about homosexuality. Not at all.
November 2, 2007: Conservapedia receives a mention in the AP article on GodTube (7th paragraph), published by CNN.
November 2, 2007: Fox News: GodTube Provides Christian Web-Video Alternative
“”GodTube is among religion-based Web sites that closely copy popular secular models.
MyChurch.org is similar to the social networking site MySpace, and Conservapedia.com is the religious right's response to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. |
September 2007[edit]
September 3, 2007: Blast magazine: Thoughts on a Conservapedia
July 2007[edit]
July 25, 2007: San Diego City Beat: Sickopedia
July 23, 2007: The Register: Conservapedia too pinko? Try Metapedia
July 13, 2007: In the YouTube videos The Inconvenience of Truth (Part One) and The Inconvenience of Truth (Part Two), Mark Pesce uses a comparison of the various encyclopedia articles to derive lulz from Conservapedia.
July 11, 2007: Queerty: Conservapedia Knows The Gays
July 1, 2007: Conservapedia gets a few mentions in an Observer piece on Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia titled For your information.
June 2007[edit]
June 29, 2007: The Institute for Creative Thought Crimes's article Conservapedia and The War Against Truth discusses Conservapedia's factual relativism.
June 27, 2007: Conservapedia makes the big time! On the Daily Show, Lewis Black reports on Conservapedia, complete with screenshots, and featuring the article on homosexuality. The report is accessible from Crooks and Liars: Daily Show: Lewis Black Exposes Right Wing Media Paranoia. Despite driving significantly more traffic than other media references have, Conservapedia not only doesn't trumpet this on its front page, it deletes references to it.
June 20, 2007: The Register picks up the report of the LA Times, Need hard facts? Try Conservapedia. RationalWiki is mentioned.
“”Unlike the L. A. Times piece, the Register's article is mocking and tongue-in-cheek. I don't think it should be mentioned on the main page. I would be very annoyed if someone put this on the main page in a way that implied that this was positive coverage; it is not.
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| —Dpbsmith's wise disclaimer in the editimg that gives the article link |
June 19, 2007: The Los Angeles Times article A conservative's answer to Wikipedia mentions RationalWiki.
“”The [15 year-old] girl, who is home-schooled, wrote an article for Conservapedia on Irish dancing and uses the site to research papers. But the biggest lesson she's taken away as a young conservative is: "There are people who want to destroy us."
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June 18, 2007: 5 de Septiembre: Conservapedia: Mucho conservadurismo y poca enciclopedia (translated: Conservapedia: Much conservatism and little encyclopaedia)
June 13, 2007: Freakonomics Radio: Hate Wikipedia? Start Your Own
June 6, 2007: The Guardian: Is Wikipedia too liberal for you?
“”A columnist just criticized Conservapedia, probably expecting to win support for it. Instead, the columnist herself is widely criticized by the public. See the column and the numerous public criticisms of it here."
|
| —Conservapedia front page on the Shinyshiny (a girls' guide to gadgets - hmmmm) article |
June 6, 2007:
| Ynet: בקטנה: הגירסה הימנית של ויקיפדיה | (translated: The right-wing version of Wikipedia) |
June 4, 2007: "Conservapedia continues to attract mainstream press attention. Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam's comments on Pat Robertson reveal a case study on objectivity." - Conservapedia front page opinion of Alex Beam, regular columnist at the Boston Globe, who write the article Just the facts -- and they're always right.
May 2007[edit]
May 13, 2007: Página/12: A la derecha de su pantalla (translated: To the right of your screen)
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In the network there are many clones: Conservapedia, with a more conservative approach than the original; Metapedia, even more right; Uncyclopedia, humorous alternative, or Frikipedia, absurd and gross on purpose. |
May 10, 2007: Press-Telegram: Conservapedia, QubeTV mimic popular sites with spin to right
May 8, 2007: San Francisco Chronicle: Popular Web Sites Breed Political Copies
“”Conservatives often decry a liberal bias in the media and elsewhere. Some even see it in some of the Internet's most popular destinations.
Conservapedia.com is a politically bent mimic of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.com, which Conservapedia claims is "six times more liberal than the American public." |
May 5, 2007: Die Welt: Die Web-Wahrheiten der strengen Christen (translated: The Web truths of strict Christians)
April 2007[edit]
April 30, 2007: Computing's article Christians take on YouTube with GodTube notes that GodTube "is similar to others which take popular websites and seek to add an alternative spin, such as Conservapedia.com, MyChurch.org and MuslimSpace.com".
April 24, 2007: The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: „Conservapedia": Gegenaufklärer im Netz (translated: "Conservapedia": Counter-Enlightenment on the Net)
April 21, 2007: History News Network: What's the Difference Between Wikipedia and Conservapedia?
April 12, 2007: 조선일보's article "위키피디아는 이제 못믿어" (translated: "I cannot believe Wikipedia now") mentions Citizendium, Conservapedia and Scholarpedia.
April 12, 2007: El País: Conservapedia, la respuesta de la derecha de EE UU contra Wikipedia (translated: Conservapedia, the US right response to Wikipedia)
March 2007[edit]
March 27, 2007: Scripps Howard News Service: Conservapedia.com -- an encylopedic message from the right
March 27, 2007: MK News: 온라인 백과사전 진보와 보수 대결 (translated: Online Encyclopedia Progressive and Conservative Confrontation)
March 25, 2007: Helsingin Sanomat: Tietosanakirjan tulevaisuus (translated: The future of the encyclopedia)
March 23, 2007: Bem Paraná: Versão conservadora da Wikipedia causa polêmica nos EUA (translated: Conservative version of Wikipedia causes controversy in the US)
March 21, 2007: According to Time's article 10 Questions: Jimmy Wales, Jimmy Wales thinks Conservapedia is biased.
March 19, 2007: Metro: Weird, wild wiki on which anything goes
March 18, 2007: Heise online: Wider den Kreationismus (translated: Against Creationism)
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The strong influence of neo-creationists and their rigorous "Kulturkampf" that is fought on all fronts also manifests itself on the Internet, where two electronic encyclopedias called "Conservapedia" and "CreationWiki" want to defy the "anti-Christian" Wikipedia. In particular, the 2535-article "CreationWiki" tries to challenge the correctness of Darwinian theory of evolution with pseudo-scientific arguments and supposedly academic terms. |
March 16, 2007: Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Conservative Web site counters the 'bias' of Wikipedia
March 13, 2007: Robert Siegel talks with Andrew Schlafly about Conservapedia on NPR's article Conservapedia: Data for Birds of a Political Feather?.
March 11, 2007: Toronto Star: Conservative wants to set Wikipedia right
March 10, 2007: APC: Wikipedia vs Conservapedia
March 10, 2007: Sg.hu: A Föld hatezer éves? (translated: Is the Earth six thousand years old?)
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In the online edition of German daily newspaper Die Welt, he reported about two encyclopedias: Conservapedia and CreationWiki. Both depict the laity's theories of science as if they were completely wrong. According to the creationists, the biblical god created the world from scratch in six days, and Earth is only 6,000 years old, not about 4.2 billion years old as taught by geology and physics.
One of the creationist websites says: "Earth is young, only a few thousand years old. Obviously, there is not enough time to evolve, as it could not have happened." In Conservapedia, which was created by a group of students at the end of last year and lawyer Andy Schlafly, there are also and similar entries: "Like all modern animals, the kangaroos come from the Middle East. They are the descendants of the two founding kangaroos that were taken from the flood before Noah's ark." |
March 9, 2007: Наш город's article Возраст Земли – шесть тысяч лет (translated: Age of the Earth – six thousand years) mentions Conservapedia's take on creationism.
March 9, 2007: Terra's article Dinossauros estão vivos, diz Wikipedia da direita (translated: Dinosaurs are alive, says the Wikipedia for the right) mentions Conservapedia's take on creationism.
March 8, 2007: The New York Times: Conservapedia: The Word Says It All
March 7, 2007: Courrier international: Et Dieu créa Conservapedia (translated: And God created Conservapedia)
March 6, 2007: Spiegel Online: Wikipedia for Christian Fundamentalists: The Lord's Encyclopedia
March 6, 2007: 网易新闻: 维基·危机 (translated: Wiki crisis)
March 6, 2007: The Christian Post: Conservapedia Challenges 'Anti-Christian' Wiki
March 5, 2007: The New York Times: Conservapedia: See Under "Right"
March 5, 2007: 20 minutos: Conservapedia, una 'wikipedia' para mantener los valores cristianos y americanos (translated: Conservapedia, a 'Wikipedia' for maintaining Christian and American values)
March 4, 2007: ECommerce Times: Conservapedia: Far Righter Than Wikipedia
March 2, 2007: The Guardian: Conservapedia - the US religious right's answer to Wikipedia
March 2, 2007: Благовест: Американские евангелики создали «Консервапедию» как альтернативу «Википедии» (translated: American evangelicals created "Conservapedia" as an alternative to "Wikipedia")
March 2, 2007: Heise: Conservapedia: christlich-konservative Alternative zu Wikipedia (translated: Conservapedia: Christian conservative alternative to Wikipedia)
Macrch 2, 2007: The Chronicle of Higher Education: A Wikipedia for the Right Wing
“”The site is, as its name suggests, a conservative response to what it bills as Wikipedia’s "increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American" sentiment. Predictably, left-leaning blogs have had a field day with that statement, and they’ve relished many of Conservapedia’s more florid phrasings: Ronald Reagan is "considered by many to be the greatest American President," for example, and kangaroos have legs that are "strong and powerful, designed by God for leaping." (To be fair to the site, left-wing pranksters have already logged on to add plenty of their own parodic passages, so it’s hard to know how much of Conservapedia’s material was written by card-carrying conservatives.)
While many pundits have treated the site as a cheap joke, Conservapedia does raise a few substantive issues. The site was founded by Andy Schlafly, a conservative writer and attorney (and the son of Phyllis Schlafly, the right-wing activist who founded the Eagle Forum), and much of the foundational material was written by home-schooled high-school students from New Jersey. Writing for The Guardian, Conor Clarke sees in Conservapedia’s creation story "the logical conclusion of a slightly worrying trend:" |
March 1, 2007: The Guardian: Rightwing website challenges 'liberal bias' of Wikipedia
March 1, 2007: The Guardian's article A fact of one's own discusses Conservapedia's objectivity.
February 2007[edit]
February 28, 2007: Wired: What would Jesus Wiki?
February 28, 2007: Information World Review: Conservapedia takes on Wikipedia 'bias'
February 26, 2007: New Scientist Blogs: A conservative rival for Wikipedia?
February 26, 2007: The Atlantic's Conservapedia Contest! challenges readers to "find the single most ridiculous entry in the Christianist version of Wikipedia, Conservapedia".
February 26, 2007:
| nrg: שמרנופדיה | (translated: Conservative-pedia) |
February 24, 2007: The Atlantic: Conservapedia?
“”Hey, it's a post-modern world, and truth isn't always truthiness.
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February 23, 2007: Huffington Post: Introducing "Conservapedia"—Battling Wikipedia’s War on Christians, Patriots
February 22, 2007: Daily Kos: Conservapedia
February 22, 2007: Discover: Conservapedia
February 21, 2007: The ScienceBlogs article on Conservapedia and Math discusses the state of Conservapedian mathematics.