Conservapedia:Mainpage
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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. |
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Since Conservapedia's founding in November 2006, its main page has gone through several changes. The basic format has conformed to the standard MediaWiki format of a left-hand side bar with 'talk', 'source/edit' and 'history' tabs across the top. The main content comprises two templates - Mainpageleft (a motley assortment of featured articles, pictures, quotes, links to 'educational' courses and bizarre self-aggrandisement by Conservative) and Mainpageright (a rag-tag aggregation of rightwing news and blog headlines, and information about the activities of 'Conservapedians').
Conservapedia's main page templates have only ever been editable by sysops. This has lead to individual sysops pimping their own hobby-horses without any regard to coherence, consistency or aesthetic appearance.
Logo[edit]
The first logo, designed by BillOReillyFan (March 2007)
The hidden text revealed
Temporary replacement due to "graffiti"
The wavy flag logo chosen by the Student Panel (March 2007)
The highly-prized Trusworthy version (April 2007)
(June 2007)
Current, web 2.0 compliant logo
The homeskollars discuss alternatives.
Color scheme[edit]
Mainpageleft[edit]
Also known as "Today's Featured Articles". In wikis that would have any sort of sanity behind their design, the left column could be used to inform the visitors of featured content. In Conservapedia, however, there's no single clear process behind this, so the admins like to come up with their own well-maintained and democratic featured content processes. "Well-maintained", of course, being rather debatable, and "democratic" in the sense of "one man, one vote – and I'm an admin so I have the vote".
The past, the present and the future features:
- Weekly Toon, Conservapedia's political cartoon that upholds all traditions of American political cartoons: badly drawn, utterly unfunny and frequently parodied. Conservapedia is justifiably proud to have a person of such striking wit on board, so the cartoons are currently the most prominent feature on the main page.
- Andy's hype. Contains Andy's highly debatable guesstimations on the site's popularity, and some bombastic encouragements to read his pet articles and to go forth and edit some stuff.
- Courses. Since the actual educational activity in the wiki has wound down, there's no need for this to be on the main page.
- Bible verses.
- Some random quote.
- Historical Quote. How this is different from some random quote, we don't know.
- Popular Articles. List of some of the prominent articles in the site.
- Featured Article. This used to be somewhat updated at some point, but now, it's neglected somewhere in the middle of the page.
- Conservapedia's Highlighted Article. Conservative never quite explained how this is different from "Featured Article".
- Article of the Year. Maybe two years. As it usually takes just about a year to read one of Conservative's doorstoppers anyway, no one minds this.
- Conservapedia * Project: Red link farms from Conservative.
- Other Ken gibberish: Random pictures of Hitwin or like, with long captions.
- Essay of the Month: A thinly veiled guise that masks Conservative's true main page agenda. We're proud to have cracked the code, and for the first time in recorded history, we'll explain it to you: Does Conservative have the machismo to display bull's balls on the front page of a family-friendly encyclopedia? Yes, he does! Repeatedly!
- The Masterpiece and Guest World Treasure: Random pretty pictures of artwork and buildings/statues, respectively. There is no room for prettiness in these lands of Conservapedia, hence these features were excised. The title "The Masterpiece" linked to Conservapedia article on masterpieces; this was Conservapedia's way to explain that the process for choosing the images to be displayed in this section was "this is how we define a 'masterpiece', and we'll choose one to be displayed on the main page when we damn well feel like it."
Mainpageright[edit]
Also known as "In The News". The right-hand column of the main page is dedicated to "breaking news" links ranging from relatively mainstream Fox News through to Wing-nut World Net Daily and some of the more extreme fundie blogs. Over 90% of so-called news entries are anti-Obama/liberal/atheist/evolutionist jibes. For a long time the news aggregation was managed by Crocoite/DeanS, but following his gradual retirement from CP after the death of his wife mainpageright was allowed to sprawl uncontrollably over screenfulls of drivel.