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I see several people on talk are concerned about finding positive references to balance all of the negative. While concern with balance is good and important, it would be improper to seek to manufacture balance where none exists. My understanding is that Conservapedia itself would be entirely non-noteworthy but for the sudden rash of criticism against it. As far as I am aware appropriate "positive" sources to include simply do not exist for us to cite. We should not feel guilty about that, and it would be an error trying to bend the Wikipedia article out of misplaced guilt over that fact. If positive sources do exist, or if positive source do appear, then by all means add them. If Conservapedia truly is noteworthy and truly has positive aspects worthy of discussion, here then others make those judgments and we will cite them.
My Original Research is that Conservapedia is (at least for the time being) a non-notable vanity site that became a tourist attraction of the train wreck variety. If they can grow and mature into a site of importance, then good for them. Alsee 03:14, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
"Balance" really means that all subjects are subjected to the same scrutiny, /not/ that all views/organizations/people/etc. get equal amounts of positive and negative attention; that would completely defeat the purpose of analysis and documentation. It is arguable that the Conservapedia is, at best, hypocritical and, at worst, maliciously so. jgates 16L49, 5 March 2007
Just noting a few thoughts here since I'm not sure how to incorporate them in the best way (or if they belong into the article at all).
Whats the deal with the "lectures" that are posted? And the various talk pages full of what looks like homework assignments? Is conservapedia moonlighting as a place for Andrew to post info to his students? Tmtoulouse 21:04, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Okay what about http://www.eagleforumu.org/eagleforumu/ its a primary source but seems like its evidence that conservapedia is being used to store course material. Tmtoulouse 21:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Kelly Ramsey in the last edit removed what the editor termed "unreliable blogs" However, the blogs in question were being used as primary sources of notable individuals commenting. In particular, Andrew Sullivan's blog [3], Carl Zimmer(one of the head science writers for the NYT) [4]. While some of the other blog entries such as | this one may be questionable(I think you can make a pretty good policy based argument otherwise but since the source is not that important for our purposes I'm not going to deal with it now), it is hard for me to see how the Zimmer and Sullivan blog entries don't meet WP:RS about what these individuals have said, and given who they are, there opinions by nature are notable. Input from other editors would be appreciated. JoshuaZ 02:36, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Am I missing something about the Andrew Sullivan quote? The linked blog entry consists entirely of the cryptic sentence "Hey, it's a post-modern world, and truth isn't always truthiness." with a link to someone else's blog, which doesn't seem a very coherent or quotable criticism. -- McGeddon 18:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
(I am a pretty active Conservapedia editor. Please do not ask me why as I'm still trying to figure it out myself).
These really are musings. They're not rhetorical questions to which I have an answer in mind.
"The project was founded by Andrew Schlafly..." Do we know this? Is there a statement anywhere of who founded it? Would he accept this as a valid characterization? The Guardian piece does call him "the" founder in one place, but mostly it refers to "founders," plural. Who are the others?
User:Conservative, a highly highly unreliable source made a reference to a "board." Does it have a board? Who's on it? Do we know? What exactly are the roles of some other higher-profile editors. Is TimSvendsen, a sometime-WIkipedia-defender one of the Christian homeschoolers? Is PhilipB? Who's an adult? Who's a kid? Who's the webmaster, incidentally? Schlafly himself? Who took care of the obvious recent upgrades in capacity and bandwidth?
The article makes the same mistake that its sources do, of solemnly treating Conservapedia as if it were a tidy monolithic command-and-control encyclopedia with nice clear institutional points of view. On the Web, a little business can look a lot like a big business, and a toy Wiki can look like it's a serious competitor to Wikipedia. The article should make the point that this is a tiny site. The Latin Wikipedia is about four times as big. The Interlingua Wikipedia is about the same size.
Much of the mockery of Conservapedia is due to the striking contrast between its impressive false front and the ramshackle building behind it.
Today, Conservapedia is a virtual church basement with half a dozen people who talk a lot, a few harried-looking adult volunteers trying to conduct RE classes, fifty-eight kids, and people wandering through who can't tell the difference between the pastor's newsletter and the ninth-grade bulletin board. That bulletin board has on it a few posters trying to explain the Bible and a bunch of student project written in magic marker for a class exercise on "Places in the Holy Land." What are all the camera crews are doing outside?
It's so tiny that there may well be newcomers who notice that JoshuaZ and dpbsmith are fairly frequent contributors and may well assume that we're both Christian fundamentalists who are homeschooling our kids somewhere in New Jersey. (For the record, I'm not. I won't speak for JoshuaZ).
90% of what's written about Conservapedia, including this article, is actually about a) Conservapedia's home page, and b) Conservapedia's attack on Wikipedia. I'm not saying these are unfair targets. But are they "Conservapedia?" Are the textbook definitions posted as teaching exercises for students to expand ("Empress Lu: The Empress of China from 195 to 180 BC. She forcefully installed her two infant sons as emperors.")? The sometimes-clumsy student contributions? The prank entries ("Massachusetts Liberal A Liberal from Massachusetts. Generally, they want to throw out all rules of God, and live like animals. Often they are also evolutionists.")? The Andrew Schafly op-eds? The well-meant attempts to write actual articles (which are somewhat comparable to those in nostalgia.wikipedia.org? What is the "real" Conservapedia?
The article draft suffers from "recentism." To those who've been Googling on Conservapedia and reading the blogs that mention it, or reading Conservapedia frequently, the arboreal tree frog article is a hot news flash. The wave of parodic vandalism that washed over Conservapedia now seems to be in check. (What is Conservapedia doing about new users? There have been some new ones so account creation can't always disabled. Maybe he lets a few in, watches them, blocks them, lets a few more in?)
Well, OK. One more thought. Which is a more notable topic, "Conservapedia" or "Andrew Schlafly?" They both fall somewhere in the hazy twilight zone of borderline notability...
I guess I do have a sort of tentative conclusion, which is, first, Conservapedia isn't really all that notable, at least not yet. I voted against Eon8 a while back and I don't think Conservapedia is anywhere near as notable as Eon8 was. Second, I'm not sure how much we really know about Conservapedia. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me we have about tapped the amount of info from WP:V sources and are blending into original research. There is a lot of points to be made about Conservapedia as Dpbsmith stated above, and that I have brought up a few times. But the problem is we have no sources that address it. I think some of the recent additions to the article, while probably valid, also fall under WP:OR. I have removed on sentence that I feel is a clear example of this. I think at this point any major expansion of the article will need to await new secondary sources. Tmtoulouse 18:06, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Is the claim that you can not register new user IDs original research? Is there a WP:RS we can use? Tmtoulouse 04:12, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
If conservapedia ends up getting an article, then we may want to have an article on vandalism of wikis, as it would now be a phenomenon no longer confined to just wikipedia. Andjam 02:56, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
The example entries seems to have OR. In particular, the 2nd law of thermodynamics set is all OR. JoshuaZ 15:32, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the following material from the Eagle Forum entry as longer applicable for I will paste it here to see if anyone wants to work it in:
As of February, 2007, Conservapedia's Alexa traffic rank has surged to nearly 1,000,000 for a few days, far above its three month average of about 580,000. [1] By comparison, Wikipedia has an Alexa ranking of 12. [2]
Conservapedia no longer allows new users to create or edit entries. [3] Tmtoulouse 18:00, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
From the article: "Jimmy Wales has stated that he has no objections to the project.[13] "Free culture knows no bounds," he said. "We welcome the reuse of our work to build variants."
Question [1]: does Conservapedia actually use Wikipedia content to build variants? (I don't think so: if so, does it meet GFDL requirements? (I don't think so)) Question [2]: to what extent can Conservapedia be said to be "free culture"? It doesn't seem to specify its licence, so I assume they simply claim copyright. No copyleft, no public domain, no GFDL, no "Free" as far as I can see. Probably I've missed where they specify, but it would be good for us to be clear if we can find the answer. Is the "free culture" alluded to here simply their use of free software? Again, it would be good to specify. - Nunh-huh 20:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Excerpt from "Examples of Bias in Wikipedia" (Conservapedia): "Polls show that about twice as many Americans identify themselves as 'conservative' compared with 'liberal', and that ratio has been increasing for two decades.[1] But on Wikipedia, about three times as many editors identify themselves as 'liberal' compared with 'conservative'.[2] That suggests Wikipedia is six times more liberal than the American public." ....So what??? ...or do they expect Wikipedia to be an exclusive domain for Americans?? Did they ever stop to think that perhaps non Americans use and edit Wikipedia and that they may be proportionally more 'liberal'? SPatrickB 01:57, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
They're nothing more than proud (and stupid, when we look at the articles based on the bible, when literature can never be a credible source, especially not the bible which is globally biased (it would amaze them, but 6.5 milliard people don't all have the same religion)) and short-sighted Christian nationalists, you just don't have to take their flimsy site seriously. Wikipedia can be trusted because it doesn't revolve around a country whose continent wasn't officially founded until 1492, and holds no religious bias, because you can be a member of Christianity, Islam, atheism, polytheism, pantheism or others, you'll find articles that are roughly equally worded for all of us, and are most often based on scientific proofs rather than "I believe it, therefore it is so" kinds of babbling around. 213.222.158.152 17:27, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
I tried to create an account on Conservapedia, but couldn't. Was I merely botching the signup process, or has Conservapedia restricted access in some way? JamesMLane t c 23:31, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I too, as a physicist, wanted to explain how objects are ever capable of moving away from each other without our "theory" of gravity breaking down, including clarifying a highly miscontextualized NASA measurement.-- Loodog 00:41, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
This topic seems to be stirring up a fair amount of emotion in the unregistered posters, I've seen two reverts in the past hour. Anyone else think topic should be semi-protected? mattbuck 23:42, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
[6] but nothing in it seems to be that terribly different than what other sources are saying. JoshuaZ 01:22, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
If information is not covered by independent third party sources, as far as Wikipedia is concerned the event didn't happen. The only exception being a narrow one in self-published and questionable sources in articles about themselves. Grabbing articles from that site that make obviously outrageous claims and then editorializing in this article that they contradict reality is original research. We cannot cherrypick content from the site and use it in this article unless it is covered by reliable sources.-- RWR8189 04:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Which parts are original research? Considering that the article has source tags to notable sources all over it, the "50% or more original research" bit strikes me as odd. The section in question was constructed on the basis of non-Conservapedia sources, and most sentences or paragraphs come with more than one source tag each. The only things (from what I can see) that were not directly sourced with tags are still based on existing sources from the reference list:
* Kangaroos: Wired * Einstein: IWR * Evolution: Guardian, CommentIsFree
I think the only bits of actually "original research" in that section are the comments that some of these things have been corrected after the sources came out. --Sid 3050 00:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC) About the potential "Why aren't the proper source tags in place for those three?" question: Listing the above direct sources to the paragraph in question would lead to six footnotes, which would be a slight overkill in my eyes. Removing the links to the Conservapedia articles is also not a good option because most articles change(d) after the sources came out, and the readers should not have to look through pages of article histories just to find the versions in question.</opinion> --Sid 3050 00:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Good, I was under the impression that these were arbitrary examples. The information should sourced to the reliable sources above, and not the Conservapedia articles.-- RWR8189 05:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
The issues is NOT that we deny that this has been disabled, but whether it is WP:OR. There are no WP:RS other than the primary source to the site itself, this MIGHT fall under WP:SELFPUB but you are not reference a page on conservapedia that says that only their login page. That is WP:OR Tmtoulouse 06:15, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
The site has clearly been disabled for new logins. Are we to take it that wikipedia content is now being censored for fear of some sort of legal action?
My first thought on Conservopedia was, "This is a parody site", my second, third and fourth thoughts were along the same lines. After reading through it, i can only come to the conclusion that this site is supposed to be a parody site along the lines of uncyclopedia. Is this true or is this a legitimate site? If it's a parody, shouldn't it be in the appropriate catagory?- Count23 07:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Somebody went through and corrected the article's spelling and grammar, but ended up botching sentences. Looking at the flurry of edits, I'm guessing the changing of British spellings to American ones was Conservapedian vandalism which wasn't reverted. Just so it doesn't turn into a tug of war, I'll explain my corrections. You have an aversion to something, not of something. Doctrine equals the collective teachings of an ideology. "The facts" as opposed to "fact" is redundant. It's not "the Conservapedia". By the way, can this be locked? It looks like people are removing perfectly valid sections and making questionable edits. Kronix1986 12:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Conservapedia seems to be closed to new registrants, because of legitimate edits which corrected nonsensical statements made by the in-house contributers. When it first appeared on the radar, many thought it would be a serious attempt to reinterpret history and science to support their stated ideals. It turns out that it's a wiki encyclopaedia written by 58 homeschooled children who are all introverted creationists, and lack a basic understanding of topics and concepts most of us covered in school.
With registrations closed, it's nothing more than a private circle-jerk between some ignorant and/or dumb kids. Does it deserve an article? Does its notoriety alone justify an article? If an article is justifiable, it should be made clear that:
1) It's closed to new entrants in order to avoid undesirable edits. 2) It's maintained by children.
Kronix1986 13:19, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Regardless of the quality or content of it, look at the reaction it's generated. Since it's well-known enough to generate demand for a page and a nonstub talk page, it's well-known enough to get an article.-- Loodog 00:52, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Someone may need to adjust the Democrat reference as the article has been changed. G e o. Talk to me 17:34, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I went ahead and removed it, I don't think we can back it up. Tmtoulouse 20:36, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
The source article from Wired has him down as a "conservative blogger" a user has suggested that he is satirical and not a conservative, does anyone care about this? Should we use "conservative" "satirical" or no adjective at all? Tmtoulouse 20:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
We have two german sources now [8] [9]. I think with sources in languages other than English any notability doubts should be gone. Also, if someoen who knows German can maybe skim these and see if there is anything worth including that would be helpful. JoshuaZ 21:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
The first sentence currently says:
Now the first two appear to be affirmed by both the site itself and all commentators, but the site does not, as far as I can tell, claim to support "American nationalism", and it would probably dispute that label (claiming instead that it's merely "not anti-American"). If this is a widely held view of the site anyway, we should cite a prominent commentator or two who has called it "American nationalist", and reword to say something like "many commentators have called its articles supportive of American nationalism, although the site itself describes them as [foo]". -- Delirium 02:06, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Based on the German source I want to insert:
"==Involvement with Eagle Forum==
In addition to its role as an encyclopedia, conservapedia is also used by Andrew Schlafly's Eagle Forum University. Material for various online courses, for example on American History, is stored on the site. [10] [11] [12]. Eagle Forum University is associated with Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum. [13] "
What do you guys think? Tmtoulouse 02:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I went ahead and put it in, but I am not sure how to properly format the ref tags..if someone knows how to do that? If not I will try and figure it out. Thanks! Tmtoulouse 03:01, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone have access to this article? [14] Tmtoulouse 03:32, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
May I suggest that "and that gravity and evolution are theories that remain unproven." is removed from the list of Conservapedia statements that contradict scientific consensus? The recognition of the difference between theory and fact is fairly strong in the scientific consensus, so this doesn't fit in with the obvious contractictions in the previous statements. I also just checked the article on Newton and it no longer makes the statement. There are plenty of Wikipedia revisions that could infer the same thing. BigBlueFish 10:16, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
[15] someone who speaks french may want to look at it to see if there is anything new. JoshuaZ 22:09, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
I see several people on talk are concerned about finding positive references to balance all of the negative. While concern with balance is good and important, it would be improper to seek to manufacture balance where none exists. My understanding is that Conservapedia itself would be entirely non-noteworthy but for the sudden rash of criticism against it. As far as I am aware appropriate "positive" sources to include simply do not exist for us to cite. We should not feel guilty about that, and it would be an error trying to bend the Wikipedia article out of misplaced guilt over that fact. If positive sources do exist, or if positive source do appear, then by all means add them. If Conservapedia truly is noteworthy and truly has positive aspects worthy of discussion, here then others make those judgments and we will cite them.
My Original Research is that Conservapedia is (at least for the time being) a non-notable vanity site that became a tourist attraction of the train wreck variety. If they can grow and mature into a site of importance, then good for them. Alsee 03:14, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
"Balance" really means that all subjects are subjected to the same scrutiny, /not/ that all views/organizations/people/etc. get equal amounts of positive and negative attention; that would completely defeat the purpose of analysis and documentation. It is arguable that the Conservapedia is, at best, hypocritical and, at worst, maliciously so. jgates 16L49, 5 March 2007
Just noting a few thoughts here since I'm not sure how to incorporate them in the best way (or if they belong into the article at all).
Whats the deal with the "lectures" that are posted? And the various talk pages full of what looks like homework assignments? Is conservapedia moonlighting as a place for Andrew to post info to his students? Tmtoulouse 21:04, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Okay what about http://www.eagleforumu.org/eagleforumu/ its a primary source but seems like its evidence that conservapedia is being used to store course material. Tmtoulouse 21:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Kelly Ramsey in the last edit removed what the editor termed "unreliable blogs" However, the blogs in question were being used as primary sources of notable individuals commenting. In particular, Andrew Sullivan's blog [3], Carl Zimmer(one of the head science writers for the NYT) [4]. While some of the other blog entries such as | this one may be questionable(I think you can make a pretty good policy based argument otherwise but since the source is not that important for our purposes I'm not going to deal with it now), it is hard for me to see how the Zimmer and Sullivan blog entries don't meet WP:RS about what these individuals have said, and given who they are, there opinions by nature are notable. Input from other editors would be appreciated. JoshuaZ 02:36, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Am I missing something about the Andrew Sullivan quote? The linked blog entry consists entirely of the cryptic sentence "Hey, it's a post-modern world, and truth isn't always truthiness." with a link to someone else's blog, which doesn't seem a very coherent or quotable criticism. -- McGeddon 18:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
(I am a pretty active Conservapedia editor. Please do not ask me why as I'm still trying to figure it out myself).
These really are musings. They're not rhetorical questions to which I have an answer in mind.
"The project was founded by Andrew Schlafly..." Do we know this? Is there a statement anywhere of who founded it? Would he accept this as a valid characterization? The Guardian piece does call him "the" founder in one place, but mostly it refers to "founders," plural. Who are the others?
User:Conservative, a highly highly unreliable source made a reference to a "board." Does it have a board? Who's on it? Do we know? What exactly are the roles of some other higher-profile editors. Is TimSvendsen, a sometime-WIkipedia-defender one of the Christian homeschoolers? Is PhilipB? Who's an adult? Who's a kid? Who's the webmaster, incidentally? Schlafly himself? Who took care of the obvious recent upgrades in capacity and bandwidth?
The article makes the same mistake that its sources do, of solemnly treating Conservapedia as if it were a tidy monolithic command-and-control encyclopedia with nice clear institutional points of view. On the Web, a little business can look a lot like a big business, and a toy Wiki can look like it's a serious competitor to Wikipedia. The article should make the point that this is a tiny site. The Latin Wikipedia is about four times as big. The Interlingua Wikipedia is about the same size.
Much of the mockery of Conservapedia is due to the striking contrast between its impressive false front and the ramshackle building behind it.
Today, Conservapedia is a virtual church basement with half a dozen people who talk a lot, a few harried-looking adult volunteers trying to conduct RE classes, fifty-eight kids, and people wandering through who can't tell the difference between the pastor's newsletter and the ninth-grade bulletin board. That bulletin board has on it a few posters trying to explain the Bible and a bunch of student project written in magic marker for a class exercise on "Places in the Holy Land." What are all the camera crews are doing outside?
It's so tiny that there may well be newcomers who notice that JoshuaZ and dpbsmith are fairly frequent contributors and may well assume that we're both Christian fundamentalists who are homeschooling our kids somewhere in New Jersey. (For the record, I'm not. I won't speak for JoshuaZ).
90% of what's written about Conservapedia, including this article, is actually about a) Conservapedia's home page, and b) Conservapedia's attack on Wikipedia. I'm not saying these are unfair targets. But are they "Conservapedia?" Are the textbook definitions posted as teaching exercises for students to expand ("Empress Lu: The Empress of China from 195 to 180 BC. She forcefully installed her two infant sons as emperors.")? The sometimes-clumsy student contributions? The prank entries ("Massachusetts Liberal A Liberal from Massachusetts. Generally, they want to throw out all rules of God, and live like animals. Often they are also evolutionists.")? The Andrew Schafly op-eds? The well-meant attempts to write actual articles (which are somewhat comparable to those in nostalgia.wikipedia.org? What is the "real" Conservapedia?
The article draft suffers from "recentism." To those who've been Googling on Conservapedia and reading the blogs that mention it, or reading Conservapedia frequently, the arboreal tree frog article is a hot news flash. The wave of parodic vandalism that washed over Conservapedia now seems to be in check. (What is Conservapedia doing about new users? There have been some new ones so account creation can't always disabled. Maybe he lets a few in, watches them, blocks them, lets a few more in?)
Well, OK. One more thought. Which is a more notable topic, "Conservapedia" or "Andrew Schlafly?" They both fall somewhere in the hazy twilight zone of borderline notability...
I guess I do have a sort of tentative conclusion, which is, first, Conservapedia isn't really all that notable, at least not yet. I voted against Eon8 a while back and I don't think Conservapedia is anywhere near as notable as Eon8 was. Second, I'm not sure how much we really know about Conservapedia. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me we have about tapped the amount of info from WP:V sources and are blending into original research. There is a lot of points to be made about Conservapedia as Dpbsmith stated above, and that I have brought up a few times. But the problem is we have no sources that address it. I think some of the recent additions to the article, while probably valid, also fall under WP:OR. I have removed on sentence that I feel is a clear example of this. I think at this point any major expansion of the article will need to await new secondary sources. Tmtoulouse 18:06, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Is the claim that you can not register new user IDs original research? Is there a WP:RS we can use? Tmtoulouse 04:12, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
If conservapedia ends up getting an article, then we may want to have an article on vandalism of wikis, as it would now be a phenomenon no longer confined to just wikipedia. Andjam 02:56, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
The example entries seems to have OR. In particular, the 2nd law of thermodynamics set is all OR. JoshuaZ 15:32, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the following material from the Eagle Forum entry as longer applicable for I will paste it here to see if anyone wants to work it in:
As of February, 2007, Conservapedia's Alexa traffic rank has surged to nearly 1,000,000 for a few days, far above its three month average of about 580,000. [1] By comparison, Wikipedia has an Alexa ranking of 12. [2]
Conservapedia no longer allows new users to create or edit entries. [3] Tmtoulouse 18:00, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
From the article: "Jimmy Wales has stated that he has no objections to the project.[13] "Free culture knows no bounds," he said. "We welcome the reuse of our work to build variants."
Question [1]: does Conservapedia actually use Wikipedia content to build variants? (I don't think so: if so, does it meet GFDL requirements? (I don't think so)) Question [2]: to what extent can Conservapedia be said to be "free culture"? It doesn't seem to specify its licence, so I assume they simply claim copyright. No copyleft, no public domain, no GFDL, no "Free" as far as I can see. Probably I've missed where they specify, but it would be good for us to be clear if we can find the answer. Is the "free culture" alluded to here simply their use of free software? Again, it would be good to specify. - Nunh-huh 20:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Excerpt from "Examples of Bias in Wikipedia" (Conservapedia): "Polls show that about twice as many Americans identify themselves as 'conservative' compared with 'liberal', and that ratio has been increasing for two decades.[1] But on Wikipedia, about three times as many editors identify themselves as 'liberal' compared with 'conservative'.[2] That suggests Wikipedia is six times more liberal than the American public." ....So what??? ...or do they expect Wikipedia to be an exclusive domain for Americans?? Did they ever stop to think that perhaps non Americans use and edit Wikipedia and that they may be proportionally more 'liberal'? SPatrickB 01:57, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
They're nothing more than proud (and stupid, when we look at the articles based on the bible, when literature can never be a credible source, especially not the bible which is globally biased (it would amaze them, but 6.5 milliard people don't all have the same religion)) and short-sighted Christian nationalists, you just don't have to take their flimsy site seriously. Wikipedia can be trusted because it doesn't revolve around a country whose continent wasn't officially founded until 1492, and holds no religious bias, because you can be a member of Christianity, Islam, atheism, polytheism, pantheism or others, you'll find articles that are roughly equally worded for all of us, and are most often based on scientific proofs rather than "I believe it, therefore it is so" kinds of babbling around. 213.222.158.152 17:27, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
I tried to create an account on Conservapedia, but couldn't. Was I merely botching the signup process, or has Conservapedia restricted access in some way? JamesMLane t c 23:31, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I too, as a physicist, wanted to explain how objects are ever capable of moving away from each other without our "theory" of gravity breaking down, including clarifying a highly miscontextualized NASA measurement.-- Loodog 00:41, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
This topic seems to be stirring up a fair amount of emotion in the unregistered posters, I've seen two reverts in the past hour. Anyone else think topic should be semi-protected? mattbuck 23:42, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
[6] but nothing in it seems to be that terribly different than what other sources are saying. JoshuaZ 01:22, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
If information is not covered by independent third party sources, as far as Wikipedia is concerned the event didn't happen. The only exception being a narrow one in self-published and questionable sources in articles about themselves. Grabbing articles from that site that make obviously outrageous claims and then editorializing in this article that they contradict reality is original research. We cannot cherrypick content from the site and use it in this article unless it is covered by reliable sources.-- RWR8189 04:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Which parts are original research? Considering that the article has source tags to notable sources all over it, the "50% or more original research" bit strikes me as odd. The section in question was constructed on the basis of non-Conservapedia sources, and most sentences or paragraphs come with more than one source tag each. The only things (from what I can see) that were not directly sourced with tags are still based on existing sources from the reference list:
* Kangaroos: Wired * Einstein: IWR * Evolution: Guardian, CommentIsFree
I think the only bits of actually "original research" in that section are the comments that some of these things have been corrected after the sources came out. --Sid 3050 00:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC) About the potential "Why aren't the proper source tags in place for those three?" question: Listing the above direct sources to the paragraph in question would lead to six footnotes, which would be a slight overkill in my eyes. Removing the links to the Conservapedia articles is also not a good option because most articles change(d) after the sources came out, and the readers should not have to look through pages of article histories just to find the versions in question.</opinion> --Sid 3050 00:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Good, I was under the impression that these were arbitrary examples. The information should sourced to the reliable sources above, and not the Conservapedia articles.-- RWR8189 05:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
The issues is NOT that we deny that this has been disabled, but whether it is WP:OR. There are no WP:RS other than the primary source to the site itself, this MIGHT fall under WP:SELFPUB but you are not reference a page on conservapedia that says that only their login page. That is WP:OR Tmtoulouse 06:15, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
The site has clearly been disabled for new logins. Are we to take it that wikipedia content is now being censored for fear of some sort of legal action?
My first thought on Conservopedia was, "This is a parody site", my second, third and fourth thoughts were along the same lines. After reading through it, i can only come to the conclusion that this site is supposed to be a parody site along the lines of uncyclopedia. Is this true or is this a legitimate site? If it's a parody, shouldn't it be in the appropriate catagory?- Count23 07:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Somebody went through and corrected the article's spelling and grammar, but ended up botching sentences. Looking at the flurry of edits, I'm guessing the changing of British spellings to American ones was Conservapedian vandalism which wasn't reverted. Just so it doesn't turn into a tug of war, I'll explain my corrections. You have an aversion to something, not of something. Doctrine equals the collective teachings of an ideology. "The facts" as opposed to "fact" is redundant. It's not "the Conservapedia". By the way, can this be locked? It looks like people are removing perfectly valid sections and making questionable edits. Kronix1986 12:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Conservapedia seems to be closed to new registrants, because of legitimate edits which corrected nonsensical statements made by the in-house contributers. When it first appeared on the radar, many thought it would be a serious attempt to reinterpret history and science to support their stated ideals. It turns out that it's a wiki encyclopaedia written by 58 homeschooled children who are all introverted creationists, and lack a basic understanding of topics and concepts most of us covered in school.
With registrations closed, it's nothing more than a private circle-jerk between some ignorant and/or dumb kids. Does it deserve an article? Does its notoriety alone justify an article? If an article is justifiable, it should be made clear that:
1) It's closed to new entrants in order to avoid undesirable edits. 2) It's maintained by children.
Kronix1986 13:19, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Regardless of the quality or content of it, look at the reaction it's generated. Since it's well-known enough to generate demand for a page and a nonstub talk page, it's well-known enough to get an article.-- Loodog 00:52, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Someone may need to adjust the Democrat reference as the article has been changed. G e o. Talk to me 17:34, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I went ahead and removed it, I don't think we can back it up. Tmtoulouse 20:36, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
The source article from Wired has him down as a "conservative blogger" a user has suggested that he is satirical and not a conservative, does anyone care about this? Should we use "conservative" "satirical" or no adjective at all? Tmtoulouse 20:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
We have two german sources now [8] [9]. I think with sources in languages other than English any notability doubts should be gone. Also, if someoen who knows German can maybe skim these and see if there is anything worth including that would be helpful. JoshuaZ 21:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
The first sentence currently says:
Now the first two appear to be affirmed by both the site itself and all commentators, but the site does not, as far as I can tell, claim to support "American nationalism", and it would probably dispute that label (claiming instead that it's merely "not anti-American"). If this is a widely held view of the site anyway, we should cite a prominent commentator or two who has called it "American nationalist", and reword to say something like "many commentators have called its articles supportive of American nationalism, although the site itself describes them as [foo]". -- Delirium 02:06, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Based on the German source I want to insert:
"==Involvement with Eagle Forum==
In addition to its role as an encyclopedia, conservapedia is also used by Andrew Schlafly's Eagle Forum University. Material for various online courses, for example on American History, is stored on the site. [10] [11] [12]. Eagle Forum University is associated with Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum. [13] "
What do you guys think? Tmtoulouse 02:49, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I went ahead and put it in, but I am not sure how to properly format the ref tags..if someone knows how to do that? If not I will try and figure it out. Thanks! Tmtoulouse 03:01, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Does anyone have access to this article? [14] Tmtoulouse 03:32, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
May I suggest that "and that gravity and evolution are theories that remain unproven." is removed from the list of Conservapedia statements that contradict scientific consensus? The recognition of the difference between theory and fact is fairly strong in the scientific consensus, so this doesn't fit in with the obvious contractictions in the previous statements. I also just checked the article on Newton and it no longer makes the statement. There are plenty of Wikipedia revisions that could infer the same thing. BigBlueFish 10:16, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
[15] someone who speaks french may want to look at it to see if there is anything new. JoshuaZ 22:09, 6 March 2007 (UTC)