Whacko-Pedia

[webmdave]

Sent in by Jim E

 

"The Truth Shall Set You Free" ... as long as the truth conforms to the principles adhered to at Conservapedia.com .

 

That's right, the right-wing believes that Wikipedia is riddled with non-truth. What Wikipedia strives for–a doggedly open debate about facts–results in what conservatives feel is a liberal bias. How very interesting. And so, Conservapedia was born.

 

The Los Angeles Times covered an article in today’s paper about this.

 

It fascinates me for several reasons.

 

First, this new wiki is frought with outright lies mixed with a good deal of status quo truth. This will cause it to appear as a viable resource to some, and result in the spread of misinformation. This is exactly the type of thing people fear from the original Wikipedia, but which hasn’t manifested itself to any great extent. Until now.

 

Second, it appears as if the Religious Right (truly the term "conservatives" would be too broadly applied here) have so thoroughly gone off the deep end that they require a parallell set of resource tools to corroborate their story. I can see it now: radical right-wing Senators will be quoting Conservapedia as a credible source on the floor of Congress. The resulting uproar would appear as hair-splitting.

 

Third, this causes me grave concern. It is appearing more and more as if America has two distinct cultural groups. I may sound like an alarmist here, but the last time the country was so polarized that the two groups could not agree on how words are to be defined, the outcome was not pretty. A nation needs a single culture and zeitgeist to be unified. It doesn’t appear that we currently have that.

 

Fourth, I encourage everyone to contribute facts to Conservapedia, as in their case, the Truth truly Shall Set Them Free.

 

To monitor comments posted to this topic, use .

 

http://exchristian.net/exchristian/2007/06/whacko-pedia.html

[The Sage Nabooru]

That's why I'm not a Republican anymore: In order to be one, you have to accept lies. Because that is not only the construct of neo-conism, but the operation.

[Kirangel]

"When the Clintons left the White House, they were accused of taking furniture that belonged not to them, but to the White House.[19] Stealing is a violation of the ten commandments, regardless of the circumstances."

 

http://www.conservapedia.com/Hillary_Clint...of_Stolen_Gifts

 

I like how they point out that stealing is a violation of the ten commandments at the end of that. Good thing because I've always thought that the bible supported it. *sarcasm*

 

 

They mention the moon God in the Islam article, but say nothing of paganism in the Christian one. But it's a 'conservative encyclopedia you can trust'

[Guest]

I just posted on something similar a few weeks ago. My folks out of the blue starting telling me and my sister that Wikipedia is "completely innacurate because it is just someone's opinion." They said they read it in a newspaper article, but I did a search at the website and found nothing, maybe that LA Times article is what they were talking about.

 

Anyway, in my research into Conservapedia, I found out it was orginially started (and IIRC is still maintained) as a project for home schooled children. That alone would make it far more suspicious than Wiki in my book.

[Takeikin]

I just posted on something similar a few weeks ago. My folks out of the blue starting telling me and my sister that Wikipedia is "completely innacurate because it is just someone's opinion."

 

You should show them the bits about how Wikipedia articles have to thoroughly cite their resources and point out that if someone posts false information it'll soon be corrected...