Conservapedia

Overview

Conservapedia is a web site purporting to be a "pro-American, pro-Christian" alternative to Wikipedia. It uses the free, open-source MediaWiki software developed by the MediaWiki Foundation for Wikipedia.

The site appears to be owned and operated by Andrew Schlafly on behalf of the ultra-conservative Eagle Forum organization led by his mother, Phyllis Schlafly.

Unfortunately, due to subtly satirical posting by those opposed to Conservapedia's mission (vandalism), it is often difficult to tell which articles are genuine and which have been written so as to exaggerate conservative points of view (or represent only the most extreme of such).

As of 2007-02-25, editing is closed (you have to log in to edit, and the "log in/create account" page is log-in only), probably due to the vandalism; blog comments on 2007-02-21 indicate that new user registration was recently available. It is not known at present what the official reason was for closing down log-ins, nor whether Conservapedia hopes to be able to re-open them.

Links

Reference

• web site
• Eagle Forum:
  • Wikipedia

Discussion

• 2007-02-28:

Blake Stacey said, on Contrary Brin:

I discovered a few days ago that the Conservapedia article on judicial activism had been written by a parodist. This bloke, going by the 'nym of "DrShaffopolis", said the following: There are two major types of judicial activism practiced in the United States' court system: Liberal judges striking down laws that uphold core conservative American values Liberal judges refusing to strike down laws that subvert core conservative American values The most famous example of this is Roe v. Wade He then confessed at Pharyngula. "Earwig" added the following text, including references to FOX News: Other examples include Brown v Board of Education which stripped state powers of control over education and put them in the hands of the federal government, McCreary County v. ACLU in which judges stripped free speech and religious freedom from McCreary County and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in which the Supreme Court sided with terrorists over the protection of the United States of America. "Conservinator" then added a blurb at the end, "and that case where the judge decided to murder poor Terry Schiavo, just because she was in a wheelchair." The project's Fearless Leader, Andrew Schlafly, then reverted the article to its previous state, keeping all the additions of DrShaffopolis and Earwig. Not too surprisingly, the joke article soon got uncritically accepted by a blogger looking for material to laugh about. Conservapedia was so hammered by traffic (thanks to its publicity at ScienceBlogs.com) that it took me ten minutes to load the page revision history and see what had really happened. Neither the person who wanted to make fun of it nor the man being mocked could tell they were falling for a parody! The satire has become the object of ridicule; the map is now the territory.

• 2007-02-21 I'm assuming many conservatives are embarrassed by Conservapedia