What Would Jesus Wiki?

[Jack]

An alternative Wikipedia written by conservative Christians has become a major target of mockery on the web. Conservapedia, a wiki-based encyclopedia that offers the historical record from a conservative perspective, is attracting lots of derisive comments on blogs and a growing number of phony articles written by mischief makers. Conservapedia "is a gold mine of unintentional hilarity," wrote Mark Frauenfelder on Boing Boing last Monday. The Wonkette political blog encouraged its readers to contribute to "this fast-growing, Jeebus-and-America-friendly online resource." So did the ScienceBlogs network, which said, "There's much fun to be had." Even conservative commentators like Andrew Sullivan are bemused. Conservapedia brands itself on its main page as "a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American." "The site is intended as a resource for the general audience, but without the defects of Wikipedia," says Conservapedia's project leader, Andy Schlafly, a conservative writer and attorney. Schlafly argues that Wikipedia's content displays a liberal bias, and that the site is rife with so much gossip, vulgarity and long-winded writing that it has become unusable as an educational resource. In fact, creating a conservative-minded online encyclopedia for students was Schlafly's prime motivation for launching Conservapedia. He started the site in late November 2006 in conjunction with 58 high-school-level, home-schooled students from the New Jersey area. Wikipedia's content, which is maintained and edited by its readership, has spurred a rash of criticism lately for perceived inaccuracies, bias and vandalism. The Wikipedia community polices itself, weeding out inaccurate content whenever possible, but Schlafly contends that's not enough. "Wikipedia does not poll the views of its editors and administrators," Schlafly says. "They make no effort to retain balance. It ends up having all the neutrality of a lynch mob." Using the same open-source software as Wikipedia, Conservapedia's entries are written in a manner sympathetic to the views of the religious right, social conservatives and creationists. The Conservapedia entry on homosexuality, for example, begins with four biblical citations decrying same-sex relationships. "We have clear principles that we display, whereas Wikipedia pretends to be neutral and ends up biased," says Schlafly, who is the son of famous conservative politician and activist Phyllis Schlafly. Conservapedia's entry on kangaroos says that, "like all modern animals ... kangaroos are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood." The site's entry on George Washington identifies the first U.S. president as "the person other than Jesus who declined enormous worldly power ... by voluntarily stepping aside as the ruler of a prosperous nation." After it launched, the site quickly found itself picked apart by bloggers of all stripes. Conservapedia was lampooned by conservative blogger Jon Swift for its brash denial of scientific facts in favor of biblical rhetoric. Science blog The Loom and liberal blog Daily Kos also pointed to some of Conservapedia's more unconventional entries. With all of the attention, vandals quickly followed. The site's entries were edited to include parody-style riffs on topics and bogus source citations. Schlafly says most of the vandalism was edited out or under control within a week, and that the site will continue to thrive. "All they accomplished was to give us enormous publicity," he says. Even so, many have pointed out that while the vandalism on the site is easy to spot, some of the parody on the site is more nuanced, and thus more difficult to identify. Conservapedia isn't the first example of the religious right turning to social software to reach a wider web audience -- there's also CreationWiki, an encyclopedia of creation science written from a Christian perspective. While CreationWiki remains mostly unscathed by the web's parodists, Conservapedia has fallen victim to countless attacks. One entry in particular has gotten a great deal of attention: the page about a tree-dwelling mollusk called the Pacific Northwest arboreal octopus. Schlafly is amused by the page and its references to the endangered species falling victim to the ravages of logging and suburban encroachment. He sees it as a parody of environmentalists, and he plans to leave it up. "Conservatives have a sense of humor, too," he says.

Wired News: What Would Jesus Wiki?

Welcome to the Wild West Web, conservative Christians. I predict future claims of persecution from the X-right over non-believers feeling free to use the wiki format to air their views.

[jascowhiz0]

Jesus would not wiki, he would edit wiki.

[Milton Bradley]

I disagree with Isherwoods contention that this is Christspeak, I think it is far more sinister. I say...


Witness the birth of Neuspeak. I also hope that you are noticing where this crap is originating, and the tactics that are being used to implement it. ( It looks to me like a twist on the "race card", only in this incarnation the part of the demon will be played by "Liberal bias in the media". )


I guess since they've articulated that they are gearing up for the "Culture War" that we can expect this to play a very large partin that war. You know the old adage, the first casualty is truth. Well, we can't say they didn't warn us.


So line up now, pick your target to demonize, and rationalize the creation of your very own reality. Who knows, perhaps others will want to play along with you as well.


In case it ever comes up that I "wigged out", and go on an appearant "random shooting spree", I want you all to know that the behavior like that exhibited above by our "consrvative friends" will be the justification I use to rationalize my own actions. If the story surrounding the incident is cloudy, I want you all to know that I probably found the nest, or the leader of this School of the Delusional, and I'm just doing my Gods ( the God of my reality ) work in exterminating the nutjobs.


I hope my ranbt helps illustrate why these "self created realities" are so dangerous.

[loser]

I hope my ranbt helps illustrate why these "self created realities" are so dangerous.

What could be more dangerous than a person named after the makers of a famous board game? Keep shooting your mouth off but please leave the shotgun at home, okay?

[PatrickHenry]

The religious right is so blind...

[Kamehameha34]

Let's look at a few of the "biases" conservapedia is trying to point out:

Wikipedia allows the use of B.C.E. instead of B.C. and C.E. instead of A.D. The dates are based on the birth of Jesus, so why pretend otherwise? Conservapedia is Christian-friendly and exposes the CE deception.

Right, so a lack of bias for Christianity is bias against it?

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.

It's all fine and dandy when you want to keep the numbers even, but why do they think the number of conservatives in America somehow effects Wikipedia's ability to publish factual material? If there were less conservatives than liberals, would that invalidate any of the articals?

Wikipedia often uses foreign spelling of words, even though most English-speaking users are American. Look up "Most Favored Nation" on Wikipedia and it automatically converts the spelling to the British spelling "Most Favoured Nation."

Damn those extra U's! They make me want to go burn down a church with the American flag!

Wikipedia distorts the youthful acceptance of deism by Benjamin Franklin by never acknowledging that he later abandoned it. Wikipedia fails to admit the significance of how Franklin, near the end of his life, proposed the saying of prayers at the Constitutional Convention for divine intervention and assistance in the proceedings,[9] an act contrary to the teachings of deism. Wikipedia also omits any acknowledgment of Franklin's praise of Pilgrim's Progress in his autobiography.

Yes, because if anything contradicts their religious values, something must be immediately cited to back them up, even if it is irrelevant. Right?

Gossip is pervasive on Wikipedia. Many entries read like the National Enquirer. For example, Wikipedia's entry on Nina Totenberg states, "She married H. David Reines, a trauma physician, in 2000. On their honeymoon, he treated her for severe injuries after she was hit by a boat propeller while swimming." That sounds just like the National Enquirer, and reflects a bias towards gossip. Conservapedia avoids gossip and vulgarity, just as a true encyclopedia does.

Either I'm too young too understand that rather.. peculiar inuendo, or wikipedia was just citing a significant event in her life.

Edits to include facts against the theory of evolution are almost immediately censored. On Conservapedia, contributions that meet simple rules are respected to the maximum extent possible.

Do they mean.. "facts" like this?:

But Darwin's meaning of the term "evolution" has not survived the test of time. Today, promoters of the theory of evolution define it simply as "change over time" because that is easier to defend.

The Theory of Evolution - Conservapedia

Or .. this?

Creationists can cite material showing that there is no real fossil evidence for the macroevolutionary position and that the fossil record supports creationism:

The Theory of Evolution - Conservapedia

Right. Facts. Sorry I doubted them.

[Kamehameha34]

Wow, I was going to close the window, but then I noticed this little gem:

There is no consensus among scientists about how evolution happened. Those who are dependent on the theory of evolution for grant money or academic support state that evolution must have happened, but cannot provided evidence for how it happened.

The Theory of Evolution - Conservapedia

[Milton Bradley]

Well done Kamehameha, had you kept going it would read like a good expose.

Quote by: loser What could be more dangerous than a person named after the makers of a famous board game? Keep shooting your mouth off but please leave the shotgun at home, okay?

Hmmm, should I be offended, or flattered?

Quote by: PatrickHenry The religious right is so blind...

So, you are saying this is strictly coming from the "religious Right", or are you implying that somebody is manipulating their opinion around to a certain perspective?


I happen to believe the latter.


There are sinister forces ar work here. ( Actually I think NOW did a pretty good job of exposing them, but I can't find a link other than a Podcast. )

[Jack]

Considering Coulter's recent remarks, do you think Conservapedia will list John Edwards as a homosexual?

[Technosoul]

And funny man Rush is a copycat of the Smothers Brothers. The conservatives are always trying to copycat liberal ideas and use the methods for their own purposes.

I think I would trust the original resource more so then the conservative one, as they also provide a number of links to webpages that do not agree with there review of a topic. Conserviatives always get paranoid about turisms when they do not support their adgendas and have a habit of claiming that the media is controlled by tree hugging liberals. Hogwash.

Facts are not things you vote on by popular opinons to gain poltical objectives.

Now I am rather sure that Jesus (if he was born now rather then in B.C.) he might have read both webpages. According to the biblical story he was a very educated person, had the old scriptures memorized, and also learned a lot about math and other topics when schooled in Eqypt as a child, and seemed to be aware of teachings from India and so forth. However he did not like getting poltical at all, however this teachings seemed to advocate socialism and liberal ideas more so then conservative or capitalistic ones, but on a voluntary bases as an individual believer and not as a governmental platform. He always wanted to be the king of a kingdom come and such a governmental system is not a democracy with a right and left wing population.

[Jack]

And funny man Rush is a copycat of the Smothers Brothers.

More like a knee-jerk conservative version of Lenny Bruce. The Smothers Brothers had talent, something Rush lacks in spades.

[ZNFYRH]

Consider Conservapedia a valuable learning tool.

Now that your jaw has returned to it's normal position, instead of dropped to the desk, here's what I mean.

Use it to learn about "those people" and their way of thinking. Even better is when they include the reasoning behind that thinking. As backwards as you or I may think they are, it gives you an invaluable perspective into the only significant question... WHY?