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Conservapedia

March 1st, 2007 · Posted by Skuds in Life · 6 Comments · Life

How fantastic of the Guardian Unlimited news blog to point us in the direction of a new site called Conservapedia. It really is like April 1st has come a month early.

Conservapedia says that it exists because Wikipedia is “biased” and “anti-Christian and anti-American”. On the main page it says:

You will much prefer using Conservapedia compared to Wikipedia if you want concise answers free of “political correctness”

By which it really means that you will much prefer using it if you want very limited information about a very limited number of topics, and prefer it to be overtly biased towards Christianity and America where ever possible.

I am not sure I really want to criticise it too much because its just too easy – its like shooting fish in a barrel – and no challenge at all. But on the other hand, its hard to resist. I know that Wikipedia, by its very nature, is something you have to be a bit wary with, but it is a brilliant starting point for research. I can’t see anyone being able to use Conservapedia for anything serious.

For a start, the Conservapedia boasts that there are “over 3800” entries in it. They will pardon me for being underwhelmed, when Wikipedia has more than 358,000 entries just in the Polish language: in English it has over 1.6 million entries. So criticism number one has to be:

The scope is very narrow

Even if you are happy with the bias, if you are trying to get information for a school project you had better hope it is one of the 3800 entries or you are stuffed. The exception might be if you were in a school with a very limited and curriculum and one where independent thinking is actively discouraged. The sort of place where intelligent design would be considered a dangerously liberal concept. Fortunately few of us go, or went, to such a place.

Obviously to list all the omissions would be impossible – it would be a list with 1.6 million items on it. Just a quick look revealed that there is no entry for Ismail Kadare (Author of 31 books, winner of the first Booker International prize, and probably the most important Albanian writer). You can’t put that down purely to an anti-foreigner bias though: there are no articles for Thomas Pynchon or John Updike. There are no entries for such seemingly common things as “iPod” or “BBC” either.

Pull up one of the very few entries in this travesty of an encyclopedia and you are likely to find something astonishingly devoid of details, so my second criticism would be:

The depth of information is very limited

And that is a huge understatement! For example, call up the article on Adolf Hitler, one of the most important historical figures of the 20th century, responsible for events which shaped the current world, and you get three paragraphs. Three short paragraphs at that. By contrast, the Wikipedia article on Hitler is huge. It is split into 15 sections, which you have to scroll down 21 times to get to the end of.

At the end there are references/citations for the assertions in the article and links to other sources of information, as well as the entry itself being littered with links to other Wikipedia entries. Nothing unusual in that: it is how the Internet works, and especially Web 2.0 applications like wikis. That is why it is called a web after all. But that brings me to the third criticism:

Its not a real wiki

Sticking with the example of the entry on Hitler, there are no links at all. It mentions Germany but no link to an entry on that even. Which is probably just as well. The entry on Germany consists of a single line, which is

A country in central Europe that was blamed for both Wolrd Wars and claimed to be the dominate race of mankind.

Not exactly comprehensive is it? (I cut and pasted, so the poor spelling/grammar is all theirs)

Apart from the lack of links, there are no citations at all and no links to other sources of information. I can understand the lack of external links: the tinfoil hat-wearing God-botherers responsible no doubt assume that the entire rest of the Internet is biased, unchristian and unamerican, and by their standards they are probably right, but the lack of citations is worrying. At least in Wikipedia if you see something questionable there is often a reference so that it is attributable.

Another example displaying the lack of depth and lack of wiki features is the entry on Ayatollah. On Wikipedia you get a pretty full page stuffed with links including a link to a list of Ayatollahs and a sidebar listing links to many other topics relating to Islamic jurisprudence. Conservapedia has a single paragraph:

The ayatollah is the religious title for an Islamic leader in Iran. For 25 years they opposed the Shah. In 1978 they succeeded in overthrowing the Shah of Iran. In 1979, when the U.S.A. admitted the Shah for medical treatment, the ayatollahs led an attack on the U.S. embassy, causing the Iran Hostage Crisis.

That tells you nothing about what an Ayatollah is, just what some of them have done. And it is wrong when it says it only an Iranian title, as there are Iraqi Ayatollahs too.

So far I have stuck to reasonably uncontentious topics – in the weird world of the right-wing religious maniacs of America even Adolf Hitler is relatively uncontentious – and avoided topics relating to christianity, philosophy or metaphysics, and that is when it starts to get scary/hilarious and reveals the main criticism which is:

The site is intentionally biased

That is a criticism which might be expected to be number one, but since the site makes no secret of this it is partly mitigated. At least it is not pretending to be neutral. I hope. Self-confessed bias is a bit better than concealed bias. It is still biased though.

But how about the claims that Wikipedia is biased? I am sure it is. All the people involved in Wikipedia say they want it to have a neutral point of view, but even if they all mean it there still has to be a built-in unconscious bais which reflects the ingrained collective cultural bias of the authors. That is unavoidable and not necessarily a bad thing as what bias there is reflects the general attitudes of most of society. If there is a problem it is that the Conservapedia bunch are out of tune with society, so they are fighting a doomed uphill rearguard battle trying to counteract it.

There is enough suspicion of this sort of person to make it unilkely they would succeed even with a useful site, but with a site which cannot be of any practical use to anyone there is no chance whatsoever. If I found their entries to be more complete and more comprehensive than Wikipedia I would use it, regardless of provenance, but its like they don’t even realise how crappy it is.

Can you imagine preparing to go on a business trip to Germany and deciding to find out a bit about the place before setting of and all you can find is that it is “a country in central Europe that was blamed for both Wolrd Wars and claimed to be the dominate race of mankind.” Mind you, the entry on the USA is not much better: three paragraphs, including this gem:

The USA is rightly considered by its patriotic citizens to be the best country in the world. Previously such beliefs (also known as Manifest destiny) were held by citizens of former superpowers, such as the Roman Empire, the Soviet Union and the Third Reich).

Note the word “rightly” in there, it really is the cherry on the cake. It gets better though. Not only is it stated as fact that America is the best country in the world, but elsewhere it says that Christianity is the only religion based on faith. In the entry on faith it says:

No other religion is based on faith as distinguished from mere belief.

and

But faith preached uniquely by Jesus obviously refers to something far more precise than any “a system of religious beliefs,” and such faith has never been preached in the same way by non-Christian religions

and

Jesus was unique in preaching the significance of faith and it is exclusive to Christianity

Hmm.. but even this brief entry says that faith is mentioned 229 times in the new testament, only twice in the old testament and in the Koran “the concept of faith in Allah is mentioned only once.” But it is mentioned. So if the Koran mentions it at all, how can it be exclusive to christianity?

And lets not even get into whether its down to how the two books have been translated into English – because its a fair bet that nobody associated with Conservapedia has read either in the original languages.

I could spend all night digging into this pile of crap and finding entries which are amusing, ridiculous, inadequate, missing, or just plain wrong, but I do have to sleep. Anyone who wants more examples of unintentional hilarity will have to go look themselves…

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6 Comments so far ↓

  • Dharma

    Lol .. what a joke

    I really cant believe the Guardian or any professional news agency would endorse that so called Wiki !

  • Dharma

    Even better look up Conservapedia on Wikipedia and they’ve exposed the kind of people who are running that site !

  • Skuds

    I did that first. The page is a bit of a battleground. Today it is only half the size it was yesterday.

  • jamsodonnell

    I suppose this entry on Ireland tells you absolutely everything you will ever need to know about Ireland:

    “A nation in north-west Europe. Largely catholic. At one point part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; a war for independence divided the nation into Northern Ireland, which continues to be part of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, which is an independent political entity.”

    What an utterly ridiculous site!

  • Jane Skudder

    I decided to bite the bullett and go straight for the article on evolution. (Last time I had my blood pressure checked the doctor said I was okay to undergo that kind of dangerous manoevre) Interesting. The best I can say is that at least it has footnotes and some cross-referencing.
    On a separate note if you look at Ancient History as a lecture topic the chronology doesn’t go further back than 3500 BC yet there is also a reference to the paleolithic. And, as far as I am aware, all the real scientists have moved on from BC and AD. Before the Common Era is a little more acceptable amongst people who actually understand the second law of thermodynamics….. (Starting to froth now – must lie down in darkened room….)

  • Jane Skudder

    Just looked at the Wikipedia entry on Conservapedia – the link to ‘What would Jesus Wiki’ was quite rewarding. (Sorry, have no idea how to make that into a link – the geekiness hasn’t managed to infect me yet!)