Difference between revisions of "Conservapedia"

Revision as of 15:36, 20 June 2011

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Conservapedia is an encyclopedia written with a conservative viewpoint; specifically, Conservapedia's articles are politically conservative, friendly to young Earth creationism and conservative Christianity, and USA-centric. Conservapedia is in general hostile to liberals, homosexuals, and people who support or teach the theory of evolution or special or general relativity.

The site was started in November 2006 by Andrew Schlafly and a group of homeschooled people to provide an alternative to the perceived anti-Christian, pro-Evolution, anti-American and anti-conservative bias of Wikipedia. The stated purpose of the site is to provide a family-friendly resource for homeschooled children from fundamentalist Christian homes. However, a few more adult topics such as homosexuality are also treated in depth from their viewpoint.

Conservapedia cannot be edited during nighttime, U.S. time, except by users with special "night editing" rights, to prevent vandals from striking when most of not all of the administrators are asleep. Conservapedia is frequently offline and favors a very liberal deletion policy.

At the start of November 2010, account creation was turned off and prospective users must now email the site owner to have an account created. This followed several months during which account creation was disabled most of the time and most new users were being blocked on sight. Account creation is still occasionally enabled, although most accounts created in this manner are immediately blocked.

In December 2010, Conservapedia started to block certain ranges of IP addresses from even viewing the site. Many IP ranges in the UK, France, Germany and other european countries now receive a 403 error when trying to load any page.

New Conservapedia has been set up to parody Conservapedia.

Statistics

As of 21 January 2011, Conservapedia had 38,489 registered user accounts, most of which are blocked, with 34 administrators. 332 users had made an edit in the preceding 91 days.

Suggested guidelines for prospective editors

Some WikiIndex editors have had negative experiences with this wiki and offer the following precautions in order to prevent having your account blocked:

• As it says on Conservapedia's user creation page, "User names based on your real name or initials are preferred" but are not required. While some users with names like Lainy74 are blocked and told to create a new name, other users with names like "TK" and "Foxtrot", (both users who later gained blocking rights) were not.
• Conservapedia's "90/10 rule" states that "unproductive activity, such as 90% talk page edits and only 10% quality edits to Conservapedia articles, may result in blocking of the account". New users are often surprised to find out that these numbers are not strictly followed, and can sometimes be blocked before making 10 total edits, especially if their edits are argumentative or questioning of the wiki. It is best to first establish yourself by making constructive edits to articles before trying to delve into the more controversial subjects.
• Be wary of disagreeing with a sysop. They may block you for disagreeing, though this may be unlikely if you are following all the other rules (including 90/10). Reverting any edits by a sysop will likely result in a ban.
• Be wary of an abundant use of {{fact}} tags on articles, especially if you could add the citations yourself. This practice is often viewed as "ideologically-motivated tagging", and is frowned upon on Conservapedia.
• Conservapedia is a conservative, creationist encyclopedia. As such, it is best not to post anything that might be construed as "liberally biased" or "pro-evolution". Even if you feel the Conservapedia arguments against evolution are flawed saying so can lead to a block. The drop menu for those with blocking power includes, "Liberal vandalism, Liberal name calling, Liberal parodist" [1]
• Do not write rude or offensive material about another user, especially don't disparage a sysop. Do not imitate users in high standing who can be very critical. Ordinary users do not have the same freedom.
• If you get blocked for any of these reasons and you think the block was unfair, do not create a new account. Instead, email the administrator or user who blocked you and appeal for a second chance. Most users are granted leniency and are allowed to edit again. This applies especially to those who did not know they did anything wrong since many get blocked without realizing they did anything wrong.
  • If the sysop who blocked you does not have email enabled, you can appeal to another sysop. This is against their new policy, but the worst they can do is block you for all eternity.
• Avoid posting using the same user name as you use on any site critical of Conservapedia, especially RationalWiki. That can be a banning offense, HelpJazz was blocked for this though Conservapedia claims not to do that (#15).
• If Aschafly accuses you of being a Liberal, don't bother denying it, as that's just Liberal Denial, Liberal Deceit, a Liberal Falsehood, Liberal Hypocrisy, and Liberal Obfuscation. All you can do at that point is apologize, and Andy may condescend to allow you to stay, as long as you never post anything else he disagrees with.
• If you're thinking about editing maliciously there, don't do it. They'll end up blocking your entire ISP, and at worst, they'll report you to the abuse contact of your internet provider for violating their terms, or someone else in your IP range will complain that they can't edit Conservapedia because of "liberal vandalism". They WILL suspend your service over this. It doesn't matter how good of a customer you think you are to your ISP, you are actually just a number to them. They don't want users who get their network blacklisted by websites like Conservapedia, so they'll drop your account like a hot potato.

See also

• A Storehouse of Knowledge was set up by former Conservapedia editors who were dissatisfied with Conservapedia.
• RationalWiki, an entire wiki originally founded to criticize and make fun of Conservapedia, now criticizes pseudo-science in general.
• Liberapedia, a parody wiki of Conservapedia that has a liberal bias
• New Conservapedia another parody that claims Conservapedia has a liberal bias