Conservapedia
Encyclopedia
Conservapedia is an English-language wiki
project written from a self-described American conservative Christian
point of view. The website considers itself to be a supporter of "conservative, family-friendly" content. It was started in 2006 by homeschool
teacher and attorney Andy Schlafly, son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly
, to counter what he called the liberal bias of Wikipedia. It uses editorial
s and a wiki-based system to generate content. Examples of the ideology of Conservapedia in its articles include: accusations against US President Barack Obama
, criticism of Wikipedia's supposed liberal bias, criticism of relativity as promoting relativism
, claiming a proven link between abortion and breast cancer and asserting that the goals of a so-called homosexual agenda
include indoctrination. Conservapedia also operates a Conservative Bible Project, a conservative interpretation of the Bible
.
Conservapedia has received negative reactions from the mainstream media
, as well as from various figures from both ends of the political spectrum, including commentators and journalists, and has been criticized for bias and inaccuracies.
Conservapedia was created in November 2006 by Andrew Schlafly, a Harvard
- and Princeton
-educated attorney and a homeschool teacher. He felt the need to start the project after reading a student's assignment written using Common Era
dating notation rather than the Anno Domini
system that he preferred. Although he was "an early Wikipedia enthusiast," as reported by Shawn Zeller of Congressional Quarterly
, Schlafly became concerned about bias
after Wikipedia editors repeatedly reverted edits to the article about the 2005 Kansas evolution hearings
. Schlafly expressed hope that Conservapedia would become a general resource for American educators and a counterpoint to the liberal bias that he perceived in Wikipedia.
The "Eagle Forum University" online education program, which is associated with Phyllis Schlafly
's Eagle Forum
organization, uses material for various online courses, including U.S. history, stored on Conservapedia. Editing of Conservapedia articles related to a particular course topic is also a certain assignment for Eagle Forum University students.
Running on MediaWiki
software, the site was founded in 2006, with its earliest articles dating from November 22. By September 2010, Conservapedia contained over 34,000 pages, not counting pages intended for internal discussion and collaboration, minimal "stub" articles, and other miscellany. Regular features on the front page of Conservapedia include links to news articles and blogs that the site's editors consider relevant to conservatism. The site also hosts debates in which its users may participate; subjects discussed include religion and politics. Editors of Conservapedia also maintain a page titled "Examples of Bias in Wikipedia" that compiles alleged instances of bias or errors on Wikipedia pages. It was, at one point, the most-viewed page on the site.
. Articles and other content on the site frequently include criticism of Wikipedia as well as criticism of its alleged liberal ideology.
Launching the online encyclopedia project, Schlafly asserted the need for an alternative to Wikipedia due to editorial philosophy conflicts. The site's "Conservapedia Commandments" differ from Wikipedia's editorial policies, which include following a neutral point of view and avoiding original research. In response to Wikipedia's core policy of neutrality, Schlafly has stated: "It's impossible for an encyclopedia to be neutral. I mean let's take a point of view, let's disclose that point of view to the reader", and "Wikipedia does not poll the views of its editors and administrators. They make no effort to retain balance. It ends up having all the neutrality of a lynch mob".
In a March 2007 interview with The Guardian
, Schlafly stated, "I've tried editing Wikipedia, and found it and the biased editors who dominate it censor or change facts to suit their views. In one case my factual edits were removed within 60 seconds—so editing Wikipedia is no longer a viable approach". On March 7, 2007, Schlafly was interviewed on BBC Radio 4
's flagship morning show, Today, opposite Wikipedia administrator Jim Redmond. Schlafly raised several concerns: that the article on the Renaissance
does not give any credit to Christianity, that Wikipedia articles apparently prefer to use non-American spellings even though most users are American, that the article on American activities in the Philippines has a distinctly anti-American bias, and that attempts to include pro-Christian or pro-American views are removed very quickly. Schlafly also claimed that the Wikipedia policy of allowing both Common Era and Anno Domini notation was anti-Christian bias.
found evidence that much of what appeared to be inaccurate or inadequate information about science and scientific theory could be traced back to an over-reliance on citations from the works of home-schooling textbook author Jay L. Wile.
Conservapedia's article on evolution
presents evolution as a naturalistic theory
that lacks support and conflicts with evidence in the fossil record that creationists
perceive to support creationism. The entry also suggests that sometimes the Bible
has been more scientifically correct than the scientific community. Schlafly had defended the statement as presenting an alternative to evolution. An entry on the "Pacific Northwest Arboreal Octopus"
has received particular attention. Schlafly has asserted that the page was intended as a parody of environmentalism. As of March 4, 2007, the entry has been deleted. Another claim is that "Einstein
's work had nothing to do with the development of the atomic bomb", and that Einstein was only a minor contributor to the theory of relativity. Conservapedia asserts that there is a proven link between abortion and breast cancer, while the scientific consensus
is that the best studies indicate that there is no such association for first-trimester abortion. On March 19, 2007, the British free newspaper Metro
ran the article "Weird, wild wiki on which anything goes", articulating the dismissal of Conservapedia by the Royal Society
, saying "People need to be very careful about where they look for scientific information". A Los Angeles Times journalist noted Conservapedia's critics voiced concern that children stumbling on the site may assume Conservapedia's scientific content is accurate.
Conservapedia has also received criticism for its articles regarding the theory of relativity
, particularly on their entry titled "Counterexamples to relativity", an article that lists examples as to why the theory is incorrect. Attention was drawn to the article by a Talking Points Memo
posting, in which they reported on Conservapedia's entry and stated that Andy Schlafly, Conservapedia's founder, "has found one more liberal plot: the theory of relativity". New Scientist
, a science magazine, criticized Conservapedia's views on relativity and responded to several of Conservapedia's arguments against it. Against Conservapedia's statements, New Scientist stated that one is unlikely to find a single physicist that would claim that the theory of general relativity is the whole answer to how the universe works, and said that the theory of relativity has passed every test that the theory has been put through.
University of Maryland
physics professor Robert L. Park
has also criticized Conservapedia's entry on the theory of relativity, arguing that its criticism of the principle as being "heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world" confuses a physical theory with a Christian-conservative moral value. In a similar statement, New Scientist stated at the end of their article that:
In October 2010, Scientific American
criticized Conservapedia's attitude towards the Theory of Relativity, assigning them a zero score on their 0 to 100 fallacy-versus-fact "Science Index", describing Conservapedia as "the online encyclopedia run by conservative lawyer Andrew Schlafly, [which] implies that Einstein's theory of relativity is part of a liberal plot."
quoted it in a critical comment saying "You may judge Conservapedia's own bias by reading its definition of liberal".
Schlafly said in an interview with National Public Radio that Wikipedia's article on the history of the Democratic Party
is an "attempt to legitimize the modern Democratic Party by going back to Thomas Jefferson
" and that it is "specious and worth criticizing". He also has claimed that Wikipedia is "six times more liberal than the American public", a claim that has been labeled "sensational" by Andrew Chung of the Canadian newspaper the Toronto Star
.
John Cotey of the St. Petersburg Times
observed that the Conservapedia article about the Democratic Party contained a criticism about the party's alleged support for same-sex marriage
, and associated the party with the homosexual agenda
. The Conservapedia entries on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama
are critical of their respective subjects. During the 2008 presidential campaign
, its entry on Obama asserted that he "has no clear personal achievement that cannot be explained as the likely result of affirmative action
". Some Conservapedia editors urged that it be changed or deleted, but Schlafly, a classmate of Obama, responded by asserting that the Harvard Law Review
, the Harvard University legal journal for which Obama and Schlalfy worked together, uses racial quotas and stated: "The statement about affirmative action is accurate and will remain in the entry". In addition, Hugh Muir of the British newspaper The Guardian mockingly referred to Conservapedia's assertion that Obama has links to radical Islam
as "dynamite" and an excellent resource for "US rightwingers". In contrast, the articles about conservative politicians, such as Republican
former US president
Ronald Reagan
and former British Conservative
Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher
have been observed as praising their respective subjects. Mark Sabbatini of the Juneau Empire
considered the Conservapedia entry on Sarah Palin
, the Republican vice-presidential candidate for the 2008 US presidential election a "kinder, gentler" and "far shorter and less controversial" reference for one wishing to learn about Palin in contrast with the corresponding Wikipedia entry, which Sabbatini found to be plagued by disputes over inclusion of potentially controversial details about her life.
In July 2008, American Prospect associate editor Ezra Klein
derided the Conservapedia article on atheism
in his weekly column: "As Daniel DeGroot notes, you've got to wonder which 'unreasonable' explanations they rejected when formulating that entry".
In May 2009, Vanity Fair
and The Spectator
reported that the biography of Richard Dawkins
had a picture of Adolf Hitler
at the top.
has raised concerns about the fact that the project is not licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License
(GFDL) or a similar copyleft
license, stating that "People who contribute [to Conservapedia] are giving them full control of the content, which may lead to unpleasant results".
, disruption or defamation. Brian Macdonald, a Conservapedia editor, commented vandalism was intended to "cause people to say, 'That Conservapedia is just wacko.'" Macdonald has spent many hours daily reverting, in the words of Stephanie Simon of the LA Times, "malicious editing". Vandals had inserted "errors, pornographic photos and satire." For example, U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales was said to be "a strong supporter of torture
as a law enforcement tool for use against Democrats and third world
inhabitants".
use British English, while articles about the United States
use American English, to resolve editorial disputes. Initially, Schlafly and other Conservapedia editors considered Wikipedia's policy allowing British English spelling to be anti-American bias.
The "Conservapedia Commandments" also require edits to be "family-friendly, clean, concise, and without gossip or foul language" and that users make most edits on their site quality edits to articles; accounts that engage in what it considers "unproductive activity, such as 90% talk and only 10% quality edits" may be blocked. The commandments also cite the United States Code
as justification for legal action against edits that contain obscenities or are vandalism or spam
. Conservapedia policies encourage its users to choose usernames "based on [their] real name or initials", and users that have usernames deemed "frivolous" by the admins are blocked; one of the site's criticisms of Wikipedia is "silly administrator names", which is claimed to reflect Wikipedia's "substantial anti-intellectual element".
. Wired
magazine noted that Conservapedia was "attracting lots of derisive comments on blog
s and a growing number of phony articles written by mischief makers". Iain Thomson in Information World Review
wrote that "leftist subversives" may have been creating deliberate parody entries. Conservapedia has been compared to CreationWiki, a wiki written from a creationist
perspective, and Theopedia, a wiki with a Reformed theology focus. Fox News
obliquely compared it with other new conservative websites competing with mainstream ones, such as MyChurch, a Christian version of social networking site MySpace
, and GodTube
, a Christian version of video site YouTube
. The Guardian of the United Kingdom has referred to the Conservapedia's politics as "right-wing
".
Thomas Eugene Flanagan, a conservative professor of political science at the University of Calgary
, has argued that Conservapedia is more about religion, specifically Christianity, than conservatism and that it "is far more guilty of the crime they're attributing to Wikipedia" than Wikipedia itself. Matt Millham of the military-oriented newspaper Stars and Stripes
called Conservapedia "a Web site that caters mostly to evangelical Christians". Its scope as an encyclopedia, according to its founders, "offers a historical record from a Christian and conservative perspective". APC magazine perceives this to be representative of Conservapedia's own problem with bias. Conservative and Christian commentator Rod Dreher
has been highly critical of the website's "Conservative Bible Project", an ongoing retranslation of the Bible which Dreher attributes to "insane hubris" on the part of "right-wing ideologues".
The project has also been criticized for promoting a dichotomy between conservatism
and liberalism
and for promoting relativism
with the implicit idea that there "often are two equally valid interpretations of the facts". Matthew Sheffield, columnist for The Washington Times
and contributor to the conservative Media Research Center
blog NewsBusters, argued that conservatives concerned about bias should contribute more often to Wikipedia rather than use Conservapedia as an alternative since he felt that alternative websites like Conservapedia are often "incomplete". Author Damien Thompson says Conservapedia "is to dress up nonsense as science".
Bryan Ochalla, writing for the LGBT
magazine The Advocate
, referred to the project as "Wikipedia for the bigoted". On the satirical news program The Daily Show
, comedian Lewis Black
lampooned its article on homosexuality
. Writing in The Australian
, columnist Emma Jane described Conservapedia as "a disturbing parallel universe where the ice age is a theoretical period, intelligent design is empirically testable, and relativity and geology are junk sciences."
Opinions criticizing the site rapidly spread throughout the blogosphere
around early 2007. Schlafly appeared on radio programs Today
on BBC Radio 4 and All Things Considered
on NPR
to discuss the site around that time. In May 2008, Schlafly and one of his homeschooled students appeared on the CBC
program The Hour for the same purpose.
Stephanie Simon of the Los Angeles Times quoted two Conservapedia editors who commented favorably about Conservapedia. Matt Barber, policy director for the conservative Christian political action group Concerned Women for America
, praised Conservapedia as a more family-friendly and accurate alternative to Wikipedia.
Wired Magazine, in an article entitled "Ten Impressive, Weird And Amazing Facts About Wikipedia," highlighted several of Conservapedia's articles, including those on "Atheism and obesity," "Hollywood values", amongst others. It also highlighted Conservapedia's "Examples of bias in Wikipedia" article, which encourages readers to contact Jimmy Wales and tell him to "sort it out."
Conservapedia's use of Wikipedia's format to try and create a conservative and fundamentalist Christian alternative encyclopedia, has been mirrored by other sites, such as Tangle.com (formerly GodTube), QubeTV and MyChurch, which adopted the format of the more prominent Facebook, YouTube and MySpace, respectively.
said about Conservapedia that "free culture knows no bounds" and "the reuse of our work to build variants [is] directly in line with our mission". Wales denied Schlafly's claims of liberal bias in Wikipedia.
, repeatedly attempted to edit Conservapedia's article on breast cancer
to include evidence arguing against Conservapedia's claim that abortion
was a major cause of the disease. Conservapedia administrators "questioned his credentials and shut off debate". Several editors whose accounts were blocked by Conservapedia administrators, including Lipson, started another website, RationalWiki, to analyze and refute "pseudoscience", the "anti-science movement", and "crank ideas", as well as conduct "explorations of authoritarianism
and fundamentalism
" and explore "how these subjects are handled in the media
."
According to an article published in the Los Angeles Times in 2007, "From there, RationalWiki members monitor Conservapedia, particularly on the page "Conservapedia:What is going on at CP?", and—by their own admission—engage in acts of cyber-vandalism".
published an article describing Richard Lenski
's 20-year E. coli experiment
, which reported that the bacteria evolved the ability to metabolize citrate. Schlafly contacted Lenski to request the data. Lenski explained that the relevant data was in the paper and that Schlafly fundamentally misunderstood it. Schlafly wrote again and requested the raw data. Lenski replied again that the relevant data was already in the paper, that the "raw data" were living bacterial samples, which he would willingly share with qualified researchers at properly equipped biology labs, and that he felt insulted by letters and comments on Conservapedia which he saw as brusque and offensive, including claims of outright deceit. The Daily Telegraph later called Lenski's reply "one of the greatest and most comprehensive put-downs in scientific argument".
The exchange, recorded on a Conservapedia page entitled "Lenski dialog", was widely reported on news-aggregating sites and web logs. Carl Zimmer wrote that it was readily apparent that "Schlafly had not bothered to read [Lenski's paper] closely", and PZ Myers
criticized Schlafly for demanding data despite not having a plan to use it nor the expertise to analyze it. During and after the Lenski dialogue on Conservapedia, several users on the site were blocked for "insubordination" for expressing disagreement with Schlafly's stance on the issue.
The dialogue between Lenski and Conservapedia is noted in Richard Dawkins
' The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
in a chapter concerning Lenski's research.
in which Jesus declares "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone". The project also intends to remove Jesus's prayer on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing", since it appears only in the Gospel of Luke
and since, according to Schlafly, "the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible". The adulteress story and the "forgive them" line are missing from many early manuscripts, and many modern textual scholars consider that they are not authentic parts of the gospels, though possibly historically valid.
The Bible project has met with extensive criticism. Rod Dreher, a conservative editor and columnist, described the project as "insane hubris
" and "crazy"; he further described the project as "It's like what you'd get if you crossed the Jesus Seminar
with the College Republican chapter at a rural institution of Bible learnin. Ed Morrissey
, another conservative Christian writer, wrote that bending the word of God to one's own ideology makes God subservient to an ideology, rather than the other way around. Joseph Farah
, editor-in-chief of WorldNetDaily
, stated: "I've seen some incredibly stupid and misguided initiatives by 'conservatives' in my day, but this one takes the cake" and "There's certainly nothing 'conservative' about rewriting the Bible".
On October 7, 2009, Stephen Colbert
called for his viewers to incorporate him into the Conservapedia Bible as a Biblical figure and viewers responded by editing the Conservapedia Bible to include his name. This was followed by an interview between Colbert and Schlafly on December 8, 2009.
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
project written from a self-described American conservative Christian
Conservative Christianity
Conservative Christianity is a term applied to a number of groups or movements seen as giving priority to traditional Christian beliefs and practices...
point of view. The website considers itself to be a supporter of "conservative, family-friendly" content. It was started in 2006 by homeschool
Homeschooling
Homeschooling or homeschool is the education of children at home, typically by parents but sometimes by tutors, rather than in other formal settings of public or private school...
teacher and attorney Andy Schlafly, son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly
Phyllis Schlafly
Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly is a Constitutional lawyer and an American politically conservative activist and author who founded the Eagle Forum. She is known for her opposition to modern feminism ideas and for her campaign against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment...
, to counter what he called the liberal bias of Wikipedia. It uses editorial
Editorial
An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...
s and a wiki-based system to generate content. Examples of the ideology of Conservapedia in its articles include: accusations against US President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
, criticism of Wikipedia's supposed liberal bias, criticism of relativity as promoting relativism
Relativism
Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration....
, claiming a proven link between abortion and breast cancer and asserting that the goals of a so-called homosexual agenda
Homosexual agenda
Homosexual agenda is a pejorative term used by some conservatives in the United States to describe the advocacy of cultural acceptance and normalization of non-heterosexual orientations and relationships...
include indoctrination. Conservapedia also operates a Conservative Bible Project, a conservative interpretation of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
.
Conservapedia has received negative reactions from the mainstream media
Mainstream media
Mainstream media are those media disseminated via the largest distribution channels, which therefore represent what the majority of media consumers are likely to encounter...
, as well as from various figures from both ends of the political spectrum, including commentators and journalists, and has been criticized for bias and inaccuracies.
History and overview
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
- and Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
-educated attorney and a homeschool teacher. He felt the need to start the project after reading a student's assignment written using Common Era
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
dating notation rather than the Anno Domini
Anno Domini
and Before Christ are designations used to label or number years used with the Julian and Gregorian calendars....
system that he preferred. Although he was "an early Wikipedia enthusiast," as reported by Shawn Zeller of Congressional Quarterly
Congressional Quarterly
Congressional Quarterly, Inc., or CQ, is a privately owned publishing company that produces a number of publications reporting primarily on the United States Congress...
, Schlafly became concerned about bias
Bias
Bias is an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of alternatives. Bias can come in many forms.-In judgement and decision making:...
after Wikipedia editors repeatedly reverted edits to the article about the 2005 Kansas evolution hearings
Kansas evolution hearings
The Kansas evolution hearings were a series of hearings held in Topeka, Kansas, United States May 5 to May 12, 2005 by the Kansas State Board of Education and its State Board Science Hearing Committee to change how evolution and the origin of life would be taught in the state's public high school...
. Schlafly expressed hope that Conservapedia would become a general resource for American educators and a counterpoint to the liberal bias that he perceived in Wikipedia.
The "Eagle Forum University" online education program, which is associated with Phyllis Schlafly
Phyllis Schlafly
Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly is a Constitutional lawyer and an American politically conservative activist and author who founded the Eagle Forum. She is known for her opposition to modern feminism ideas and for her campaign against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment...
's Eagle Forum
Eagle Forum
Eagle Forum is a conservative interest group in the United States founded by Phyllis Schlafly in 1972 and is the parent organization that also includes the Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund and the Eagle Forum PAC. The Eagle Forum has been primarily focused on social issues; it describes...
organization, uses material for various online courses, including U.S. history, stored on Conservapedia. Editing of Conservapedia articles related to a particular course topic is also a certain assignment for Eagle Forum University students.
Running on MediaWiki
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
software, the site was founded in 2006, with its earliest articles dating from November 22. By September 2010, Conservapedia contained over 34,000 pages, not counting pages intended for internal discussion and collaboration, minimal "stub" articles, and other miscellany. Regular features on the front page of Conservapedia include links to news articles and blogs that the site's editors consider relevant to conservatism. The site also hosts debates in which its users may participate; subjects discussed include religion and politics. Editors of Conservapedia also maintain a page titled "Examples of Bias in Wikipedia" that compiles alleged instances of bias or errors on Wikipedia pages. It was, at one point, the most-viewed page on the site.
Editorial viewpoints and policies
Conservapedia has editorial policies designed to prevent what Schlafly sees as structural and ideological problems with Wikipedia and generalized vandalism.Differences from Wikipedia
Many editorial practices of Conservapedia differ from those of WikipediaWikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
. Articles and other content on the site frequently include criticism of Wikipedia as well as criticism of its alleged liberal ideology.
Launching the online encyclopedia project, Schlafly asserted the need for an alternative to Wikipedia due to editorial philosophy conflicts. The site's "Conservapedia Commandments" differ from Wikipedia's editorial policies, which include following a neutral point of view and avoiding original research. In response to Wikipedia's core policy of neutrality, Schlafly has stated: "It's impossible for an encyclopedia to be neutral. I mean let's take a point of view, let's disclose that point of view to the reader", and "Wikipedia does not poll the views of its editors and administrators. They make no effort to retain balance. It ends up having all the neutrality of a lynch mob".
In a March 2007 interview with The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, Schlafly stated, "I've tried editing Wikipedia, and found it and the biased editors who dominate it censor or change facts to suit their views. In one case my factual edits were removed within 60 seconds—so editing Wikipedia is no longer a viable approach". On March 7, 2007, Schlafly was interviewed on BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
's flagship morning show, Today, opposite Wikipedia administrator Jim Redmond. Schlafly raised several concerns: that the article on the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
does not give any credit to Christianity, that Wikipedia articles apparently prefer to use non-American spellings even though most users are American, that the article on American activities in the Philippines has a distinctly anti-American bias, and that attempts to include pro-Christian or pro-American views are removed very quickly. Schlafly also claimed that the Wikipedia policy of allowing both Common Era and Anno Domini notation was anti-Christian bias.
Conflict with scientific views
Various Conservapedia articles have been challenged from a scientific perspective. Although not all contributors subscribe to a young earth creationist point of view—former administrator Terry Koeckritz stated to the LA Times that he does not take the Genesis creation account literally—sources have attributed the poor science coverage to an overall editorial support of the YEC perspective and an over-reliance on home schooling textbooks. In an analysis in early 2007, science writer Carl ZimmerCarl Zimmer
Carl Zimmer is a popular science writer and blogger, especially regarding the study of evolution and parasites. He has written several books and contributes science essays to publications such as The New York Times and Discover...
found evidence that much of what appeared to be inaccurate or inadequate information about science and scientific theory could be traced back to an over-reliance on citations from the works of home-schooling textbook author Jay L. Wile.
Conservapedia's article on evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
presents evolution as a naturalistic theory
Naturalism (philosophy)
Naturalism commonly refers to the philosophical viewpoint that the natural universe and its natural laws and forces operate in the universe, and that nothing exists beyond the natural universe or, if it does, it does not affect the natural universe that we know...
that lacks support and conflicts with evidence in the fossil record that creationists
Creation science
Creation Science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology...
perceive to support creationism. The entry also suggests that sometimes the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
has been more scientifically correct than the scientific community. Schlafly had defended the statement as presenting an alternative to evolution. An entry on the "Pacific Northwest Arboreal Octopus"
Pacific Northwest tree octopus
The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is an internet hoax created in 1998 by Lyle Zapato. This fictitious endangered species of cephalopod was given the Latin name "Octopus paxarbolis"...
has received particular attention. Schlafly has asserted that the page was intended as a parody of environmentalism. As of March 4, 2007, the entry has been deleted. Another claim is that "Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
's work had nothing to do with the development of the atomic bomb", and that Einstein was only a minor contributor to the theory of relativity. Conservapedia asserts that there is a proven link between abortion and breast cancer, while the scientific consensus
Scientific consensus
Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity. Scientific consensus is not by itself a scientific argument, and it is not part of the...
is that the best studies indicate that there is no such association for first-trimester abortion. On March 19, 2007, the British free newspaper Metro
Metro (Associated Metro Limited)
Metro is a free daily newspaper in the United Kingdom published by Associated Newspapers Ltd . It is available from Monday to Friday each week on many public transport services across the United Kingdom.-History:The paper was launched in London in 1999, and can now be found in 14 UK urban centres...
ran the article "Weird, wild wiki on which anything goes", articulating the dismissal of Conservapedia by the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
, saying "People need to be very careful about where they look for scientific information". A Los Angeles Times journalist noted Conservapedia's critics voiced concern that children stumbling on the site may assume Conservapedia's scientific content is accurate.
Conservapedia has also received criticism for its articles regarding the theory of relativity
Theory of relativity
The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....
, particularly on their entry titled "Counterexamples to relativity", an article that lists examples as to why the theory is incorrect. Attention was drawn to the article by a Talking Points Memo
Talking Points Memo
Talking Points Memo is a web-based political journalism organization created and run by Josh Marshall, journalist and historian covering issues from a "politically left perspective,". It debuted on November 12, 2000...
posting, in which they reported on Conservapedia's entry and stated that Andy Schlafly, Conservapedia's founder, "has found one more liberal plot: the theory of relativity". New Scientist
New Scientist
New Scientist is a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of...
, a science magazine, criticized Conservapedia's views on relativity and responded to several of Conservapedia's arguments against it. Against Conservapedia's statements, New Scientist stated that one is unlikely to find a single physicist that would claim that the theory of general relativity is the whole answer to how the universe works, and said that the theory of relativity has passed every test that the theory has been put through.
University of Maryland
University of Maryland
When the term "University of Maryland" is used without any qualification, it generally refers to the University of Maryland, College Park.University of Maryland may refer to the following:...
physics professor Robert L. Park
Robert L. Park
Robert Lee Park , also known as Bob Park, is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park and a former Director of Public Information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society...
has also criticized Conservapedia's entry on the theory of relativity, arguing that its criticism of the principle as being "heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world" confuses a physical theory with a Christian-conservative moral value. In a similar statement, New Scientist stated at the end of their article that:
In October 2010, Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
criticized Conservapedia's attitude towards the Theory of Relativity, assigning them a zero score on their 0 to 100 fallacy-versus-fact "Science Index", describing Conservapedia as "the online encyclopedia run by conservative lawyer Andrew Schlafly, [which] implies that Einstein's theory of relativity is part of a liberal plot."
Political and religious ideology
Many Conservapedia articles criticize values that its editors associate with "liberal ideology". The article "Liberal" begins with text originating from Schlafly personally: "A liberal (also leftist) is someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing." Leonard PittsLeonard Pitts
Leonard Pitts Jr. is a politically progressive African American commentator, journalist and novelist. He is a nationally-syndicated columnist and winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary...
quoted it in a critical comment saying "You may judge Conservapedia's own bias by reading its definition of liberal".
Schlafly said in an interview with National Public Radio that Wikipedia's article on the history of the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
is an "attempt to legitimize the modern Democratic Party by going back to Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
" and that it is "specious and worth criticizing". He also has claimed that Wikipedia is "six times more liberal than the American public", a claim that has been labeled "sensational" by Andrew Chung of the Canadian newspaper the Toronto Star
Toronto Star
The Toronto Star is Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Its print edition is distributed almost entirely within the province of Ontario...
.
John Cotey of the St. Petersburg Times
St. Petersburg Times
The St. Petersburg Times is a United States newspaper. It is one of two major publications serving the Tampa Bay Area, the other being The Tampa Tribune, which the Times tops in both circulation and readership. Based in St...
observed that the Conservapedia article about the Democratic Party contained a criticism about the party's alleged support for same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage is marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender. Supporters of legal recognition for same-sex marriage typically refer to such recognition as marriage equality....
, and associated the party with the homosexual agenda
Homosexual agenda
Homosexual agenda is a pejorative term used by some conservatives in the United States to describe the advocacy of cultural acceptance and normalization of non-heterosexual orientations and relationships...
. The Conservapedia entries on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
are critical of their respective subjects. During the 2008 presidential campaign
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...
, its entry on Obama asserted that he "has no clear personal achievement that cannot be explained as the likely result of affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
". Some Conservapedia editors urged that it be changed or deleted, but Schlafly, a classmate of Obama, responded by asserting that the Harvard Law Review
Harvard Law Review
The Harvard Law Review is a journal of legal scholarship published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School.-Overview:According to the 2008 Journal Citation Reports, the Review is the most cited law review and has the second-highest impact factor in the category "law" after the...
, the Harvard University legal journal for which Obama and Schlalfy worked together, uses racial quotas and stated: "The statement about affirmative action is accurate and will remain in the entry". In addition, Hugh Muir of the British newspaper The Guardian mockingly referred to Conservapedia's assertion that Obama has links to radical Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
as "dynamite" and an excellent resource for "US rightwingers". In contrast, the articles about conservative politicians, such as Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
former US president
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
and former British Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
have been observed as praising their respective subjects. Mark Sabbatini of the Juneau Empire
Juneau Empire
The Juneau Empire is a newspaper in Juneau, Alaska, United States. Mark Bryan was appointed publisher in 2009.-External links:* *...
considered the Conservapedia entry on Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...
, the Republican vice-presidential candidate for the 2008 US presidential election a "kinder, gentler" and "far shorter and less controversial" reference for one wishing to learn about Palin in contrast with the corresponding Wikipedia entry, which Sabbatini found to be plagued by disputes over inclusion of potentially controversial details about her life.
In July 2008, American Prospect associate editor Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein is a liberal American blogger and columnist for The Washington Post, columnist for Bloomberg, a columnist for Newsweek, and a contributor to MSNBC...
derided the Conservapedia article on atheism
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
in his weekly column: "As Daniel DeGroot notes, you've got to wonder which 'unreasonable' explanations they rejected when formulating that entry".
In May 2009, Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
and The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
reported that the biography of Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
had a picture of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
at the top.
Licensing of content
Conservapedia allows users to "use any of the content on this site with or without attribution". The copyright policy also states "This license is revocable only in very rare instances of self-defense, such as protecting continued use by Conservapedia editors or other licensees". It also does not permit "unauthorized mirroring". Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy WalesJimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....
has raised concerns about the fact that the project is not licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License
GNU Free Documentation License
The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...
(GFDL) or a similar copyleft
Copyleft
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
license, stating that "People who contribute [to Conservapedia] are giving them full control of the content, which may lead to unpleasant results".
Vandalism
The site has stated that it prohibits unregistered users from editing entries due to concerns over vandalismVandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...
, disruption or defamation. Brian Macdonald, a Conservapedia editor, commented vandalism was intended to "cause people to say, 'That Conservapedia is just wacko.'" Macdonald has spent many hours daily reverting, in the words of Stephanie Simon of the LA Times, "malicious editing". Vandals had inserted "errors, pornographic photos and satire." For example, U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales was said to be "a strong supporter of torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
as a law enforcement tool for use against Democrats and third world
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
inhabitants".
Other editorial policies
Conservapedia states on its "Manual of Style" page that "American English spellings are preferred but Commonwealth spellings, for de novo or otherwise well-maintained articles are welcome". It prefers that articles about the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
use British English, while articles about the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
use American English, to resolve editorial disputes. Initially, Schlafly and other Conservapedia editors considered Wikipedia's policy allowing British English spelling to be anti-American bias.
The "Conservapedia Commandments" also require edits to be "family-friendly, clean, concise, and without gossip or foul language" and that users make most edits on their site quality edits to articles; accounts that engage in what it considers "unproductive activity, such as 90% talk and only 10% quality edits" may be blocked. The commandments also cite the United States Code
United States Code
The Code of Laws of the United States of America is a compilation and codification of the general and permanent federal laws of the United States...
as justification for legal action against edits that contain obscenities or are vandalism or spam
Spam (electronic)
Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately...
. Conservapedia policies encourage its users to choose usernames "based on [their] real name or initials", and users that have usernames deemed "frivolous" by the admins are blocked; one of the site's criticisms of Wikipedia is "silly administrator names", which is claimed to reflect Wikipedia's "substantial anti-intellectual element".
Reception
The Conservapedia project has come under significant criticism for numerous factual inaccuracies and factual relativismFactual relativism
Factual relativism or epistemic relativism is a mode of reasoning which extends relativism and subjectivism to factual matter and reason...
. Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
magazine noted that Conservapedia was "attracting lots of derisive comments on blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s and a growing number of phony articles written by mischief makers". Iain Thomson in Information World Review
Information World Review
Information World Review is an English information industry trade newspaper. It is a monthly title published by Bizmedia Ltd under license from Incisive Media since March 2009. Bizmedia also updates the magazine's website -References:...
wrote that "leftist subversives" may have been creating deliberate parody entries. Conservapedia has been compared to CreationWiki, a wiki written from a creationist
Creationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...
perspective, and Theopedia, a wiki with a Reformed theology focus. Fox News
Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel , often called Fox News, is a cable and satellite television news channel owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of News Corporation...
obliquely compared it with other new conservative websites competing with mainstream ones, such as MyChurch, a Christian version of social networking site MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....
, and GodTube
Godtube
GodTube is an online video sharing platform which strives to have Christian content. It is owned by Salem Web Network, the Internet division of Salem Communications...
, a Christian version of video site YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
. The Guardian of the United Kingdom has referred to the Conservapedia's politics as "right-wing
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
".
Thomas Eugene Flanagan, a conservative professor of political science at the University of Calgary
University of Calgary
The University of Calgary is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1966 the U of C is composed of 14 faculties and more than 85 research institutes and centres.More than 25,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students are currently...
, has argued that Conservapedia is more about religion, specifically Christianity, than conservatism and that it "is far more guilty of the crime they're attributing to Wikipedia" than Wikipedia itself. Matt Millham of the military-oriented newspaper Stars and Stripes
Stars and Stripes (newspaper)
Stars and Stripes is a news source that operates from inside the United States Department of Defense but is editorially separate from it. The First Amendment protection which Stars and Stripes enjoys is safeguarded by Congress to whom an independent ombudsman, who serves the readers' interests,...
called Conservapedia "a Web site that caters mostly to evangelical Christians". Its scope as an encyclopedia, according to its founders, "offers a historical record from a Christian and conservative perspective". APC magazine perceives this to be representative of Conservapedia's own problem with bias. Conservative and Christian commentator Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher is an American writer and editor. He was a conservative editorial writer and a columnist for The Dallas Morning News, but departed that newspaper in late 2009 to affiliate with the John Templeton Foundation. He has also contributed in the past to The American Conservative and National...
has been highly critical of the website's "Conservative Bible Project", an ongoing retranslation of the Bible which Dreher attributes to "insane hubris" on the part of "right-wing ideologues".
The project has also been criticized for promoting a dichotomy between conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
and liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
and for promoting relativism
Relativism
Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration....
with the implicit idea that there "often are two equally valid interpretations of the facts". Matthew Sheffield, columnist for The Washington Times
The Washington Times
The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and until 2010 was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the...
and contributor to the conservative Media Research Center
Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is a content analysis organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, founded in 1987 by conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III...
blog NewsBusters, argued that conservatives concerned about bias should contribute more often to Wikipedia rather than use Conservapedia as an alternative since he felt that alternative websites like Conservapedia are often "incomplete". Author Damien Thompson says Conservapedia "is to dress up nonsense as science".
Bryan Ochalla, writing for the LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
magazine The Advocate
The Advocate
The Advocate is an American LGBT-interest magazine, printed monthly and available by subscription. The Advocate brand also includes a web site. Both magazine and web site have an editorial focus on news, politics, opinion, and arts and entertainment of interest to LGBT people...
, referred to the project as "Wikipedia for the bigoted". On the satirical news program The Daily Show
The Daily Show
The Daily Show , is an American late night satirical television program airing each Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. The half-hour long show premiered on July 21, 1996, and was hosted by Craig Kilborn until December 1998...
, comedian Lewis Black
Lewis Black
Lewis Niles Black is an American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor. He is known for his comedy style, which often includes simulating a mental breakdown, or an increasingly angry rant, ridiculing history, politics, religion, trends and cultural phenomena...
lampooned its article on homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
. Writing in The Australian
The Australian
The Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia from Monday to Saturday each week since 14 July 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Clive Mathieson and the 'editor-at-large' is Paul Kelly....
, columnist Emma Jane described Conservapedia as "a disturbing parallel universe where the ice age is a theoretical period, intelligent design is empirically testable, and relativity and geology are junk sciences."
Opinions criticizing the site rapidly spread throughout the blogosphere
Blogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community or as a social network in which everyday authors can publish their opinions...
around early 2007. Schlafly appeared on radio programs Today
Today programme
Today is BBC Radio 4's long-running early morning news and current affairs programme, now broadcast from 6.00 am to 9.00 am Monday to Friday, and 7.00 am to 9.00 am on Saturdays. It is also the most popular programme on Radio 4 and one of the BBC's most popular programmes across its radio networks...
on BBC Radio 4 and All Things Considered
All Things Considered
All Things Considered is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio. It was the first news program on NPR, and is broadcast live worldwide through several outlets...
on NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
to discuss the site around that time. In May 2008, Schlafly and one of his homeschooled students appeared on the CBC
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
program The Hour for the same purpose.
Stephanie Simon of the Los Angeles Times quoted two Conservapedia editors who commented favorably about Conservapedia. Matt Barber, policy director for the conservative Christian political action group Concerned Women for America
Concerned Women for America
Concerned Women for America is a conservative Christian public policy group active in the United States best known for its stance against abortion...
, praised Conservapedia as a more family-friendly and accurate alternative to Wikipedia.
Wired Magazine, in an article entitled "Ten Impressive, Weird And Amazing Facts About Wikipedia," highlighted several of Conservapedia's articles, including those on "Atheism and obesity," "Hollywood values", amongst others. It also highlighted Conservapedia's "Examples of bias in Wikipedia" article, which encourages readers to contact Jimmy Wales and tell him to "sort it out."
Conservapedia's use of Wikipedia's format to try and create a conservative and fundamentalist Christian alternative encyclopedia, has been mirrored by other sites, such as Tangle.com (formerly GodTube), QubeTV and MyChurch, which adopted the format of the more prominent Facebook, YouTube and MySpace, respectively.
Jimmy Wales
Wikipedia's co-creator Jimmy WalesJimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....
said about Conservapedia that "free culture knows no bounds" and "the reuse of our work to build variants [is] directly in line with our mission". Wales denied Schlafly's claims of liberal bias in Wikipedia.
RationalWiki
In April 2007, Peter Lipson, a doctor of internal medicineInternal medicine
Internal medicine is the medical specialty dealing with the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of adult diseases. Physicians specializing in internal medicine are called internists. They are especially skilled in the management of patients who have undifferentiated or multi-system disease processes...
, repeatedly attempted to edit Conservapedia's article on breast cancer
Breast cancer
Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...
to include evidence arguing against Conservapedia's claim that abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
was a major cause of the disease. Conservapedia administrators "questioned his credentials and shut off debate". Several editors whose accounts were blocked by Conservapedia administrators, including Lipson, started another website, RationalWiki, to analyze and refute "pseudoscience", the "anti-science movement", and "crank ideas", as well as conduct "explorations of authoritarianism
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
and fundamentalism
Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism is strict adherence to specific theological doctrines usually understood as a reaction against Modernist theology. The term "fundamentalism" was originally coined by its supporters to describe a specific package of theological beliefs that developed into a movement within the...
" and explore "how these subjects are handled in the media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
."
According to an article published in the Los Angeles Times in 2007, "From there, RationalWiki members monitor Conservapedia, particularly on the page "Conservapedia:What is going on at CP?", and—by their own admission—engage in acts of cyber-vandalism".
Lenski dialogue
On June 9, 2008, New ScientistNew Scientist
New Scientist is a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of...
published an article describing Richard Lenski
Richard Lenski
Richard E. Lenski is an American evolutionary biologist. He is the son of sociologist Gerhard Lenski. He earned his BA from Oberlin College in 1976, and his PhD from the University of North Carolina in 1982...
's 20-year E. coli experiment
E. coli long-term evolution experiment
The E. coli long-term evolution experiment is an ongoing study in experimental evolution led by Richard Lenski that has been tracking genetic changes in 12 initially identical populations of asexual Escherichia coli bacteria since 24 February 1988...
, which reported that the bacteria evolved the ability to metabolize citrate. Schlafly contacted Lenski to request the data. Lenski explained that the relevant data was in the paper and that Schlafly fundamentally misunderstood it. Schlafly wrote again and requested the raw data. Lenski replied again that the relevant data was already in the paper, that the "raw data" were living bacterial samples, which he would willingly share with qualified researchers at properly equipped biology labs, and that he felt insulted by letters and comments on Conservapedia which he saw as brusque and offensive, including claims of outright deceit. The Daily Telegraph later called Lenski's reply "one of the greatest and most comprehensive put-downs in scientific argument".
The exchange, recorded on a Conservapedia page entitled "Lenski dialog", was widely reported on news-aggregating sites and web logs. Carl Zimmer wrote that it was readily apparent that "Schlafly had not bothered to read [Lenski's paper] closely", and PZ Myers
PZ Myers
Paul Zachary "PZ" Myers is an American biology professor at the University of Minnesota Morris and the author of the Pharyngula science blog. He is currently an associate professor of biology at UMM, works with zebrafish in the field of evolutionary developmental biology , and also cultivates an...
criticized Schlafly for demanding data despite not having a plan to use it nor the expertise to analyze it. During and after the Lenski dialogue on Conservapedia, several users on the site were blocked for "insubordination" for expressing disagreement with Schlafly's stance on the issue.
The dialogue between Lenski and Conservapedia is noted in Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
' The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution is a 2009 book by British biologist Richard Dawkins, which was released on 3 September 2009 in the UK and on 22 September 2009 in the U.S...
in a chapter concerning Lenski's research.
Conservative Bible Project
Conservapedia hosts the "Conservative Bible Project", a project aiming to rewrite the English translation of the Bible in order to remove terms described as "liberal bias". The project intends to remove sections of the Bible which are judged by Conservapedia's founder to be later liberal additions. These include the story of the adulteress in the Gospel of JohnGospel of John
The Gospel According to John , commonly referred to as the Gospel of John or simply John, and often referred to in New Testament scholarship as the Fourth Gospel, is an account of the public ministry of Jesus...
in which Jesus declares "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone". The project also intends to remove Jesus's prayer on the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing", since it appears only in the Gospel of Luke
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...
and since, according to Schlafly, "the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible". The adulteress story and the "forgive them" line are missing from many early manuscripts, and many modern textual scholars consider that they are not authentic parts of the gospels, though possibly historically valid.
The Bible project has met with extensive criticism. Rod Dreher, a conservative editor and columnist, described the project as "insane hubris
Hubris
Hubris , also hybris, means extreme haughtiness, pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power....
" and "crazy"; he further described the project as "It's like what you'd get if you crossed the Jesus Seminar
Jesus Seminar
The Jesus Seminar is a group of about 150 critical scholars and laymen founded in 1985 by Robert Funk under the auspices of the Westar Institute....
with the College Republican chapter at a rural institution of Bible learnin. Ed Morrissey
Ed Morrissey
Ed Morrissey is an American conservative blogger, columnist, motivational speaker, and talk show host.He goes by the nickname Captain Ed and he currently lives in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota....
, another conservative Christian writer, wrote that bending the word of God to one's own ideology makes God subservient to an ideology, rather than the other way around. Joseph Farah
Joseph Farah
-External links:* Official website* *...
, editor-in-chief of WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is an American web site that publishes news and associated content from a U.S. conservative perspective. It was founded in May 1997 by Joseph Farah with the stated intent of "exposing wrongdoing, corruption and abuse of power" and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.-History:In...
, stated: "I've seen some incredibly stupid and misguided initiatives by 'conservatives' in my day, but this one takes the cake" and "There's certainly nothing 'conservative' about rewriting the Bible".
On October 7, 2009, Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.Colbert originally studied to be an...
called for his viewers to incorporate him into the Conservapedia Bible as a Biblical figure and viewers responded by editing the Conservapedia Bible to include his name. This was followed by an interview between Colbert and Schlafly on December 8, 2009.