User:Timwayne/Conservapedia

Conservapedia is a wiki project aiming to construct an encyclopedia with articles that are purportedly pro-American, socially conservative and supportive of conservative Christianity.

The project was founded by Andrew Schlafly, son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, in response to an alleged anti-Christian and anti-American bias in the articles of Wikipedia. According to a FAQ on Conservapedia it originated from a project for homeschooled children, and its creator believes it could eventually evolve into a "reference for teachers". In addition to its role as an encyclopedia, Conservapedia is also used by Andrew Schlafly's Eagle Forum University. Material for various online courses, for example, on American History, is stored on the site. Eagle Forum University is associated with Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum. Andrew Schlafly has stated that he hopes the site becomes a general resource for United States teachers and work as a general counterpoint to alleged liberal bias on Wikipedia as Fox News does for the news media. Its earliest articles date from 22 November 2006.

Conservapedia and Wikipedia
Conservapedia disapproves of what it claims is an "institutional aversion" on Wikipedia to the use of Christian scripture and doctrine as objective and reliable sources for topics outside the field of Christian theology.

Wikipedia subscribes to a policy of writing from a neutral point of view incompatible with the intent to "favor Christianity and America" stated by Conservapedia. For example, Conservapedia considers Wikipedia's treatment of biological evolution as mainstream to be biased, alleging that "most Americans reject the theory of evolution", which even if correct would be irrelevant to Wikipedia's treatment of the topic, since its policies define "mainstream" based on peer-reviewed academic publications, not polls of the US-American population.

The policy of English Wikipedia to allow both CE/BCE and AD/BC notation, and both British English and American English spellings, are also interpreted as "anti-Christian" and "anti-American" bias, respectively.

In a March 2007 interview with The Guardian newspaper, 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 8 Andy Schlafly was interviewed on BBC Radio 4's flagship morning show, the Today programme, opposite Wikipedia administrator Jim Redmond. Schlafly raised several concerns: that the article on the Renaissance does not give any credit to Christianity, that many Wikipedia articles 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. Conservapedia has asserted that, "Wikipedia is six times more liberal than the American public."

Schlafly has indicated that Conservapedia has not adopted what he considers "Wikipedia's complex copyright rules," adding that Conservapedia "reserves the right to object to copying of its materials,"

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has stated that he has no objections to the project. "Free culture knows no bounds," he said. Wales has however also denied Schlafly's claims of bias on Wikipedia.

Criticism and vandalism
The Conservapedia project has come under significant criticism for alleged factual inaccuracies and perceived factual relativism Conservapedia has also been compared to CreationWiki, a wiki written from a creation science perspective.

Critics, such as libertarian conservative writer Andrew Sullivan, conservative blogger Jon Swift, science writer Carl Zimmer, and others, have criticized and mocked the Conservapedia website for factual inaccuracy, extremism, hypocrisy, bias, and ignoring the scientific consensus on subjects such as the Big Bang and evolution in favor of biblical exegesis. Widely disseminated examples of Conservapedia articles that contradict the scientific consensus include the claims that all kangaroos descend from a single pair that were taken aboard Noah's Ark, that "Einstein's work had nothing to do with the development of the atomic bomb," and - at one time - that not only evolution but also gravity are unproven theories, although the latter allegation has since been revised. An entry on the "Pacific Northwest Arboreal Octopus" has received particular attention, a page which Schlafly has asserted  was intended as a parody of environmentalism. However, as of March 4 2007, the entry has been deleted. Other offending articles have since been revised to include fewer statements of the kind that have brought derision from the blogosphere.. Additionally, it is difficult to know how many of these articles were written by serious contributors to the project and how many of them were written by vandals.

Tom Flanagan, a conservative professor of political science at the University of Calgary has argued that Conservapedia is more about religion than conservatism and that it "is far more guilty of the crime they're attributing to Wikipedia" than Wikipedia itself.

There is evidence that people who object to Conservapedia's stated conservative Christian mission have been creating deliberate parody entries in an attempt to ridicule the widespread use of Christian scripture as a source for Conservapedia articles.

The project has also been criticized for promoting a dichotomy between conservatism and liberalism and for promoting the notion that there "often are two equally valid interpretations of the facts."

Licensing of Conservapedia Content
The project is not currently licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License or a similar copyleft license and this led to some concerns. According to Wales people who contribute to Conservapedia "are giving them full control of the content, which may lead to unpleasant results." Schlafly has responded by stating that although Conservapedia has not yet decided on a formal copyright policy "We support broad reuse of our material in a manner similar to Wikipedia."