Bacteria evolve; Conservapedia demands recount (2008) | Hacker News Reader

Bacteria evolve; Conservapedia demands recount (2008)

arstechnica.com

21 pointsshrikant8 comments

At first I thought Conservopedia must have something like Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View and No Original Research policies that would suggest it wouldn't get involved in research. Then I realized with a name like Conservopedia, it must not have a Neutral Point of View.

I was curious what they have instead of a Neutral Point of View, so I looked it up. On its page "How Conservapedia Differs from Wikipedia" -- http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:How_Conservapedia... -- it lists this relevant policy:

"We do not allow liberal censorship of conservative facts."

Talking about "conservative facts" speaks for itself and says a lot.

Its Guidelines page -- http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:Guidelines -- says

"Unlike Wikipedia, we do not block for ideological reasons."

The Arstechnica article says "Several of those individuals are apparently now ex-Conservapedia members, having had their accounts blocked for insubordination," implying Conservopedia is overstepping its guidelines. This instance sounds like the pot calling the kettle black. If people within Conservopedia discuss Conservopedia, why would someone block mere discussion?

To demonstrate how obsessively out of whack the conservapedia folks are, note that "Homosexual Agenda" is the top article, after the home page. I remember a few years ago that all of the top 10 were related to homosexuality. They must have changed their ranking to demote things that used to be there.

The article on the Homosexual Agenda claims that the "homosexual agenda" is the greatest threat to free speech today. Not SOPA, DOMA, the NSA, or secretive international agreements on the regulation of the Internet.... it's homosexuals.

I've never seen Conservapedia before.

It wasn't until about 5 minutes after reading some of it, I realised it wasn't some parody like Uncyclopedia.

I'm utterly shocked that the human race actually is possible of pumping out shite of that grade.

I'm in the UK BTW so I'm not that aware of American politics so my ignorance may come from there.

Uncyclopedia has reported to fully support Conservapedia's stand on this issue.

Wait, I thought Conservapedia was a joke?

No, Conservapedia is deadly serious. The guy who operates it (Andrew Schlafly) is a real piece of work. And apparently it runs in the family too, since his mom (Phyllis Schlafly) is the main reasons the equal rights amendment got shot down:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Schlafly

A pretty big WTF there.

By poes law, its not very surprising that someone would think conservapedia to be a parody rather than something serious. The only people who post there are either extreme, or trolls pretending to be.

I wonder how much of their traffic and contributors are genuine conservatives or just people who want to troll/laugh at conservatives?

The real comedy gold is in the "talk" pages, I remember some years ago a person tying to make an argument that the Al-Qaeda page should begin "Al-Qaeda is a liberal organisation..".

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