The dodgiest place to go for information used to be Wikipedia.
In 2006, its burlesque unreliability was parodied on the satirical web site The Onion which suggested the on-line encyclopedia was celebrating 750 years of American independence.
This fake news story said that, according to the Wikipedia database, America was 212 years older than the Eiffel Tower, 347 years older than the earliest-known woolly-mammoth fossil, and a full 493 years older than the microwave oven.
“In fact,” Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales was quoted as saying, “at three-quarters of a millennium, the USA has been around almost as long as technology.”
Such delicious, star-spangled truthiness.
Over the years, however, Wikipedia has become more authoritative, with one study by the British journal Nature concluding that the free resource is roughly on par with the scientific accuracy of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Fortunately a new, even dodgier on-line reference has arrived to fill the gap.
Conservapedia (motto: The Trustworthy Encyclopedia) is the work of American evangelical Christians who object to what they claim are Wikipedia’s liberal biases and mobocratic sensibilities.
The site looks and e-smells like the original, user-generated encyclopedia. But closer inspection reveals a disturbing parallel universe where the Ice Age is a theoretical period, intelligent design is empirically testable, and relativity and geology are junk science.
“Conservapedia strives to keep its articles concise, informative, family-friendly, and true to the facts, which often back up conservative ideas more than liberal ones,” Conservapedia writes trustworthily in its entry on itself.
“Wikipedia articles may contain trivia, gossip, profanity, and even pornographic/sexually explicit images. The latter three are prohibited on Conservapedia and trivia is largely discouraged.”
Hurrah!
I mean, boo.
I mean I have absolutely no idea what I mean which is likely to make me an ideal Conservapedia contributor.
The site’s bizarre word regurgitations make Wikipedia look positively scholarly (which is really saying something given the number of times vandals have inserted potty talk such as “poo bum dicky wee wee” into otherwise perfectly reasonable articles about Chinese monk fist boxing).
On Conservapedia, arguments are often circular, spelling is often unilateral, and grammatical and syntax errors flourish with abandon that is only the good, God-approved type of gay.
Contradictions, self-serving rationalisations and hypocrisies abound. Despite claiming to be superior to Wikipedia because it uses real names, Conservapedia lists someone handily called Conservative as an influential editor.
Administrator SharonS says her or his credentials include reading the bible in a straightforward or literal manner, while Jpatt boasts that he has blocked more than 2000 “liberal fascists/trolls/vandals/racists”.
If you’re concerned you might be a liberal fascist troll, simply consult the definition provided by influential editor TK who says vandals (aka internet terrorists) are those whose intentions are to argue with and dispute conservative or Christian points of view.
Does this mean Conservapedia is opposed to the principles of free speech? It’s hard to say. On its brief and extravagantly unreferenced page on the topic, the site expresses concern that hate crimes legislation will be used to stop preachers and others from saying homosexuality is evil.
Which it most definitely and factually is. At least if your information source is Conservapedia.
The Big C’s heavily viewed homosexuality page includes a bunch of excitingly inflammatory sub-titles such as: Homosexuality and Parasites; Untruthful Homosexual Activist Ideology Cost Lives; and American Lesbian Women More Than Twice as Likely to Be Obese Than All Other Female Sexual Orientation Groups.
(Dear Rubenesque Sapphics, please don’t be too offended by this weightest generalisation: Heteropedia also claims a link between atheism and obesity, suggesting that – like playground bullies – it resorts to calling kids it doesn’t like a bunch of fatty boomsticks.)
The homosexual agenda entry, meanwhile, includes a detailed expose of, you guessed it, the homosexual agenda.
Friends-of-Dorothy goals are said to include destroying Christian morals, encouraging lad-on-ladism among boy scouts, preventing five-year-olds from attending therapy to “repair “their sexual preferences, and “undermining the resolve of latent homosexuals so their will becomes too weak to resist the temptations of homosexuality”.
Scary lot those homosexuals. Scary and also terribly tempting.
On Conservapedia’s feminism page, you’ll discover that so-called liberated women feign insult at harmless displays of chivalry, belittle and mock those who want children, and shirk traditional gender activities such as baking and wearing dresses.
There’s a glut of similar factoids on liberalism, found on pages with titles such as Liberal Stupidity, Liberal Hysteria, Liberal Denial, Liberal Deceit, Liberal Tricks, Liberal Obfuscation, Liberal Celebrity Obsession, Liberal Falsehoods, Liberal Hypocrisy, Liberal Myths, Liberal Lies About the American Right, and, of course, the Dixie Chicks.
One of Conservapedia’s many flattering reports about itself is that it fosters an educational environment – and it’s true the site is highly instructional.
But rather than revealing the truth about controversial topics such as where we all came from and what it all means, Conservapedia actually reveals the truth about the truth: namely that many “facts” are contested, subjective and relative.
Truth claims – which are pumped out by people of all political and Wiki persuasions – are often dressed up to look more truthy via the use of academic bells and whistles such as citations. But a little number at the end of a sentence does not in and of itself constitute reliable evidence.
Consider Conservapedia’s article of the month – the aforementioned piece on atheism and obesity. While this essay includes 67 impressive-looking endnotes, many reference biblical or religious blogs, while one links conveniently back to another Conservapedia page.
A big part of the site’s proof for its pagans-are-porkmeisters argument is the listing of a handful of celebrity atheists and evolutionists who carry spare tyres round their midriffs. There is also a bitchy deconstruction of photos of the American Atheist organisation’s board of directors which concludes that some are facing “challenges in terms of their body weight”.
Not so much evidence as nerny ner ner ner-ing.
In summary, Conservapedia is an exemplar of the propaganda-isation of information and an excellent reminder of the importance of reading critically and checking sources. And if you don’t agree with everything I just said, I’ll cast narky aspersions on your body mass index.
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