If you are a conservative, then Conservapedia should be embarrassing to you. Formed ostensibly to counteract perceived anti-Christian and anti-American bias in Wikipedia, the effort wouldn’t pass muster in a reasonably-challenging public middle school. Take, for example, the entry that came up for me when I asked for a random page:
Pilgrims were people (mostly puritans) in the 1600’s that traveled to the American Colonies because of persecution in England. These settlers started the very first settlement in the American colonies, Jamestown.
It’s amazing you can get that much wrong in only two sentences. The pilgrims were mostly puritans, but they came as part of the Plymouth Company in 1620 to Massachusetts. Jamestown was established in 1607 by the Virginia Company of London, not by pilgrims. The 144 settlers did not flee Anglican persecution when traveling to Virginia. And Jamestown, while the first permanent English colony in the New World to survive, was not the first attempt. It was the 19th.
Try it for yourself - Random Conservapedia page.
Since the site’s existence hit the blogs, there have been some efforts to improve the inanity. Compare the current page on faith to what it originally said:
Faith is a uniquely Christian concept that means trust or complete confidence in something unseen. The term lacks a precise definition. In English the word comes from the Latin word “fidere”, meaning “to trust”.
The concept of faith does not exist in other major religions. While faith is mentioned 229 in the New Testament, faith is mentioned only twice in the Old Testament (KJV). In an English translation of the Koran (Islam), the concept of submission to Allah is mentioned 11 times, but faith in Allah is only mentioned once.
The term “faith” is often misused to describe the belief systems of other religions.[1]
There are clearly problems with Wikipedia. It is generally, but clearly not always, accurate. Pages on controversial topics are often riddled with bias, leading to lockdowns to prevent edit wars. It keeps the learning curve intentionally high to prevent the unwashed masses from participating. But the Conservapedia is ridiculous.
[via Pharyngula]
