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This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations: Rob Mackey (2007-03-08). "Conservapedia: The Word Says It All". The New York Times. Peter Sbarski (2007-03-10). "Misplaced Pages vs Conservapedia". APC Magazine. John Cotey (2007-03-16). "Conservative Web site counters the 'bias' of Misplaced Pages". St. Petersburg Times. Jake Coyle (2007-05-08). "Popular Web Sites Breed Political Copies". Associated Press. Chris Steller (2009-01-23). "Klobuchar on apparent Conservapedia hit list". The Minnesota Independent.

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neutrality

Might I suggest that every effort is made to make this article as neutral and factual as possible. As somebody who thinks Conservapedia is a ridiculous website, I would say the best way to contrast its bias and propogandist nature is to make this article as fair and unopinionated as possible (something which I'm afraid it hasn't been in places), which would demonstrate how Misplaced Pages is a much more mature and rational tool. 89.243.44.154 (talk) 16:29, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

From what I've seen of Conservapedia, to make this article seem fair and balanced, you would actually have to inject substantial bias in favour of Conservapedia. The article, in its current form, seems, if anything, slightly biased in that direction. However, as has already been noted, in order to include the things that would remove that slight bias, Misplaced Pages rules regarding reliable sources and original research would have to be disregarded. 92.23.17.223 (talk) 20:52, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Commercial?

Why does the infobox say "Commercial: no" when it's a dotcom? Rees11 (talk) 15:46, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Probably 'cause there's no cash transaction involved at all? "Dotcom" is meaningless. SpeckledHen (talk) 16:20, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Schlafly is a homeschool teacher and the site is part of his for profit home school teaching business. According to Schlafly.--216.67.4.221 (talk) 02:33, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

is that enough to make it commercial? CP doesn't sell anything and you don't have to pay to join. The only money that changes hands is offline, in Schlafly's school fees. I don't see how that would make CP a commercial site. the .com suffix is incidental - anyone starting a website may choose any suffix they wish. Totnesmartin (talk) 10:48, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Back in Web 1.0 there were plenty of sites put up by businesses that provide information but weren't selling anything. People enroll in the courses through the site, the courses are taught on the site, homework is submitted and graded through the site. Take for instance this website (I looked up well drilling figuring no one would sell it over the net and this was what google kicked back) They don't collect fees, you don't have to pay to access the site, the only money that changes hands happens in real life. I do agree the the .com doesn't make it commercial. --216.67.4.221 (talk) 00:13, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

NPOV (March 2010)

First of all, I have a WP:COI in this which is why my changes to the article have been minimal. However, I've noticed that at least 75% of this article references criticism. That doesn't seem neutral to me. Anyone else want to weigh in on this? PCHS-NJROTC 21:16, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

...feel free to supply positive Reliable Sources? This issue had been noted since the first days of this article, and the awkward answer had been "That's pretty much all there is...". Since CP went online, the widespread reaction had been criticism. With things like the Conservative Bible Project, even the conservative sources criticized it. I'm not terribly rule-versed, so take this with a grain of salt, but NPOV doesn't mean Equal Weight. I guess WP:WEIGHT applies here? --Sid 3050 (talk) 21:24, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to see a concrete proposal, with specifics of what is to be removed or added. Rees11 (talk) 21:52, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Sid is absolutely right. WP:WEIGHT is exactly what applies. There are nearly no sources (liberal, conservative or otherwise) which discuss CP in a positive light especially within the past year. The Concerned Woman of America is pretty much the only major group that has praised the project and that was only a brief write up from two years. On the other hand, if you have reliable sources which are positive about CP we could probably work them in. --Leivick (talk) 21:56, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

We have presented evidence on this page much of this criticism of CP over the past year was inserted by RationalWiki parodists in both the "Hit List" and "Lenski" incidents. nobs (talk) 22:23, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

(a) Rob, this is about reliable sources, several of which are dated roughly 2007, before RationalWiki even existed in its current form.

(b) CP sysops implicitly approved of the "Hit List" (an incident that is not even mentioned in the article from what I saw!) entry by editing it like any other article. It was only removed when people shone a spotlight on it. The Lenski thing was Andy's idea. He was the one who defended his "Send a letter and demand the data!" idea against his sysops. The ballot-stuffing had been utterly transparent - several people literally came out of nowhere to pat Andy's back. Several sysops saw right through it, but Andy Schlafly personally approved of it. Andy wrote the letters, and Andy made several of the more idiotic accusations. And even the single-purpose accounts were verifably not all from RW - LarryFarma, a Holocaust revisionist joined just for this discussion and even got Edit Rights within four days. Additionally, several people actually argued against Andy - and guess where they came from (or where they went after being banhammered)!

(c) Did RW create a YEC-friendly wiki that bills itself as promoting The Truth? No. Did RW accuse Misplaced Pages of liberal bias? No. Did RW come up with the Conservative Bible Project? No. Did RW think of sending a letter to Lenski? No. Did RW make all the entries that blame liberals for everything and that claim that everything liberal is bad? No. Did RW insert claims like "Jesus healing some guy far away disproves relativity"? No. Did RW post the infamous HitWin picture that had been on CP's main page? No. Is RW responsible for creating rules that discourage compassion (MYOB) and smack down discussions (90/10)? No. Did RW get the brilliant idea to apply these rules only to people the management doesn't like? No.

(d) Who is "we"? I just saw you.

(e) You already have two sections for your "evidence", why must you try to drag this one down, too?

All you have done here was trolling. I'm sorry, I know I should avoid personal remarks and stuff, and I know you or TK will quickly whine to sysops about how nasty I am and how I (but not Rob!) violated a trillion rules, but your 30+ kb section above allows no other conclusion. You dragged several editors down a long road of random and unconnected accusations (while always claiming that your current accusation was what it's all about), grasping for straws as you dug random holes into history, looking for something that would stick. I'm sick and tired of this, and it needs to stop. You managed to cause another editor to put the neutrality of this entire article in dispute simply because one section echoes what a Reliable Source says. To make things worse, it's a RS Conservapedia praised at least twice on its main page! You are trying to include Original Research just because you're not happy that we're sticking to what the sources say in regards of Dr. Lipson. You accuse RationalWiki of controlling the content of this article, and yet you try to control it yourself, insisting that a section isn't neutral just because it doesn't say what you want!

Tell you what, Rob. You include that essay, and we include all CP essays. Open Season. I'll gladly pull an all-nighter to include all the stuff Andy said over the ages. Where should I start? Counterexamples to Relativity? Greatest Mysteries of World History? Critical Thinking in Math? Counterexamples to Evolution? Best of the Public? Come on, let's include Jesus disproving relativity! Let's mention how the beauty of fall leaves disproves evolution! Let's discuss if there was humor before Christianity! Or how about Quantifying Openmindedness?

But if you go through the archives, you will notice something funny, Rob: RW regulars don't tend to go to great lengths to suggest such crap. We know in advance that no Reliable Source covers it, so we don't suggest it. And if some WP newbie does suggest it, RW regulars will be among the people who will reply "That's interesting and true, but it's not covered by a RS, so it can't go in.". Do you know what that means? It means that RW members, the evil vandals you are desperately trying to pin down, are better at working on an article about a site they oppose than you are right now.

You've been here long enough to understand the rules about Original Research and Reliable Sources, Rob. So I shouldn't have to say this, but I will do so anyway: If you want your claims to be included, show us a Reliable Source that says so. Until then, you're entitled to your opinion, but it won't go in. --Sid 3050 (talk) 23:45, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec) See Talk:Conservapedia/Archive_12#Needs_a_POV_check -- Nx / talk 21:56, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Moving back to content concerns

The situation between nobs (RobSmith on RW) and RationalWikians kept escalating, and it moved further and further away from discussing actual content.

Right after posting a lengthy (maybe too long, but things like "Wanna see your Username on the sockpoppet Noticeboard for the next several years" or "Your contribs at wp:CP hurt the WP project. I'll prove it to Arbcom, if necessary." bring out the worst in me) reply, I mentally slapped myself.

So I'm taking things back here to discuss content.

Nobs. What are your specific concerns? You brought up a lot of them, and they go from accusing RationalWiki of controlling the content of this article to including Dr. Lipson's political views. I think it's safe to say that people lost track of what you are trying to achieve.

So please, tell us which sections of the article you don't like, and what you would want to change to what. Let's start slowly so we're all on the same page. --Sid 3050 (talk) 01:19, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

More than two days have passed, and Nobs has just insisted on overriding the COI Noticeboard he requested in the related RationalWiki article while at the same time threatening me with ArbCom and claiming that he was engaging in Dispute Resolution without actually discussing content. I'm done here. I spent almost a week on nothing but this on- and off-wiki.

Below is a post from my user talk page where I detailed to Nobs why I believe his repeatedly stated concerns about the LA Times accuracy are unfounded. The post is dated "01:30, 25 March 2010 (UTC)" and came in direct reply to Nobs (a.k.a. RobSmith on RW) threatening me with ArbCom unless I agree with him ("But working together begins with recognizing I have valid concerns. And those concerns basically are for the Misplaced Pages project. Your contribs at wp:CP hurt the WP project. I'll prove it to Arbcom, if necessary."). He never replied to it, instead keeping up the Dispute Resolution talk and ArbCom hints while claiming that I rejected to resolve the dispute.

I recognize that the LA Times article could be worded better, and it's been shown that it's apparently possible to read it in a way that implies that PalMD founded RationalWiki - hence the Register article and the initial version of the restored RW article.

However, I reject that the LA Times article says PalMD is the founder of RationalWiki. It doesn't. It says (God, by now, I could recite this in my sleep):

"After administrators blocked their accounts, Lipson and several other editors quit trying to moderate the articles and instead started their own website, RationalWiki.com. From there, they monitor Conservapedia."

"Several other editors" includes me. Does the LA Times article thus say that I'm the founder of RW? No, it doesn't. PalMD is just the only one of the initial group who is named in the article, but it doesn't say that he had a special role.

People can obviously jump to different conclusions after reading this article, and that's unfortunate. But that doesn't mean we should discard it. It means that we have to read it carefully and see if other sources contradict it.

• The Register merely paraphrases the LA Times. It likely didn't do its own direct research in the way Simon did (she interviewed at least two CP sysops and also communicated with one or more RationalWiki members, if I recall correctly). So where it goes beyond the claims of the original article and starts to paraphrase, I won't give it more weight than the LA Times article.
• PalMD himself states on his user page that the Register is wrong.
• Our own history page states that ColinR founded the original RW.
• I don't recall us denying that PalMD was among the first members. Considering that Simon knew of his medical qualifications and of his discussions with Andy about abortion/breastcancer, I would guess that he contacted when she appeared on CP to announce her article-writing intentions.

From my understanding, our statements thus don't contradict what the LA Times says: "Lipson and several other editors started their own website". He was there in the beginning, and we were among the initial members to start it together.

At this moment, PalMD's statement, RationalWiki's history page, the LA Times and the Misplaced Pages CP article agree: "Several editors, including Lipson, started another website". There is no mention of a founder in the WP articles because the one source that mentions a founder at all is the Register, which drew its own conclusions from the LA Times article that go against what the person and the site in question claim.

Did this help in some way? Did I understand your concerns correctly? If you want to discuss this issue somewhere on Misplaced Pages, drop me a note and I'll copy this comment over. If your concerns are about something else, please tell me and I'll give you my thoughts as time permits.

The time for wikilawyering games is over. Discuss content or stop pestering me. I'm sick and tired of this. --Sid 3050 (talk) 11:44, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Article issues

Rob, please provide specific content issues you have with the article here. To avoid cluttering this up and preventing us from actually improving the article please avoid personal attacks against editors, or any other various threats that keep popping up. In order for anything to be done we need to see what it is you want to accomplish. Tmtoulouse (talk) 17:50, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

citation 43

could we provide some examples for citation 43?Ref ward (talk) 21:53, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

First of all, there's no need because the source itself provides examples. Second, of the examples the source cites, only two remain current. Finally , the source author fails to understand the history of Conservapedia. It was started as a project by homeschool students, so it's not the least bit surprising that some homeschool sources ended up being used for some articles. Now that Conservapedia has advanced beyond that point, the sources and information from them are expanding and problems with "inaccurate or inadequate information" are corrected.

Now, that being said, I have noticed a problem with the sentence that is sourced by citation 43. It states, "Science writer Carl Zimmer has found evidence that much of what appears to be inaccurate or inadequate information about science and scientific theory can be traced back to an over-reliance on citations from the works of home-schooling textbook author Dr. Jay L. Wile." That smacks of synthesis. Zimmer mentions problems found by others and points out a handful of articles in which Wile was cited as a source, but at no point does he say the former is caused by the latter. The sentence should be changed. Seregain (talk) 23:18, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Mostly a note on the first part of your reply (I'm not awake enough to weigh in on synthesis concerns, sorry): You said "Now that Conservapedia has advanced beyond that point, the sources and information from them are expanding and problems with 'inaccurate or inadequate information' are corrected."

Hmmm, you're right and wrong in a way. (Beware: Incoming Original Research! The following is mostly just my take on CP's development and should be treated as a comment to provide some perspective, not as something to be included in the article (unless there are sources echoing my thoughts of course - but I'm not readily aware of any, I think). As an additional disclaimer, I'm a long-time RationalWiki member and have kept an eye on CP pretty much since the initial blog rush.)

The site did move beyond the "Andy plus homeschoolers" concept, but after the initial flood of coverage, the number of active Conservapedians dropped for various reasons until just a small group of regulars (plus a few random users that come and go) remained. And those users mostly began to focus on their favorite niches (plus politics).

This leads to a situation where simply nobody feels compelled (or has the time) to look for better sources in currently 101 articles (and this issue isn't even the worst problem resulting from the small and specialized user base).

I do agree that the issue is kinda historic in the sense that there have been (minor) efforts to fix it, and nobody is likely going to make it worse, so in the worst case, it simply stays at its current level (which is bad, but not critical). Thus I also don't think that it's necessary to cite specific examples.

However, one point of the source has actually become more of a problem: "He or she seems to think that all you need to do is put a mark on someone--"evolutionist" in this case--and then everything he or she says must be wrong because he or she says it. And anything that is opposite to the marked person's claims must be right." The only difference is that it's less about "evolutionists" and more about "liberals" and "conservatives" these days.

Lastly, the source is dated February 21, 2007, so it had been mostly right for its time - the site mostly consisted of Andy and his class (the members of which were the most active users, if I recall correctly), with everybody else being unproven newbies. It just hadn't been obvious that the site would truly move beyond the "Andy + homeschoolers" concept. --Sid 3050 (talk) 00:38, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

so a rewrite may be on the way?Ref ward (talk) 15:47, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but I think we'll have to wait until a RS reports on what Sid is saying. Yes, what Sid says is true, but no-one has reported on it in a way that is useful for Misplaced Pages yet. No real comment on the synthesis issue right now, I might go read the Zimmer source and see if I have anything useful to say. Huw Powell (talk) 19:36, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Fixed, if we want to talk about how it has changed since then we need an RS that says that it has changed (which we are unlikely to find) --EmersonWhite (talk) 20:18, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Notability of RationalWiki

So the consensus view of RationalWiki as a non-notable source revailed at the RfD. The question now is, why is it mentioned at all this article? nobs (talk) 02:18, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

I think there's some misunderstanding here. The AfD was closed as keep, or no consensus. It was left up to the editors to opt for a redirect. The general opinion is that, according to WP:RS, the reference used in this article is more than adequate. As such, it is perfectly acceptable to mention RationalWiki here. Wisdom89 _{(T / )} 02:33, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, so a factual inaccurate WP:RS is citing a non-notable source. Ok. nobs (talk) 02:48, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

What? Tmtoulouse (talk) 02:56, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

You have repeatedly made the accusation that the LA times article is inaccurate but you have not made any attempt to provide evidence of that conclusion. --EmersonWhite (talk) 02:58, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

The wording here is also mildly confusing. Article topics are subject to the notability criteria, not their sources per se, although that might just be semantics. Nevertheless, how anybody can say the LA Times does not meet WP:RS is beyond me. Wisdom89 _{(T / )} 03:33, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

No, he's saying that the LA Times article is inaccurate and that RationalWiki is non-notable. Which (1) kinda ignores WP:NNC, (2) kinda ignores the outcome of the RW AfD, (3) completely ignores discussion attempts regarding the factual accuracy of the LA Times (on RW and in my "Moving back to content concerns" section above).

Briefly summing up my longer argument from above: The LA Times article says "Lipson and several other editors started their own website". Lipson and RW's History page say that he is not the founder. From what I see, the claim of inaccuracy rests solely on Nobs' insistence that the LA Times line says that Lipson was the founder of RW. Which... it doesn't. It's possible to jump to such a conclusion (see the Register article that made the Lipson-as-founder claim while paraphrasing the LA Times article) because Lipson is the only named early-generation member, but that's not what the article actually says. The LA Times could be phrased better, but it boils down to "Lipson was one of the first members", which isn't contradicted by Lipson or RW History. Heck, I'm one of the first members, too, but nobody is claiming that I'm the founder of RW. The Misplaced Pages article right now reads "Several editors, including Lipson, started another website", which is accurate and sourced in my eyes. I don't see the problem. --Sid 3050 (talk) 09:13, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your help, Sid. Would it be safe to say Lipson was a co-founder, or among the founding members?

Let's reiterate what the LA Times says, Lipson and others founded RationalWiki and by thier own admission engage in cybervandalism. Is this not what Stephanie Simon reported?  !nobs (talk) 02:21, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Can we avoid the foreplay and you just say what exactly you want changed in the article, and how? Tmtoulouse (talk) 03:46, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

RationalWiki appears to have piggybacked on this Conservapedia entry to promote itself, particularly since RationalWiki editors have included it. The L.A. Times article points out RationalWiki founders have admitted to engaging in cybervandalism. This Misplaced Pages has been controlled by the RationalWiki founders. nobs (talk) 04:24, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Nobs seems to harbor some delusion that if something is not notable enough for a stand-alone article, it isn't notable enough to be mentioned in Misplaced Pages at all. So basically, every proper noun should be linked, and if the link is red, the item should be removed. This is, of course, ridiculous, and deserves no further consideration. -R. fiend (talk) 14:08, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

I suggest, per nobs's argument, that we remove all mention of Andrew Schlafly from this article, as he has no article of his own - merely a redirect. Totnesmartin (talk) 16:32, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Certainly seems like what we have now is fair and accurate, and meets requirements of general WP policy as well as general consensus of active editors. Tmtoulouse (talk) 17:36, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

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