CONSERVAPEDIA!

Oh my, I don't even know where to start. I stumbled upon this website the other night when I was just loafing around on the internet and now I can't stop myself from searching for topics just to see the ridiculous things Conservapedia publishes about them.

For instance, if one types "sex" into the search feature one gets an article that describes sex as "the attribute of being either male or female." It doesn't mention ANYTHING about what sexual intercourse is and any attempt to find an article about sexual intercourse leads right back to the initial "sex" article. There are only three sections in the entire article, the largest by far being the one entitled "Sexual Morality in the Bible." This section describes how the bible forbids having sex before marriage, labels people who do so as whores, and talks about how women could be killed for committing this heinous act, as well as if she were married under false pretenses, i.e. her husband thought she was a virgin but they discovered (somehow) that she wasn't.

You might be wondering why I was so avidly searching for sex on Conservapedia to begin with. Well, it all stems from reading a list of their "Commandments" and a section outlining precisely "How Conservapedia Differs from Wikipedia." The third Commandment states that anything not considered family-friendly is a sin. So, knowing the stigma extreme conservatives place around sex, I wanted to find out if this scientific, natural, NECESSARY biological process was too lewd to be included in Conservapedia's vast array of completely factual articles (please see The First and Second Commandments). And to my surprise and disbelief, apparently even an informational description of sexual intercourse is not family-friendly enough. As one quick-witted respondent in the "talk" section of the article noted: isn't sex how families are made?

Conservapedia also prides itself on having no censorship like Wikipedia has. C-pedia claims that the liberal editors of Wikipedia edit "conservative fact" out of entries so as not to concede anything to the conservatives  and prides itself in being free of obscenities, trivial discussion, and inaccurate information, just like a real encyclopedia.  It does provide links to opposing sites and claims to “welcome opposing views” but it then throws the tag of “liberal bias” onto any information gained through journalists and Wikipedia.   Thus, it is easy to see that Conservapedia can cause echo-chamber-like effects:  it claims to be better than other sources for unverifiable differences and reduces the credibility of other sources by labeling them in such a way that cannot successfully be argued against by the other side.  For instance, it would be hard to convince a Conservapedia follower that Wikipedia is not liberally biased simply because the proponent of Conservapedia is biased herself.  If you don't know what an echo-chamber is, it's a metaphor for what our power of filtering information is leading to:  a world in which we only hear echoes of our own voices, i.e. a world in which we only see, hear, touch, taste, and feel things that we've chosen to, and only socialize with people who have the same opinions as us.

Conservapedia sucks, and perhaps they are more accurate that Wikipedia for the 6 entries they have, but they are much more biased than they claim Wikipedia is--and anyways, it's not WIKIPEDIA that's biased...if anyone, it is the people writing the articles, and people are allowed to have biases.