<sarcasm> What started as a World History project for home-schooled high-school students has become the beacon of hope for conservatives all over America, who had thus far been lamenting Wikipedia’s “liberal bias”. </sarcasm>
Launched just a few months ago by Andy Schlafly, Conservapedia joins the company of some other equally ridiculous wikis such as the CreationWiki. While the site may seem like a good idea to some, I agree with Nate when he says that the only thing the site will accomplish is the further polarization of the two political groups.
The site and others like it raise a thorny epistemological question: is there such a thing as “conservative” and “liberal” knowledge? And if so, what does this imply about “knowledge”?
As always, the great folks at Ars have more.
Originally posted on March 8, 2007 @ 1:28 am
I can just imagine what Conservapedia’s take on evolution of the species will be.
I suppose some modern-day Fred Flintstone will write the article.
Wikipedia is great for articles that cannot be controversial by nature. The article about rivers for example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River) is just great! My daughter used it for her homework, and it saved me money by not having to buy Encarta.
The downside is that the rest is hopelessly biased one way or another by whichever pressure group has more manpower to throw at it. I’m not surprised some people are feeling left out.