Let me be clear, I think that intentionally misrepresenting somebody’s viewpoint as a form of ridicule is morally and rhetorically wrong. So please don’t take this as any sort of official encouragement. But, ye gods, are these guys begging for it.
From their “about” section, which appears to be down at the moment:
Tired of the LIBERAL BIAS every time you search on Google and a Wikipedia page appears? Now it’s time for the Conservatives to get our voice out on the internet!
Conservapedia began in November 2006, as the class project for a World History class of 58 advanced homeschooled and college-bound students meeting in New Jersey. Conservapedia has since grown enormously, including contributors nationwide.
Conservapedia already has over one-half the number of entries as the Oxford Dictionary of World History. Conservapedia is rapidly becoming one of the largest and most reliable online educational resources of its kind.
Try to resist.
***Update***
On their front page:
Did you know that faith is a uniquely Christian concept? Add to the explanation of what it means, and how it does not exist on other religions.
Yikes.
***Update 2***
PZ Meyers has more, plus some very naughty commenters.
dslak
I couldn’t resist doing a search on ‘liberal,’ and I got this gem:
Of course, this could just be a spoof, but that might make it even funnier.
dslak
Oh, and the ‘liberal’ article references itself as a source on liberals’ treason and hatred of America. Meta-brilliant!
Darrell
Yeah, what idiots. They’re really begging for ridicule, huh Tim?
Punchy
Google has a liberal bias? WTF?
fester
Darrell — note the limitation of the Dkosopedia — “political encylcopedia” and then spend a little bit of time browsing through it annd it focuses on issues that progressives/liberals are very interested in — Guberntorial elections, off year election cycles, 2008 House targets, Hurricane Katrina relief and the political spinoffs thereof, the entire Plame saga….
I have no problem of a group building an internal reference manual to form a common understanding of language that interests mainly a group.
dslak
DKosopedia uses ‘conservative’ as an epithet, although they do get kudos for sounding smarter than whoever wrote the ‘Liberal’ article on Conservapedia:
Darrell
No, not just issues liberals are interested in, but an “encyclopedia” written from the truthiness of a liberal point of view
dreggas
I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing for this site to exist. On the one hand it COULD be educational, but more likely it will re-inforce the idiocy and ignorance of the right to whatever extent still possible. Sadly the right is also ignorant with regards to the scientific fact that homogenity species brings about defects and this can be extrapolated to thought as well, that is if they are all on the same page al the time and bar outside thought they will eventually be mentally retarded..oh wait.
srv
Seems like there would be money in doing front-ends to google that have different biases. For example, news.google that would only refer to left or right journals, or is talking-point/keyword aware.
Just remember where you got it.
chopper
where does dkosopedia state its intent to supplant wikipedia et al as the ‘fair’ encyclopedia of choice? i mean, an internal reference for a liberal blog vs ‘tired of wikipedia? ours is better!’?
or do you have an actual point?
Bubblegum Tate
Yeah, I think it earned that distinction for turning down some wingnut ads. Something like that. The point is, Google searches give aid and comfort to the enemy. Can’t you use some sort of terrorist-free search engine?
As for conservapedia…what’s the over/under on how long it takes for the entry on “abortion” to just be the word MURDER!!!!! in bright red 50-point font?
srv
I think Flufferpedia(tm) would be a better name.
dslak
From what I’ve gleaned so far, Conservapedia’s “serious” stuff, like politics, is being written by libertarians, while the bits on math and science are being written by whack-jobs like Andy Schlafly.
Richard 23
This isn’t a “spoof,” unlike Darrell. Its domain was registered by Andy Schafly, son of Phyllis Shafley, a conservative also known for The Eagle Forum.
Even good conservatives are making fun of it.
It’s still growing, but it’s a wonderful idea. An American friendly, Christian friendly source of information without all the liberal bias, gossip, pro-evolution slant, profanity, British spelling, BCE/CE instead of BC/AD and other anti-Christian drivel at the root of Wikipedia.
Jake
You’re frickin’ kidding me. I wonder if the Eagle Forum is named in honour of the Eagle Club in Wash., D.C.
I can’t get the Consterpedia to open. Perhaps my computer has a liberal bias. Hey, it is called a P.C.
The Other Andrew
I predict that this new endeavor will involve some very nasty civil wars–competing edits, that sort of thing–particularly in relation to issues like immigration (Wall Street versus xenophobes), size/role of government (theocons versus libertarians), and science (theocons versus pretty much the entire planet).
While self-imposed segregation will further polarize and radicalize the far right, it’ll also make them less visible/important in the mainstream. By doing this, they’re basically giving up on competing in the marketplace of ideas and–gasp–surrendering territory to modernity.
Richard 23
Uh, you’re probably thinking of Wikiality, the truthiness encyclopedia.
Nobody pays any attention to dKosopedia, dKos and DU except for drooling morons who require an echo chamber to convince them that they’re right.
Walker
You should read the takedown on Conservapedia’s “conservative mathematics” posted on Good Math, Bad Math. I don’t know if the whole site is meant to be serious or a spoof, but word is the guy who wrote those articles believes in them.
Tsulagi
Tried to get to then seek wisdom from Conservapedia. Finally it came up, but it is extremely slow. Keeps returning errors too.
Guess that fits. It’s fully in the image of party of Bush conservatives. Extremely slow and incompetent.
Pb
An authoritative wingnut reference of biases, prejudices, misinformation, and disinformation–it’s a lazy spoofer’s dream come true!
Richard 23
Judge for yourself. Go to the site and punch the random page link a dozen or so times. Of course you’ll have to bookmark it for now and try later. The libtards are obviously hammering it with DoS attacks in an attempt to keep people from the truth.
Some of those pages will make your moonbat head explode. Oh no, the truth is coming! The truth is coming!
You should take a look at the change log. There’s been a lot of vandalism, silly and obscene edits and liberal slanted info inserted into it, and as a result, plenty of bannings and reverts. It is not open to new user registrations anymore (at least for now). Too bad. I wanted to help. I didn’t find out about this great project until last night and by then it was already too late. The Marxists had already arrived.
CaseyL
It’s already been taken over by spoofers, mostly sent over by PZ Meyers of Pharangula (Science blogs), so it’shard to tell which brain-dead entries are real.
Seriously, go over to PZ’s place. There’s some very funny discussion of the entries they’re finding (presumably ‘real’ ones) and the edits they’re making.
jenniebee
It went back to before the ads though. I recall a kerfluffle sometime in the last couple of years (forgive the vaguery) when somebody noticed that when they googled something – evolution, global warming, heliocentrism, I forget exactly what – that Google returned a couple of pages of links that supported the scientific view before any “balanced” links were returned. Ignorant of the way that internet search engines work, the idiots that be sat down with their donations databases, discovered that some Google employees make campaign donations and that some of those donations are to Democrats, put 0 and 0 together and got 110%. It raged a couple of days, was debunked, laughter ensued, but the seed was planted, and now whatchagonnado?
Looks like the poor Christocentrics’ site has been unable to withstand the herds of rampaging Kossaks: I can’t get the pages to even load.
cleek
This isn’t a “spoof”
no, it isn’t. but it’s been completely overrun by spoofers.
dreggas
I predict a lot of fun to be had this weekend…
ThymeZone
Jesus, not my yard man, Christ. They actually said that?
Well, the thing is, the stupid people need a place to go. I don’t
begrudge them that. And if they have places to go, at least you know
where they are and what they are doing.
Meanwhile, we, the non-stupid people, move on. Long term, smart wins
over stupid. The more stupid the stupid become, the more we beat
them.
It’s easy when they are intent on shooting themselves in the groin at
every turn.
Maybe I should go over there and help them write their
6000-year-old-earth material?
Me, I’m happy that Darrell now has a reference site he can use to
learn things.
Grrr
It was the Awful Link of the day, so it’s probably swarming with SA goons that made it in before they closed the gate.
Richard 23
Since terrorists and liberals are trying to suppress Conservapedia today, take a look at CP-friend Shelley the Republican‘s site. She has Conservapedia’s featured article on France up today:
Indeed. More at the link….
Face
It’s spoof. It just has to be. Look at these:
Even the best spoofers here couldn’t write this stuff. Pure comedy.
Grrr
Hey TZ, looks like your yard man has been moonlighting.
Heh. I bookmarked Pharyngula ages ago but kind of forget about it. Good stuff.
Krista
And I bet that DougJ is now bitter that he didn’t think of creating that site first. Although, just from what’s been posted here, he’s probably happy. The results will be the same (making conservatives look like complete idiots), and he didn’t have to so much as lift a finger.
ThymeZone
If anything, it’s too funny. If they would tone it down slightly, the morons would fall for it.
RSA
Shelley the Republican is spoofalicious. Check out the rant about Halloween. The second picture down gives the game away, to my mind, although they’re very good at keeping it on the level.
So, if I have a hard time telling real conservative sites from spoof sites, I wonder if there are good spoof liberal sites? Any suggestions? Shelley and Jon Swift are a couple of the best on the liberal side, I think, though I never visited Scrutator and don’t know much about it.
Bubblegum Tate
Well, at the least, I think we can all agree that they owe DougJ royalties.
Rome Again
The days of “one truth” are over apparently.
My head is hurting just thinking about the ramifications of this.
Andrew
I’d like to see some proof that he didn’t.
JImmy Mack
Truthiness _is_ the liberal point of view. They admit it. Stephen Colber is their Walter Cronkite. Sad but true…
bpower
Fuck me, this is funny. We’ll need to add a lot more tubes to this interweb to deal with the amount of snark that this is gonna provide.
bpower
JImmy Mack, are you serious, you know Colbert is a parody, right?
Sorry if your being ironic, between reading conservapedia and the goings on over at pharyngula I starting to get confused.
srv
How do we know DougJ != Andy Schafly?
JImmy Mack
Uh, yeah, I think that’s my point.
The Other Steve
Wait! I have the perfect addition for conservapedia. A friend of mine just recently sent me an old Ma and Pa Kettle bit where they prove that 25 divided by 5 is 14!
See:
14 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 14…
4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 = 20
1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5
20 + 5 = 25
The Other Steve
Is that spoof? The Republicans around here had Halloween banned from the schools.
bpower
JImmy Mack.
Im not sure Im getting it. Are you saying that liberals consider Colbert to be a great journalist, and that they dont get the fact that he’s a parody because they believe anything that feels good (ie “truthiness”) ?
Is this it?
Pb
The Other Steve,
That looks like perfectly sound Numerology, and therefore, surely ideal for inclusion on Conservapedia!
Tulkinghorn
You can’t spoof this. When the sincere parts are this stupid, how can you equal this, much less top it?
grumpy realist
Sometimes I wonder if all the junk churned out for the “home-schooling” crowd isn’t secretly financed by China.
Egads, we’re too stupid to be allowed to live. The Founding Fathers managed to put a strait-jacket around our religious nuts and anti-intellectuals, but now 240 years after the founding of the nation, they’ve managed to wriggle out and we’re seeing the consequences.
grumpy realist
Oh, and could I just ONCE have someone point out that the other great influence on Western Civilization was Roman Law?!
dreggas
Roman Law with a mix of greek and renaissance philosophy all of which was considered heretical. But of course no one ever would mention this.
Zifnab
I know a few Republican-Americans on my block who helped ban Harry Potter from the student library because it talked about magic. They also helped block funds for a handful of school Halloween parties and other events.
Thank god, or we never would have had the retarded cash to throw a Christmas.
Nick
The Other Steve:
That Shelly the Republican site is definitely a spoof site, but they take actual views and comments made by several people and merge it into a few personas on one site. I know that I’ve heard almost every point of view on that site come out of the mouthes of people who actually believe what they’re saying, which made it difficult for me to tell at first if it was a spoof or for real.
I stumbled on it via the initial linux rant. That was an article that basically is a combination of bits and pieces of misinformation that I’ve heard about Linux.
I’m with RSA, though. I’m curious if there’s any good Liberal spoof sites around. Then again, I live in one of the most conservative places in the country, so I’m not exposed much to the extreme liberal views around here so much.
RSA
Down here in NC we used to have Judgment Houses put together by the local fundamentalists, though I haven’t seen much advertising for them over the past few years. But even so, I don’t think any of them would put up a picture of a semi-nude model in a bathtub of blood, with her naughty bits covered by CGI pasties with a picture of Jesus on them. Love it.
Pb
That sounds like something Demi might write…
demimondian
Strong. Smart. Sincere.
Tulkinghorn
Roman Catholic Canon Law is based on Roman law, but don’t tell that to D’knownothing.
JImmy Mack
No, it’s worse — they know he’s a parody and _still_ consider him to be a great journalist. Do you get it?
dreggas
Yes it is sad when one of the best “journalists” on TV is a comedian considering the “real journalists” are just overpaid hacks.
Richard 23
Actually Shelley the Republican does that too. It’s to protect good Christian Republicans and their families from vile smut and materials of a pruient nature.
As far as it supposedly being a “spoof”…STR.com makes too much sense. I mean, what are they really trying to accomplish by sounding so genuine? They hit all the right notes and are correct on all the issues. So no, it’s no spoof. It can’t be. Lieberals just see the truth and don’t understand it so they label it as satire.
HyperIon
my fav…
the writing style does seem to resemble that of a victim of home-schooling. science education really takes a beating when one home schools. sad.
dreggas
I think there is a hidden genius to this site, it’s like the fly paper theory of fighting terrorism, but in this case it’s removing stupidity from the diaspora and giving it one place to congregate, unfortunately the technique to then kill teh stupid has not been invented as doable over the intertubes…yet.
Zombie Santa Claus
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
There goes 80-90% of the conservative commentariat, Tim! Who the Hell do you think is writing this stuff?
Zombie Santa Claus
80-90% of what’s left of the conservative commentariat, I should say.
Technically, Darrell’s not a spoof, he’s a creative writing project for John Cole’s students.
Richard 23
Ah, that would explain the multiple personalities thing. He always did seem a little…off?
Zombie Santa Claus
It also explains how he can afford to comment 23 hours a day. Who the fuck else has time for that? Even the spoofers have to sleep occasionally.
dslak
The Conservapedia can have its uses. For example, if you wished to confirm your suspicion that “Judicial Activism” really just refers to any court decision that conservatives don’t like, Conservapedia’s entry on Judicial Activism would confirm your suspicion with this description of the two kinds of judicial activism found in the U.S. court system:
The Constitution says something about the courts being obligated to uphold core conservative American values, so it’s not judicial activism if you say they should.
chopper
all i know is, when i want to know what all the liberals in the world think, first person i ask is a partisan right-winger. they’re sure to be right.
Darrell
Yeah? You won’t find me commenting at 5:34 am like so many of you loons who can’t sleep because of all those voices in your head.
Brian
My favorite, on Democrats:
The major tenets of the modern Democrat platform include cowering to terrorism, treasonous anti-Americanism, and establishment of an amoral, atheistic, Communist state. However, contempt for all the founding principles of America is not yet an official prerequisite for entry into the Democrat party.
CaseyL
I can’t wait for kids to start turning in school reports filled with cites from Conservapedia: “But it has to be true! I found it in an encyclopedia!”
The downside is that winger and religious nutcase schools (as well as winger and religious nutcase homeschoolers) will probably approve using the damn thing as a reference.
The upside is that nobody educated to think Conservapedia offers accurate information will be able to function in the outside world. We can help make this happen by adding sections on things like DIY electrical wiring, auto repair, and home remedy recipes guaranteed to win a Darwin Award for anyone who uses ’em as guides.
Zombie Santa Claus
Usually college kids have passed out drunk by that hour, I guess. The ones still awake are probably high on crank or what have you. This may explain why “Darrell” changed personality during the course of the day.
Andrew
The Clenis:
grumpy realist
Tulkinghorn–
Yah–heresy (and punishments) of the catholic church was swiped completely from Roman treason law. Innocent IV (if I get my popes straight) had been trained as a jurist.
Heresy wrecked havoc with property rights all over Europe because one could bring post-mortem accusations for up to 40 years, which, if upheld, would result in the confiscation of the accused’s property by the authorities. (Secular authorities tried to do this with post-mortem accusations of treason, for similar reason. Often got squashed by the jurists.)
Redleg
Most of the contributors to Conservapedia do write like homeschooled idiots. If they’re college bound, I hope none of them come to my college. I’ve had it up to my freaking neck with students who feel they’re too smart to come to class, take notes, read the text, yet still complain when they get a D on the exams.
dslak
Sounds like a bunch of liberals who think they don’t have to work hard in order to achieve.
Tulkinghorn
ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
If you have data or anecdotal information the kids on one side of a political spectrum work harder or better, let’s hear it. Stupid snippets from the culture war will be ridiculed, or worse, ignored.
dslak
What about facetious comments-slash-spoofs?
RSA
Further evidence of liberals’ essential lack of seriousness.
Redleg
dslak,
These are business majors, not liberal arts majors. I suspect that most of these business majors are to the right of center, you know, anti-labor, pro-big-business, anti-tax, pro-golden parachute for failed execs, anti-regulation, pro-protection for their own industry.