RationalWiki, the wiki-sphere’s response to pseudoscience and radicalized religion, has reinvented itself to cover the world, and the good and bad of the blogs, from a rationalist perspective. Originally the community at RationalWiki developed as a home for intelligent Conservapedia expatriates, enraged and ready to speak out against the sidelining of science in the broader culture, and I’m thrilled to see the site focus that energy on tackling the larger problems of pseudoscience and irrationality outside of the context of Conservapedia.
But you can’t go wrong with a re-invention of the basics, either. RationalWiki’s original claim to fame (its Conservapedia coverage) faces integration into the site’s broader context in the form of a blog-style, week-by-week focus piece on the worst of the fundamentalist side of the internets – including, occasionally, Conservapedia. First on the hit parade: Conservapedia’s “article” on “the theory of evolution,” less an article than a glorified cut-and-paste job of decontextualized (“mined”) quotes strung together with permutations of the phrase “in regards to,” and Google-bombed to the top of the Google rankings.
The only redeeming quality of a site like Conservapedia, as RationalWiki has proven, is that such compilations of idiocy occasionally have the effect of getting a group of hitherto unaffiliated people together, and giving them a good cause to fight for. A bad act may inspire such a response as to dwarf the initial evil. Cheers to RationalWiki for giving voice to the minds of a dedicated group of rationalists. May their influence continue to outstrip that of the Conservapedias of the world.
I remember back when you were writing articles for Conservapedia describing why things like habeas corpus was a good thing. How long were you able to do same before they caught on?
Posted by Anzezzle | July 29, 2008, 10:15 pmOh it did not last long. I registered in late February of 2007, and got myself banned when they killed all liberals in May. Alas!
Posted by Ames | July 29, 2008, 10:23 pmThankfully, I originally registered after Night of the Blunt Knives, so I lasted a bit before some jerk decided to ban me for not sufficiently sucking up to Andy.
Posted by autofire372 | July 29, 2008, 10:30 pmHey Ames, the Article of the Weak won’t only be about conservapedia stuff. Also, it might not exactly be weekly ;) But we appreciate the post!
Are we really supposed to start calling it RW 3.0 now? Neat.
Posted by Human | July 29, 2008, 10:51 pmHERK! Thanks Human :-). Consider it fixed!
Posted by Ames | July 29, 2008, 11:05 pmI’ve really been enjoying your blog. So much so that I want to syndicate it on BustaBlog, a new blog network. You will earn money from your posts by doing nothing more than you’re are doing now.
For more information: Visit Bustablog.com/Syndication
Posted by bustablog | July 30, 2008, 11:29 pmI’ve just been working at a school where wikipedia is the first place the kids go to reseacrh for their projects. The teachers don’t seem to discourage this or even recognise the utter dodgyness of some of the entries. With schools putting greater emphasis on projects over traditional testing wiki might actually be defining the learning expereicne of a whole generation!
Posted by hugahoodie | July 31, 2008, 7:41 amRationalwiki is my coffee in the morning. Can just get up, a few clicks, and you’re cheered up and laughing at how mentally deranged some folks can be without being classified as mentally handicapped at CP.
Posted by Barley | October 6, 2008, 12:54 pmBut rationalwiki is heavily biased towards rationality.
Posted by Igor | October 6, 2008, 1:32 pm