Friday, June 22, 2007

Reality has a well-known liberal bias

A conservative's answer to Wikipedia - Los Angeles Times

The article cited above should give you a taste of exactly how deluded and dangerous some conservatives are. It describes a new conservative website - Conservapedia - which bills itself as an "encyclopedia you can trust" contra the slanted, liberal infected Wikipedia.

Don't get me wrong. Wikipedia has its problems. But because of how the site is built "bias" shouldn't be one of them. After all, any reader can edit and update most any page. See a "fact" you don't like? Change it. Rewrite the page. Add new information. And if your corrections are valid and good they will be accepted. The whole point of Wikipedia is to start a discussion, based on the noble and liberal idea that vigorous and robust conversation between people of different backgrounds and persuasions will produce the truth - or whatever semblance of it finite humans can achieve.

This isn't how it works at Conservapedia, where irony is slowly slitting its wrists. According to the LAT, readers who attempt to introduce pesky facts and inconvenient truths to Conservapedia have had their accounts canceled. Why isn't the conservative encyclopedia interested in discussion? Why don't they trust the truth to prevail in the marketplace of ideas?

Coservapedia's Orwellian mission statement provides a clue: "We have certain principles that we adhere to, and we are up-front about them. Beyond that we welcome the facts."

Adhering to principles is fine, I suppose, but when you put principles ahead of facts you turn your back on the truth. By shutting off debate and refusing to examine received wisdom (both practices common at conservative websites like Cross Currents) Conservapedia demonstrates cowardice and gives bad information an undeserved imprimatur.

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