Posted on 07/01/2007 8:46:16 AM PDT by Freedom'sWorthIt
"Andy Schlafly was appalled. He was teaching a history class to home-schooled teens and one student had just turned in an assignment that dated events as "BCE," before the common era - rather than "B.C." or before Christ.
"Where did that come from?" he demanded.
Her answer was "Wikipedia."
Schlafly knew he had to act. In his mind, the popular online encyclopedia - written and edited by self-appointed experts worldwide - was riddled with liberal bias.......
(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...
Somebody needs to get to work on this site:
“However, under the more likely scenario where all of the ballots in Florida were counted, Al Gore actually won Florida, and thus should have ascended to the presidency. The United States Supreme Court prevented all votes from being recounted, thus insuring Bush’s victory in Florida.”
http://www.conservapedia.com/United_States_presidential_election%2C_2000
Yes someone does need to get to work on this site. That would be an entry to alert Mr. Schlafly about I would think....
Good for Mr. Schlafly. About time.
That site is an embarrasment. Look at the entry on President Bush. It reads like a stub written by a 14 year old. Wiki is still unsurpassed in easy access to fleeting constantly changing information. They should revise the articles there if they don’t like them.
Any parent or teacher who allows their child to even type in Wikipedia should have their head examined.
Wikipedia is no better and no worse than any encyclopedia except that its fallacies are of a lower quality.
"Hillary Clinton may suffer from a psychological condition that would raise questions about her fitness for office. [10] A recent book entitled The Extreme Makeover of Hillary Rodham Clinton examines the Senator's instability, incoherent speeches as both student and First Lady, casual disregard for the law, and ever-changing opinion on the Iraq war. [11] These character flaws, analyst Bay Buchanan writes, make Hillary overly dependent on gurus and outside experts, with no internal compass to guide her, displaying all the classic symptoms of “clinical narcissism.” The American Psychiatric Association describes this condition to include feelings of superiority, self-importance and “fantasies of unlimited success, fame or power.” The author further states, “We are not talking about self-infatuation, we are talking about a clinical condition that could make her dangerously ill-suited to become President and Commander in Chief.”
So where else could you quickly get information on which days the Beatles recorded ‘Penny Lane’ or a list of those in line to the British throne going out into the 100s?
We’ve been down this road before. A similar thread was posted about this a few months back.
Most of the people on that thread said that the name “Conservapedia” is a bad name since it’s admitting (conservative) bias outright.
If Wikipedia had called itself “Liberalapedia” than making a “Conservapedia” would have made sense.
But since Wikipedia (the name itself) doesn’t imply any sort of upfront bias, calling the alternative “Conservapedia” just sounds arrogant and (obviously) slanted.
The way to get around sounding arrogant and slanted would be to choose a name like factapedia - which means your encyclopedia is based on facts alone - not conservative interpretation of facts.
Because, let’s be totally honest, we don’t want liberal interpretation of facts either!
Yet I don’t think BCE is or was commonly used in the Encyclopedias I studied re: historical events....though that was decades ago. Was it during your studies?
Sorry, I missed that thread. Well, I agree. Something was needed. Surely an alternative to Wiki was needed. At least Mr. Schlafly has made an effort to correct something he sees as flawed. Others could do the same - even better. I applaud him for at least starting the ball rolling.
"Where did that come from?" he demanded.
Her answer was "Wikipedia."
Is Mr. Schlafy asserting that the Wikipedia is somehow the initiator of the use of "B.C.E." instead of "B.C."? I had seen the use of B.C.E. growing long before the Wikipedia came into existence.
This young lady could have as easily answered many other just-as-likely sources --- including perhaps conservapedia.org (an example is on this "talk" page http://www.conservapedia.org/Talk:Genesis (at least for the moment;-)), until someone notices that it is not acceptable usage in its articles.
It’s a good website, it just needs tons of help. I signed up about a week and a half ago and had to create the article for Mitch McConnell and the WWE. Also, I substantially increased the size of the article on Austin, TX. Not to say that they all don’t still need serious help. If any FReeper would like to, sign up and have fun, though I believe editing is blocked on Sundays, though don’t quote me on that.
BCE is new to me, but then I just began to read the real stuff only a couple years ago. I don’t like encyclopedias anymore because they are ‘about’ something or somebody, and I find that when I read what somebody actually wrote it doesn’t much resemble what is said about him. Real historians don’t seem to be concerned with dates of stuff but what the stuff actually was.
Fixed.
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