Conservapedia:Better than a wiki?

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[edit] Intro

Brought up on Andy's talk by Mtur and AManInBlack page prior to TK's deletion of it[1] there is the question of "could Conservapedia run on better software?"

Chances are, Andy is blinded by hubris and wants to eclipse wikipedia using their own software. The unfortunate aspect is that the Wikipedia model and the mediawiki software - while not forcing an open system of editing - strongly encourage it. It is possible to run it in something other than a ochlocracy (that is the correct word - not mobocracy) .

[edit] Tangent on goverment systems

<tangent> There are several words tossed about that are misused at Conservapedia.

[edit] mobocracy ochlocracy

As mentioned above, TK, Ed and Andy claim that Wikipedia is a mobocracy, or, to use more accurate terminology, an ochlocracy. They claim that within an ochlocracy, there is no formal rule at all, or rather the only rule is might makes right. Sheer force of numbers is the resulting answer. One would hope that Ed, in his previous incarnation as one of the admins and dispute resolution members of Wikipedia would realize that this is not the case.

[edit] Meritocracy

On the other hand, TK, Ed, and Andy claim that Conservapedia is a meritocracy. {insert pause here while author recollects himself from uncontrollable laughter} I personaly fail to do a better job than how Wikipedia starts off the article[2]:

Meritocracy is a system of government or other organization based on demonstrated ability (merit) and talent rather than by wealth (plutocracy), family connections (nepotism), class privilege, cronyism, popularity (as in democracy) or other historical determinants of social position and political power.

Can it be said any better that Conservapedia is not a meritocracy in any sense of the word?

  • Merit (What were the contributions of these editors who were appointed as part of a contest and kicking out people who are actually knowledgeable in the area? Doctors and recently Ed is working on a meteorologist[3] )
  • Family connections (RShafly has a sysop account?)
  • Positions given for agreement to philosophical background rather than quality work

And then, one would assume that in meritocracy, one would be editing about the area one has knowledge in and can actualy do contributions with some merit. A lawyer talking about relativity, quantum mechanics, and how this accounts for the age of the universe does not have much merit on these subjects.

[edit] Return from tangent - what are Conservapedia's goals?

See also: Conservapedia:Goals

The primary goal of Conservapedia is to give a filtered view of the world to its readers. There is a concept of page ownership (that Wikipedia rejects). There would be approved content - and content under development.

[edit] H2G2

Brought up by Mtur, H2G2 is a rather old site based on Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - HHGG, or H2G2. It is run by the BBC. There are actually two H2G2 sites - one is the approved content, and the other is the content under development. With a hierchary of administrative types, content is frozen, cleaned up, and moved to the published content site. There is a bit of loss to page ownership concept - but the publishing process of moving content would keep all of the vandalism out of what is shown to the world and would only

[edit] E2

Another old site (almost 10 years old now) mentioned by AManInBlack. This site features user controlled content and a very disorganized structure. To an extent, it is designed to be disoraganized - the creators wanted and anti-disambiguation (words missing? meaning?). Going to a page on tree[4] you get:

  • short graph theory definition
  • a bit of botany
  • Kanji
  • a local band
  • a list of links to things about the plant tree
  • a DOS program
  • a bit more botany
  • a definition from Webster's 1913 dictonary
  • A list of pages that people came to this page or went to from this page

While there still is user controlled content, if anything, it is a very unstructured world. It does have some code (the development cycle there is very slow) for the submit and publish approach to material, but this is to be thought of more as a collection of essays than an encyclopedia. As AManInBlack said, E2 has a different goal than Wikipedia.

Nonetheless, it is still interesting to see another long lived writing community and the structure it has built evolved to handle the type of material it has.

There are several spinoff sites to Everything2 that show other ways to take the code:

There are some other spinoffs that are more bloggish - individuals or groups of friends creating a blog. Several of these existed before the modern blogging explosion.

[edit] Conclusion

All of this is moot - Andy wants to run a wiki - a conservative YEC wiki. Anything else isn't acceptable. It has to be a wiki and it has to be 'better' than Wikipedia. But if he actually wants a site that will do what he wants it to without more work for the admins, he might want to look elsewhere.

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