I was a Conservapedia Administrator

Introduction

Note: If you are unfamiliar with "Wiki" encyclopaedias, you might like to read appendix A first.

Recording my experiences

When I thought about writing about my experiences on Con­serva­pedia, I really wasn't sure why I was doing it or who I was writing it for. Was I going to write it to bring about change? Was I going to write it to vent my anger at being banned (which had not happened, but I wondered if it would)? Was I writing it simply to vent my frustrations, and perhaps when I'd finished I would feel happier about Con­serva­pedia?

Was I writing it for Andy Schlafly or the other admin­istra­tors to read and under­stand where I was coming from? Was I writing it for my friends and relatives who might simply be interested in what I'd been involved with? Was I writing it just for my own satisfaction? Or for Con­serva­pedia critics who had wondered how I could involve myself with what some have described as a "hate site"? Of even, perhaps inflating my own importance, for consumption by the mass media writing about Con­serva­pedia?

I didn't know the answers to these questions, but decided that, whatever the reason and whatever the audience, it was something that would be worthwhile doing. And if I did get banned and wanted to make it public, I'd like to have it ready when that day came.

Problems with Wikipedia

I joined Wikipedia on 8^th July, 2004. My first edit was correcting a name in an article about the town in which I lived. This was followed by some talk-page comments about closed railway stations in Melbourne. Soon after, I made a couple of talk-page comments on the Religion article, then did nothing more for a month. My return saw me altering the wording of the article on Noah, making the wording more neutral. This also marked my foray into editing articles related to creation and the flood.

However, before long I found more about how Wikipedia works in practice. In theory, it has a "Neutral Point of View" (NPOV) policy. That is, no article is allowed to be written as though something in dispute is actually true or false. So to use Wikipedia's own example, "rather than asserting, "The Beatles were the greatest band," we can say: "Most people from Liverpool believe that the Beatles were the greatest band,"".

Of course, there is a limit to this. It's not reasonable to say that "most people believe that iron is a metal", and the reason is that the fact is not (or not seriously) in dispute. But therein lies the problem for creationists. Evolution is believed by significant majorities of most western cultures (only the United States is something of an exception to this), and by the vast majority of scientists. But "vast majority", in this case, still means that there are an estimated tens of thousands of scientists who reject evolution. Rejection of evolution is not something limited to a handful of crackpots or ignoramuses, but a significant number of scientists and others, even if the percentage is in single figures.

So how does Wikipedia treat the creation/evolution debate? Because the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia editors are opposed to the creationary view, and because Wikipedia policy requires giving due weight to all "significant" viewpoints, you often find that the creationary view is treated as "insignificant". This is not only in articles about evolution (where creation gets a one-paragraph mention and Intelligent Design is not mentioned at all) or about living things (where evolution is simply treated as true), but even in articles about creation and Intelligent Design (the latter is more of an article about why Intelligent Design is wrong than an article about Intelligent Design).

Trying to discuss these biases on the talk pages becomes an exercise in frustration, as you are immediately pounced on with various side-tracking questions and accusations. You find yourself refuting the same tired old anti-creationist urban myths over and over again, and of course because you are disputing the "consensus" view of the dominant editors, you must be there simply to make trouble. What often happens is that editors with opposing views get so frustrated that they either give up and leave or lash out in anger. In the latter case, the result is usually the frustrated editor being blocked by a sysop for being uncivil.

I managed to hold my temper and never received a block, but the difficulty in making progress resulted in me keeping away from the creation topics and concentrating on other, less controversial, areas of interest, such as railways.

By the way, lest anyone think that my frustration was due to me being unreasonable, apart from the vitriol that was sometimes directed my way, I also found a number of editors who disagreed with me complimenting me on my reasonableness.

Around October 2004, I believe, I joined Creation Wiki. However, various issues there which are not relevant to this discussion made me uncomfortable with the site, although I still pop in there occasionally and do the odd bit of updating.