OF NEARLY universal interest to college students are websites that provide free, reliable information effortlessly. Wikipedia reigns supreme among these sites, with millions of entries on every imaginable subject in many different languages. In fact, Wikipedia claims to have more than 5,300,000 articles, over 1,600,000 of which are in English. Anyone with an internet connection can access these articles; by the same token, just about anyone with an internet connection can make changes to them. Theoretically, because everyone has access to this, a novice's errors or a person's bias will be corrected by someone else and reach a middle path. Wikipedia claims that "many articles start their lives as partisan, and it is after a long process of discussion, debate, and argument, that they gradually take on a neutral point of view reached through consensus."
This belief does not resound with all users, however, and offshoots of Wikipedia seek to create a similar website with a different spin on issues. One of these is Conservapedia, the avowed goal of which is to create a "conservative encyclopedia you can trust" and to counteract the "liberal bias" of the media. While the website states some legitimate grievances and good points; Conservapedia remains subject to the same problems that plague Wikipedia. Bias remains, Conservapedia just makes it obvious.
Conservapedia lines up well with the thinking of its preferred users. In its commandments for editing pages, it gives some that make sense and ought to be upheld, such as to cite all sources, avoid using personal opinions, and provide only true and reliable information, but also has some that cater to specific (and traditionally conservative) demographics. It asks that users refrain from using bad language and that all edits be family-friendly.
Most noticeably, however, the Conservapedia commandments ask that when referencing dates, users refrain from using the designations Before Common Era and Common Era (B.C.E. and C.E.) and instead use the traditional Judeo-Christian forms Before Christ and Anno Domini (B.C. and A.D.). While this makes perfect sense, as the switch from B.C. to B.C.E. is merely a petty attempt to de-Christianize a date and system of chronology inherently rooted in a Christian worldview, it also delineates the audience to which Conservapedia caters: conservative Christians.
The other audience to which Conservapedia caters consists of somewhat jingoistic Americans who prefer to Americanize words and are offended by the Anglicized versions. Is this petty and unnecessary? You bet it is. But Conservapedia sees Anglicized words as a form of bias, as they lean away from its American base.
Conservapedia presents a long list of grievances against Wikipedia as well, some major and legitimate, others of questionable importance. For example, the Conservapedia website claims that a significant portion of the Wikipedia editors display a liberal bias; it also argues that Wikipedia has demonstrated bias in the entry about Conservapedia. These grievances, however, come naturally with the style of encyclopedia both seek to create.
Both websites face a common problem. When you allow people to submit articles or changes to articles with a minimal procedure (or capability) for checking their veracity, you automatically open the door for personal opinion and the corresponding bias, as well as for factual inaccuracies. Both have some procedure for preventing the most blatant abuses -- Wikipedia has a team of editors and an appeals process; Conservapedia's is unclear, but there is some procedure -- but both involve the problem of a vested human interest. Because the editors for both are human beings, they will necessarily inject their opinions into a subject. Similarly, the relative anonymity provided by the internet and usernames allows those who wish to insert errors or inject bias into an article to do so more boldly than would be acceptable in a more reputable or more tightly controlled source.
Despite the allure of free, easily accessed information, the reader ought to be aware of the problems that come along with sources in the public domain and take them always with a grain of salt. Wikipedia articles are not universally reliable, nor are Conservapedia articles. The trick is deciding with which grain of salt to take them. Conservapedia makes this obvious. If you look for information on it, you will get a conservative spin. Whether or not one accepts articles as fact is a personal decision. The same applies to Wikipedia, but with a less obvious caveat, as one does not know from whence the article originates. Thus, despite real and imagined differences in the angle from which articles originate on the two sites, they are remarkably similar in the problems they face.
Robby Colby's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at rcolby@cavalierdaily.com
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