RationalWiki

RationalWiki
RationalWiki logo
Screenshot
Screenshot of the RationalWiki Main Page as of February 10, 2015
Type of site
 Wiki
Available in English, Russian and more[1]
Owner RationalMedia Foundation[2]
Created by Volunteer contributors[3]
Website rationalwiki.org
Alexa rank Positive decrease 16,022; 4,952: United States (June 2018)[4]
Commercial No
Registration Optional
Launched May 22, 2007 (2007-05-22)[5]
Current status Active
Content license
 CC-BY-SA 3.0
Written in MediaWiki software

RationalWiki is a wiki whose stated aims are to critique and challenge pseudoscience and the anti-science movement, explore authoritarianism and fundamentalism and analyze how these subjects are handled in the media.[6] It was created in 2007 to counter Conservapedia after an incident in which contributors attempting to edit Conservapedia were banned. The website has since explicitly moved its focus away from Conservapedia.[7]

History

Origin

In April 2007, Peter Lipson, a doctor of internal medicine, attempted to edit Conservapedia's article on breast cancer to include evidence against Conservapedia's claim that abortion was linked to the disease. Conservapedia is an encyclopedia started by Andy Schlafly as an alternative to Wikipedia, which Schlafly perceived as suffering from liberal and atheist bias. He and Conservapedia administrators "questioned [Lipson's] credentials and shut down debate". After they were blocked, "Lipson and several other contributors quit trying to moderate the articles [on Conservapedia] and instead started their own website, RationalWiki".[8][9]

RationalMedia Foundation

In 2010, Trent Toulouse incorporated a nonprofit organization, the RationalWiki Foundation Inc., to manage the affairs and pay the operational expenses of the website.[2] In July 2013, the RationalWiki Foundation changed its name to the RationalMedia Foundation, stating that its aims extended beyond the RationalWiki site alone.[10]

Mission and content

RationalWiki's stated missions are:[11][12]

  1. Analyzing and refuting pseudoscience and the anti-science movement
  2. Documenting the full range of crank ideas
  3. Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism
  4. Analysis and criticism of how these subjects are handled in the mass media

RationalWiki differs in several ways from the philosophy of Wikipedia and some other informational wikis. It has a "snarky point of view" (SPOV) policy[13] as opposed to Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy. Following this mission, many RationalWiki articles mockingly describe beliefs that RationalWiki opposes, especially when covering topics like alternative medicine or fundamentalist Christian leaders.[9]

A significant fraction of activity on RationalWiki was critiquing and "monitor[ing] Conservapedia".[8] RationalWiki contributors, many of whom are former Conservapedia contributors, are often highly critical of Conservapedia. Lester Haines of The Register stated: "Its entry entitled 'Conservapedia:Delusions' promptly mocks the claims that 'Homosexuality is a mental disorder', 'Atheists are sociopaths', and 'During the 6 days of creation G-d placed the Earth inside a black hole to slow down time so the light from distant stars had time to reach us'".[9] According to an article published in the Los Angeles Times in 2007, RationalWiki members "by their own admission" vandalize Conservapedia.[8]

Reception

Andrea Ballatore of University of California, Santa Barbara described RationalWiki as a debunking website, finding it to be the most visible debunking website of conspiracy theories in terms of Google and Bing search results, slightly more visible than rense.com and less visible than YouTube or Wikipedia.[14] In Critical Thinking: Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, Johnathan Smith lists RationalWiki in an exercise on finding and identifying fallacies.[15]

In Intelligent Systems'2014, Alexander Shvets stated that RationalWiki is one of the few online resources that "provide some information about pseudoscientific theories" and notes that it attempts to "organize and categorize knowledge about pseudoscientific theories, personalities, and organizations".[16] Similarly, Keeler et al. stated that sites like RationalWiki can help to "sort out the complexities" that arise when "distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people".[11] Benjamin Brojakowski of Bowling Green State University described RationalWiki as "a Wikipedia-style website aimed at educating [people about] individuals with unorthodox views".[17] WMNF contributor JoEllen Schilke states that RationalWiki addresses "a lot of the scientific falsehoods used by pundits, writers, and your angry relatives" and is "often kind of snarky and rude".[18]

Tom Chivers of The Daily Telegraph cited and quoted RationalWiki for background on several Internet laws.[19] Snopes has repeatedly quoted RationalWiki for background on Sorcha Faal of the European Union Times.[20][21][22][23] RationalWiki was quoted by Magnus Ramage in Perspectives on Information about the "Lenski affair".[24] It was quoted by Thomas Leitch in Wikipedia U: Knowledge, Authority, and Liberal Education in the Digital Age on the history of Citizendium.[25] RationalWiki was cited by Reiss Rubinstein and Lois Weithorn in Responding to the Childhood Vaccination Crisis about the website Whale.to, saying that "Whale.to ... is sufficiently familiar to science advocates to be identified as a particularly noncredible source for citation and reliance", using RationalWiki as a source.[26] The Guardian also referenced RationalWiki's explanation of Gish gallops in an article on climate change denial.[27]

Several blogs and op-eds have responded harshly to specific RationalWiki articles that criticized their beliefs. Paul Austin Murphy, of American Thinker magazine, criticized RationalWiki for calling American Thinker a "wingnut publication".[28] George Selgin of the Cato Institute disagreed with RationalWiki's criticism of the stability of the gold standard.[29] Franklin Einspruch of The Federalist criticized RationalWiki for claiming that the "Cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory is a conspiracy theory.[30]

See also

References

  1. ↑ https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki:Languages
  2. 1 2 "About". RationalMedia Foundation. Retrieved January 26, 2015.
  3. ↑ "General disclaimer". RationalWiki. Retrieved January 16, 2015.
  4. ↑ "Rationalwiki.org Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved June 29, 2018.
  5. ↑ "Timeline". RationalWiki. Retrieved August 10, 2017.
  6. ↑ "RationalWiki - RationalWiki". rationalwiki.org. Retrieved September 11, 2017.
  7. ↑ "Template:Cpmothball". RationalWiki. June 4, 2017. Retrieved June 21, 2017.
  8. 1 2 3 Simon, Stephanie (June 22, 2007). "A conservative's answer to Wikipedia". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 2, 2007.
  9. 1 2 3 Haines, Lester (June 20, 2007). "Need hard facts? Try Conservapedia". The Register. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
  10. ↑ "Introducing the new RationalMedia Foundation". RationalMedia Foundation blog. Archived from the original on April 5, 2016. Retrieved August 22, 2017.
  11. 1 2 Keeler, Mary; Johnson, Josh; Majumdar, Arun. "Crowdsourced Knowledge: Peril and Promise for Complex Knowledge Systems" (PDF). p. 4. Retrieved January 17, 2015.
  12. ↑ "RationalWiki Main Page". RationalWiki. Retrieved May 15, 2017.
  13. ↑ "What is a RationalWiki article?". RationalWiki. Retrieved January 16, 2015.
  14. ↑ Ballatore, Andrea. "Google chemtrails: A methodology to analyze topic representation in search engine results". 20.7 (2015). First Monday. Retrieved March 15, 2016.
  15. ↑ Smith, Jonathan C. Critical Thinking: Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. John Wiley & Sons, 2017, pp 77. 9781119029489
  16. ↑ Shvets, Alexander (October 2, 2014). Filev, D.; Jabłkowski, J.; Kacprzyk, J.; et al., eds. Intelligent Systems'2014: Proceedings of the 7th IEEE International Conference Intelligent Systems IS’2014, September 24–26, 2014, Warsaw, Poland, Volume 2: Tools, Architectures, Systems, Applications. Series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, Vol. 323. Springer Publishing. A Method of Automatic Detection of Pseudoscientific Publications, page 533 et seq. ISBN 978-3-319-11310-4.
  17. ↑ Brojakowski, Benjamin (August 2017). "Digital Whiteness Imperialism: Redefining Caucasian Identity Post-Boston Bombing". Bowling Green State University (dissertation). Retrieved 3 October 2017.
  18. ↑ Schilke, JoEllen (July 28, 2017). "Fact checking websites to help get through the daily news". WMNF.
  19. ↑ Chivers, Tom (October 23, 2009). "Internet rules and laws: the top 10 from Godwin to Poe". The Telegraph. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
  20. ↑ "Russia Warns Obama: Monsanto". Snopes.com. May 29, 2013. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
  21. ↑ "Loose Change". Snopes.com. October 10, 2013. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
  22. ↑ "Rapid Fire". Snopes.com. October 15, 2013. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
  23. ↑ "Outboxing Helena". Snopes.com. January 27, 2014. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
  24. ↑ Ramage, Magnus; Chapman, David (2012). Perspectives on Information. Routledge. p. 90. ISBN 1-136-70763-8.
  25. ↑ Leitch, Thomas (2014). Wikipedia U: Knowledge, Authority, and Liberal Education in the Digital Age. JHU Press. p. 145. ISBN 1-4214-1550-X.
  26. ↑ Reiss, Dorit Rubinstein, and Lois A. Weithorn. "Responding to the Childhood Vaccination Crisis: Legal Frameworks and Tools in the Context of Parental Vaccine Refusal." (PDF) Buffalo Law Review 63 (2015).
  27. ↑ Nuccitelli, Dana (July 25, 2016). "These are the best arguments from the 3% of climate scientist 'skeptics.' Really". The Guardian. Retrieved October 6, 2017.
  28. ↑ Murphy, Paul (November 19, 2014). "American Thinker is a Wingnut Publication". Retrieved January 19, 2015.
  29. ↑ Selgin, George (June 4, 2015). "Ten Things Every Economist Should Know about the Gold Standard". Retrieved August 14, 2017.
  30. ↑ Einspruch, Franklin (September 6, 2016). "Cultural Marxists Are Actually Pomofascists". The Federalist. Retrieved August 14, 2017.
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