The meaning of information

June 29th, 2007 | by Sean |

With Wednesday night’s revelation on The Daily Show about conservative wiki Conservapedia, I got to thinking. My first thoughts were “inane”, “stupid”, and something along the lines of “catastrophically without factual merit.” The more I thought about it though, the more I started thinking that Conservapedia has a point, but doesn’t realize it.

You see, Conservapedia is a “conservative encyclopedia” that seeks to provide an alternative viewpoint to the “liberal bias … on Google and Wikipedia” [CP]. This is particularly interesting, given that Wikipedia is one of the most user-driven content sites available on the internet. Given the egalitarian nature of Wikipedia, where virtually anyone can edit virtually anything, one would be very surprised to find the content skewed in any political direction for any protracted length of time. Hot topics and topics with political skew are pushed back to neutral by the self-correcting nature of the system. With this in mind, one would find it hard to believe that Wikipedia is “6 times more liberal than the American public.” [CP]

Now, this gets us back to this thinking I had earlier. Wikipedia does not seek to be a source of original thought [WIKI]. It seeks to contain a “neutral point of view” (NPOV) [WIKI] for pre-existing data, where all sides of an argument are given a neutral voice and attribution. With this ideal and Conservapedia’s conservative-bent in mind, I would like to describe the major difference between Wikipedia and Conservapedia in this way: they operate at different layers of knowledge. Wikipedia seeks to describe a scene whereas Conservapedia seeks to interpret a scene in its broader context.

Take these quotes from both sites and see if you can identify which is which:

In a show down with Congressional Democrats after taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate in the 2006 Congressional Midterm elections, Democrats retreated on their pledge to end the Iraq War early and bring the troops home.

On January 10, 2007 Bush addressed the U.S. about the situation in Iraq. In his speech, he announced the surge of 21,500 more troops for Iraq, as well as a job program for Iraqis, more reconstruction proposals, and 1.2 billion dollars for these programs.[126] On May 1, 2007, Bush used his veto for only the second time in his presidency, rejecting a congressional bill setting a deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

(both quotes from their respective ‘George W. Bush’ pages)

One of the fundamental attributes of an encyclopedia is to describe the situation and allow the reader to draw their own conclusion. One example here attempts to set a current event in the context of current events, without regard for the immeasurable amount of bias that introduces. I would like to say, in the general case, that Wikipedia would describe a tree in terms of the size of the trunk, the color of the leaves, and the climate in which it grows; while Conservapedia would describe the meaning of the tree, how beautiful it is, and how the color green is linked with emotive jealousy. Wikipedia seeks to describe the scene, Conservapedia to interpret it.

So, on second thought, Conservapedia isn’t “stupid.” It’s not a repository of facts, it’s a repository of opinions. At best, it’s a topical commentary on conservative issues. At worst, it’s a propaganda device posing as fact. It’s certainly not a traditional encyclopedia.

For me, I think Wikipedia will continue to be my first stop for knowledge.

[CP] Conservapedia. http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia
[WIKI] Wikipedia NPOV. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view

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