Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Vast Consensus Is Biased

I just saw this thing Jack Black did on The Daily Show about this website Conservapedia, this website that says Wikipedia is, as a whole, biased against Christians.

Now Wikipedia isn't perfect. If an article doesn't get a lot of traffic, errors and even blatant vandalism can go for days, sometimes weeks, before someone corrects them. That's not why these people are saying it's biased, though. They are saying that it's biased because of things like the fact that Wikipedia allows articles to use either the AD, BC dating system or the CE, BCE dating system.

That's right, they believe that failing to force people to use Christian dating notation is bias against Christianity.

Conservapedia claims not to be neutral where Wikipedia is not. Here are the first sentences from the Conservapedia and Wikipedia article for "Palestine." You tell me which one sounds more neutral:

Wikipedia:
Palestine (from Latin: Palaestina; Hebrew: ארץ־ישראל Eretz-Yisra'el, formerly also פלשתינה Palestina; Arabic: فلسطين Filasṭīn, Falasṭīn) is one of several names for the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River and various adjoining lands.

Conservapedia:
Palestine is the name given to the land of Israel by the Romans and others.