Andy Schlafly was appalled. He was teaching a history class to home-schooled teens and one student had just turned in an assignment that dated events as "BCE," before the common era -- rather than "BC," before Christ.
"Where did that come from?" he demanded.
Her answer: "Wikipedia."
At that, Schlafly knew he had to act. In his mind, the popular online encyclopedia -- written and edited by self-appointed experts worldwide -- was riddled with liberal bias. Dating events without referring to the New Testament was just one example. How about Wikipedia's entry on golfer Zach Johnson, winner of the 2007 Masters? Not a single word about how Johnson gave credit for his win to Jesus Christ.
Thus was born Conservapedia.com -- labeled "a conservative encyclopedia you can trust."
Schlafly, 46, started small, urging his students to post brief -- often one-sentence -- entries on ancient history. He went live with the site in November. In the last six months, it's grown explosively, offering what Schlafly describes as fair, scholarly articles. Many have a distinctly religious-right perspective.
Take the Pleistocene Epoch. Most scientists know it as the ice age and date it back at least 1.6 million years. But Conservapedia calls it "a theorized period of time" -- a theory contradicted, according to the entry, by "multiple lines of evidence" indicating that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, as described in the Book of Genesis.
"We have certain principles that we adhere to, and we are up-front about them," Schlafly writes in his mission statement. "Beyond that we welcome the facts."
Conservapedia defines environmentalists as "people who profess concern about the environment" and notes that some would want to impose legal limits on the use of toilet paper.
Femininity? The quality of being "childlike, gentle, pretty, willowy, submissive."
A hike in minimum wage is referred to as "a controversial manoeuvre that increases the incentive for young people to drop out of school."
And the state of the economy under President Bush? Much better than the "liberal media" would have you think: "For example, during his term Exxon Mobile has posted the largest profit of any company in a single year, and executive salaries have greatly increased as well."
With fewer than 12,000 entries and typos galore (the misspelling of Mobil above; the mayor of L.A. is referred to as "Anthony Varigoso"), Conservapedia isn't about to supplant Wikipedia -- which boasts 1.8 million articles in English alone.
