Conservapedia:Community Portal

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This is the place to discuss issues of interest to the Conservapedia community.

Community Portal/Archives

This page contains some material that has been moved from Talk:Main_Page. We are attempting to get general discussion of issues relating to Conservapedia's content and policies on this page, leaving the main talk page for its original purpose of discussing the content of the Main Page.



On proper grammar, or, did you know that most of the population of Texas is homosexual?

I have chided Cons repeatedly on proper punctuation, particularly regarding subordinate clauses and compound sentences. For a sample, see User_talk:SamHB#Re:_Aburke.

Well, it turns out that the same errors can show up in unexpected places, like the Texas Republican party’s official platform. It has:

“ Homosexuality is a chosen behavior that is contrary to the fundamental unchanging truths that has been ordained by God in the Bible, recognized by our nations founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. ”

See this.

Watch those commas!!!! SamHB (talk) 11:57, 20 May 2016 (EDT)

Wow. And shouldn't it be "have been ordained" rather than "has been ordained"? RobS Pat Nixon for President 13:12, 20 May 2016 (EDT)

States and Governors

I mentioned this earlier, but nothing happened - here are the U.S. states with red-linked governors:

state governor ann
Alaska Bill Walker
Arizona Doug Ducey
Arkansas Asa Hutchinson
Hawaii David Ige
Illinois Bruce Rauner
Maryland Larry Hogan Thank you, User:DavidB4!
Montana Steve Bullock
Nebraska Pete Ricketts
New Hampshire Maggie Hassan
North Carolina Pat McCrory
Pennsylvania Tom Wolf
Rhode Island Gina Raimondo
Washington Jay Inslee

It seems that Doug Ducey even isn't any longer governor of Arizona! The overall look of the articles on the smaller states is quite abysmal - and often outdated. As I am not American, I do not feel up to editing these articles in detail, but I have to ask: If they cannot use Conservapedia even to check who the governor of an U.S. state is, what will high-school pupils think of it? They have to rely on Wikipedia to get up-dated information!

It would be nice to have articles on the governors, too, just to check their political priorities. --AugustO (talk) 05:11, 24 May 2016 (EDT)

I know a fair amount about political concepts, people I can have a hand in electing, and other well-known political figures. However, I know little about--if you'll pardon the expression--lesser politicians, who have little significance to me. Therefore, I'm sorry to say that I know almost nothing about these governors. However, I've done a little on a couple of them. I may do more, but all I can do is research then write based on what I find. It could be hopelessly inaccurate, but I have no way of knowing. For this reason, I'm trying not to add too much detail, since I don't want to make fa lse statements. If anyone else knows anything about them, please add to or revise what I've written! --David B (talk) 11:01, 24 May 2016 (EDT)
Well spoken, David. Speak of what you know; not of what some website wants you to believe. AlanE (talk) 02:57, 26 May 2016 (EDT)

One column footnoting vs. two column footnoting and mobile devices

For this article Operation Compass I added footnoting code at the bottom of the article for the new editor.

If you look at the article, you will see that the footnoting is one column footnoting and not two column footnoting.

I think I recall reading that one column footnoting is better for mobile device readers, but I am not sure. Do you know if this is the case or not?

Also, if you look at my edit which is HERE, you will see that my column width is colwidth=30em . I think this might be better for mobile devices as well, but I am not sure.

If I am right about these two matters, I think Conservapedia's manual of style should be updated. Also, we might want to clean up our most high traffic articles so one column format is used.

Does anyone know about these matters? I ask because a lot of people are using mobile devices now. Conservative (talk) 03:11, 5 June 2016 (EDT)

I don't know, but I have a testing platform I might be able to use tomorrow, if no one else knows either. It would have sense that single columns would be better, but the Wiki software comes with a mobile mode, so this might counteract columns. I'll try to get back to you on this. --David B (talk) 23:26, 5 June 2016 (EDT)
I'll do some real-world testing tomorrow, but if you click the "Mobile View" link in CP's footer (here's the direct link), you can see that columns are removed completely. Therefore, it seems that it shouldn't matter what we do for columns. --David B (talk) 00:38, 6 June 2016 (EDT)
A big problem with 2 column footnotes is that if there are a small number of footnotes, it will break them up with only one or two words in the second column. It does not have code to put the column break between two different footnotes. Thank you DavidB for cleaning this up. JDano (talk) 04:39, 6 June 2016 (EDT)
I'm not very good at designing templates for Wikis, but I wonder if someone could fix that. Anyway, I did a little testing and all the mobile platforms I tried did load the wiki's mobile view, with the single column of references. I even tried the Atheism article, with its three columns and had the same result, even if it was painfully slow due to the size of the page. It looks like we can do columns for computers only without worrying about mobile viewing. If you have anything else you want me to check, though, let me know! --David B (talk) 08:39, 6 June 2016 (EDT)

OK. Thanks. Conservative (talk) 10:32, 6 June 2016 (EDT)

Is Trump the new Zachary Taylor?

That's what this article argues: "How an outsider president killed a party." Taylor, elected president in 1848, was the ultimate outsider candidate, even more so than Trump. He had no political experience whatsoever, and he proudly boasted that he had never even voted. When he was nominated by the Whig Party, he was known only as the commander who defeated the Mexicans at Buena Vista. But I can't agree with the article's headline. Taylor was not the guy responsible for the downfall of the Whigs. That would be Millard Fillmore, Taylor's vice president. If Taylor was the non-ideological celebrity candidate of 1848, Fillmore was a true believer, a Whig version of Ted Cruz. Whig ideology called for the president to defer to Congress. Taylor died in office after a year. When Fillmore succeed, the long-frustrated "ultra Whigs" finally got their day in the sun. It was a disaster. Although personally opposed to slavery, Fillmore deferred to Congress as a good Whig. This meant strictly enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. It was a combination of views made him hugely unpopular, both in the North and in the South. The party collapsed in 1852. PeterKa (talk) 02:50, 10 June 2016 (EDT)

They're at it again

Is there anyone around who can block these people? There still creating accounts. Maybe we should add "1.888.811.4532" to the spam filter. SamHB (talk) 22:22, 11 September 2016 (EDT)

Blocked--finally. You're right, they keep using text from the same crawls of Amazon and Quickbooks. It should be easy to add temporary entries to the spam filter. --David B (TALK) 23:14, 11 September 2016 (EDT)
They're still at it. --1990'sguy (talk) 10:48, 13 September 2016 (EDT)

Is the server clock messed up?

The clock seems to be a few hours fast. According to what it says, I'm going to try to repair the E=mc^2 article at about 04:30. It is now 00:46 EDT. Or have you switched to UTC? I thought CP was on EST/EDT. SamHB (talk) 00:47, 1 October 2016 (EDT)

Never mind. It's back on EDT now. SamHB (talk) 00:59, 1 October 2016 (EDT)

Fair use images

What is our policy on fair use of copyrighted or trademark-protected images? Please take a look at: Pajamas Media logo.gif. Thanks, JDano (talk) 06:29, 9 November 2016 (EST)

I am not aware of a specific, written code to follow regarding this on CP. In general, I think most people here try to avoid copyrighted images. However, some use them as WP does (any image, anytime, anywhere can be uses under Fair Use, it seems is their policy), and no one here seems to object. Personal, I try to avoid copyrights except when the copyright is help by an organization friendly to CP. Answers In Genesis I have no problem with, because it is my assumption that I probably have the legal right, but in any case I expect they appreciate friendly publicity. I could always be wrong, though...
Trademark laws are a little less restrictive, and since we are not selling a product under their trademark, it is my understanding that it is usually acceptable to use these images. However, if they are also copyrighted, I usually will not. Even in court, Fair Use is a pain, because it is ambiguous, but I'd advise that you err on the side of caution. I could be mistaken, but it seems to me that for the most part, each person does what they think is right. (Perhaps like "...every man did that which was right in his own eyes." -Judges 21:25?)
I'll stop rambling in just a moment, but a pseudo-legal definition I've heard is "Spontaneous usage of a portion of a work for a purpose which generates no profit for the user, nor takes profit from the owner." Other definitions I've heard almost always also include some element of spontaneity, such as a teacher sees an article online, prints off a page or two of it, and hands it out to the class for study in class. I don't know where to draw the line, though. As you probably know better than I, WP seems to assume that anything is fine to use, since it is for education purposes and does not directly generate revenue for them (though nice articles tend to lead to more donations). It may be alright to use this policy since they get away with it, but I personally prefer not to risk it for the most part. Perhaps an admin here knows more on the topic. I know I've spoken to Jpatt about copyright issues before, so you could always try asking him directly, if you don't get a satisfactory answer here. --David B (TALK) 13:31, 19 November 2016 (EST)
This is the guidelines for images here:[1] Karajou (talk) 13:45, 19 November 2016 (EST)

Hillary's Downfall

The original (and still hysterically funny) version is here. This version is updated for 2016. PeterKa (talk) 00:33, 18 November 2016 (EST)

Browser search engine: Conservapedia

It seems that most browsers have Wikipedia listed as one of the available search engines. It occurs to me that some might find the same useful for CP. What do you all think? I've stared a page to show what I'm thinking. Can I get some input?
One important factor is that I don't think this can be easily set up for Internet Explorer. Also, Firefox is being a problem, but I may be able to assemble an XML file that works. Is something like this worth publishing? (see: User:DavidB4/search conservapedia) --David B (TALK) 01:36, 23 November 2016 (EST)

Math conundrum

This meme started in Japan and is confounding people across the Internet:

x=9-3÷⅓+1 PeterKa (talk) 04:45, 27 November 2016 (EST)
Are you suggesting that if a high school student read CP, he could not find what he needs to answer this correctly? JDano (talk) 03:10, 29 December 2016 (EST)

Was Hitler a Catholic?

The article Liberal myths says "They claim Hitler was a Catholic." The article Christian In Name Only says "Despite being raised Roman Catholic and claiming that Jesus was his inspiration, Hitler was only using Christianity to gain favor with the German people. His true beliefs were based off of his social darwinistic views." It also includes "The Catholic Church" as all being XINO. What are we trying to communicate here? That liberals are wrong in claiming that Hitler was a Catholic in name only, or that because Hitler was raised a Catholic, even if Hitler had remained a faithful practitioner of Catholicism, he would still be just a XINO? Or that liberals claim that Hitler was true to the teaching and spirit of the Catholic Church in his every thought and deed? Or is it a liberal myth that the complexity of Christianity can be reduced to a short list of XINOs? Please help! JDano (talk) 03:10, 29 December 2016 (EST)

My beliefs may differ from CPs, but as I understand it, Hitler claimed to be a catholic to win favor. He was not (he was actually very involved in the occult) but even if he had been, it would have been questionable whether he was a Christian or not. His actions proved he was not a Christian or a catholic, however, so I suppose you could say he was two-fold Christian in name only. --David B (TALK) 09:32, 29 December 2016 (EST)
Many secular liberals like to claim that Hitler was a Christian or a Roman Catholic in order to blame Christianity for the Holocaust, as well as every other evil in the world. That's all it is. Hitler clearly opposed Christianity,[2][3] believed in evolution, [4] and tried to modify Protestantism in Germany into a XINO organization that adhered to Nazi beliefs.[5] (I also read somewhere that Hitler wished that Islam were the dominant religion in Europe because it was "stronger" and he thus could use it better). I think what the article is saying is that Hitler, like the R.C.C., claimed to be Christian, but in reality had beliefs far from biblical Christianity. His denomination does not appear to really matter. --1990'sguy (talk) 12:15, 29 December 2016 (EST)
Historians have generally viewed the Pope and the Roman Catholic hierarchy as being complicit in spreading anti-Semitism and being supportive of the Holocaust. However, the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church have changed a lot since 1939, particularly for blaming the Jews for Christ's death. I believe that it is probably a mistake to list the entire Roman Catholic Church as XINO, and the terse "They claim Hitler was a Catholic." is too condensed to help the reader. There are many ways to criticize liberals, and this one is probably so weak that most people would not list it. If the Roman Catholic Church is XINO, what about the Mormons? JDano (talk) 13:00, 29 December 2016 (EST)
I (and probably the person who added the R.C.C.) believe the R.C.C. is XINO because of theological reasons rather than promoting politically left-wing ideology (even though I could name some R.C. clergy who would be better characterized as leftist activists). On issues such as the way to salvation (the most important one), the R.C.C. follows doctrine that the Bible not only does not support, but also speaks against. Same with the Mormons. That is why the R.C.C. is listed here.
Also, because so many Roman Catholics edit CP, I should make myself clear that I have nothing against Catholics or Mormons, and I think many of them are great people. I say what I say not to bash them but to point out that many of their doctrines are false and unbiblical. --1990'sguy (talk) 13:16, 29 December 2016 (EST)
I also enjoy working with Catholics and Mormons. I find religion to be very deep and textured. At this point in my life, when I look back at all of the decisions and judgments that I have made, I no longer can tell where religion ends and my personal ethics takes over -- everything was baked together. I think that wikis or general encyclopedias are not suited for religious teaching or debate. So, I cringe when I read the stuff on Liberal myths and Christian In Name Only. It is like trying to publish a book called "Religion for Dummies." JDano (talk) 14:00, 29 December 2016 (EST)
Yes, it can be a problem when people with very different theological beliefs (despite the same political and cultural views) edit articles like that. I do think, however, that both Roman Catholics and Protestants have no problem with the material on "Liberal myths." I could be wrong, but the XINO article seems to have been quite stable over the years, which is quite remarkable, considering the disagreements of our editors. --1990'sguy (talk) 15:37, 29 December 2016 (EST)
Hitler was from Austria. At that time, everyone in Austria was Catholic. So he was Catholic in the sense that he didn't publicaly break with the faith. Hitler's Table Talk records what he said in private dinner conversations. He's real views was Nietzschean and social Darwinist, according to the book. He thought Christianity is for weaklings, and so forth. PeterKa (talk) 22:31, 29 December 2016 (EST)
New book says Hitler was a pantheist. That puts him in bed witbh Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, and Steven Hawking. Which makes sense. RobS#NeverHillary 01:23, 30 December 2016 (EST)

Conservatism sells: The growth of followers of conservatives on Twitter

See Top conservatives on Twitter for current number of followers of top Twitter users considered to be conservative. Of those Twitter posters whose accounts on that page are still in existence, none lost in their total number of followers over the whole year of 2016.

Promoters of conservatism with large gains of followers on Twitter, 2016 (top 20 each category)
Twitter poster Increase
in followers
2016 		Percent
increase
in followers
Pres.-Elect Donald J. Trump +13,053,000 +237%
Dr. Ben Carson +1,475,000 +136%
Michelle Malkin +943,000 +105%
Sean Hannity +697,000 +56%
Laura Ingraham +550,000 +89%
Ann Coulter +463,000 +63%
Judge Jeanine Pirro +292,000 +222%
Franklin Graham +277,000 +59%
Sarah Palin +226,000 +20%
Tucker Carlson +224,000 +89%
Steven Crowder +180,000 +122%
Dinesh D'Souza +166,000 +69%
Mark Levin +157,000 +30%
James O'Keefe +147,000 +198%
Katie Pavlich +145,000 +70%
Allen West +137,000 +29%
Dr. Charles Krauthammer +121,000 +20%
Monica Crowley +114,000 +42%
Linda Suhler, Ph. D. +90,000 +48%
Gov. Greg Abbott +65,000 +40%
John Nolte +46,000 +74%
Dennis Prager +28,000 +50%
Hugh Hewitt +42,000 +47%
Nikki Haley +57,000 +47%
Sen. Tim Scott +51,000 +45%

VargasMilan (talk) 01:15, 9 January 2017 (EST)

A better example of conservatism actually selling is Milo's book deal with Simon & Schuster.[6] Historically, the only conservatives the "big five" book publishers dealt with were those with bankable personalities, i.e. people who had a built-in audiences due to regular appearances on Fox News or whatever. Only Regnery would publish books by lesser-known conservatives. Liberals think Al Franken is a great comedian because he wrote Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. Why can't they see the humor in “Science Proves It: Fat-Shaming Works”? PeterKa (talk) 23:09, 4 January 2017 (EST)

Alexa rank

User:Conservative was "crowing" about how Conservapedia in April of last year had reached 100,000 on the Alexa world rank. As of today [7], it's reached a global ranking of 55,877.

Is this a new record? Does the increase reflect only a seasonal factor or impressive growth? Do you suppose people around the world want to know more about conservatism now that conservatives have outvoted the opposition to help elect their preference to be the next President? VargasMilan (talk) 03:18, 9 January 2017 (EST)

We're sorely lacking in new content. All that new traffic to read many articles which are outdated and have not been maintained. I don't know... RobS#NeverHillary 07:42, 9 January 2017 (EST)
The graph makes it look like a record. As a site grows, the number does usually drop, so this seems to be a good sign. RobS has a point, though--we have a lot of outdated content, so at the very least we need to spiff it up so we don't loose traffic.
On a side note, I am suspicious of the 7.5% of traffic from China. Firstly, we don't have any significant Chinese content, secondly the "great firewall of china" probably blocks citizens form accessing CP, and thirdly China is notorious for their cyber attacks as of late. Oh well... --David B (TALK) 09:47, 9 January 2017 (EST)
I should note that we are still growing internationally, but we are starting to shrink in the U.S. (after a long period of growth and reaching what likely was a record high, of course). In mid-December, we were at 12,535 in the U.S., but now we are at 16,553. --1990'sguy (talk) 10:37, 9 January 2017 (EST)
Forty percent of our traffic is from search engines. Nine percent of the search engine traffic goes to the Poe's law article. PeterKa (talk) 12:50, 9 January 2017 (EST)
@DavidB, so what do you think? Putin is routing traffic through Chinese servers to influence French and German elections? RobS#NeverHillary 10:34, 10 January 2017 (EST)
@RobS Don't say that too loud, or the MSM will start screaming it! It sounds just like something they would say. I assume your comment was in jest but text doesn't carry inflection, so just to be clear, no I don't think that! I'm not sure what to think about that traffic--it seems odd, and I'm not sure how to explain it. It could be genuine, but I'd sooner suspect something synthetic...Chinese hacking???? --David B (TALK) 11:06, 10 January 2017 (EST)
Either hacking or the Chinese are interested in American politics because of the election. I sure hope its not the first one! --1990'sguy (talk) 11:09, 10 January 2017 (EST)
I hope so too. The website is still here, so that's a good sign at least. (Although realistically, they usually gather information rather than destroy it.) --David B (TALK) 11:16, 10 January 2017 (EST)
Whoever it is, their culling for ideas. CP has become pivotal in the global struggle against globalization and the New World Order. RobS#NeverHillary 12:25, 10 January 2017 (EST)

Unlock Template:Infobox person?

Could I get someone to unlock the Template:Infobox person page? It should have some more elements, and perhaps be merged with Template:Infobox person2. Thanks! --David B (TALK) 11:24, 12 January 2017 (EST)

New templates to mark direction of changes

I have added five new templates, which I hope will gain widespread adoption. These templates show icons to indicate increase or decrease, such as ranking in a list or company profit.

  • Increase: {{Increase}}, to show an increase or going up in rankings
  • Decrease: {{Decrease}}, to show a decrease or going down in rankings
  • Steady: {{Steady}} = to show no change

An optional first argument alters the tooltip comment. For example, {{Decrease|-5%}} produces -5%.

In cases where a symbol is needed to represent an increase that is "bad" or a decrease that is "good", such as a rise or fall in road accident fatalities, the following should be used:

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. Thanks, JDano (talk) 08:13, 27 January 2017 (EST)

Political directory

A few years ago, some editors copied a lot of political directory information into CP. For example, the state articles list all of the Senators and Congressmen and the infobox has the Senators' telephone numbers. Much of this has changed in the 2014 and 2016 elections. In some cases, like Elizabeth Warren, the junior senator has become the senior senator of the state. I have corrected Ohio, but do not want to fix all of this by myself. Can we organize a work list and cross off each state as it is updated? Please let me know if you want to help. JDano (talk) 09:22, 15 February 2017 (EST)

I can't say I'm thrilled at the idea, but I can try to chip in a little, as time permits. That's a very good idea, and I'm glad you noticed--I'm just not sure how much time I can contribute. --David B (TALK) 11:03, 15 February 2017 (EST)
In my state even the official state website hasn't been updated in more than two years (it still lists an officer sitting in jail as Secretary of State). I'm sure the lazy government bureaucrats blame Republican budget cuts who took over the legislature in 2014. RobSCIA vs Trump. Who's gonna win? 21:33, 15 February 2017 (EST)
This project is focusing on 1) list of US Congressmen and Senators and 2) Senators in infobox. JDano (talk) 00:27, 16 February 2017 (EST)

Sources: http://www.house.gov/representatives/ and https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state&Sort=ASC When you have finished with a state, cross the state name out using <s>State</s>.

Many thanks to Pokeria1, AMorrow, and DavidB4 for their help on this project. JDano (talk) 13:44, 16 February 2017 (EST)

Since we finished the federal officers faster than I expected, I am proposing a Phase II, where we go back and check the names of the state-wide officers listed in each of the above articles. After you have checked an article please change <s>state</s> to <b>state</b>. Many thanks! JDano (talk) 10:59, 17 February 2017 (EST)

I recommend adding the phrase "As of 2017" to the "Elected officials" sections of each state. With this, we will know the exact date when these officials were all in power, and we will hopefully be more compelled to update the list later. --1990'sguy (talk) 00:01, 18 February 2017 (EST)
That may work unless there is a mid-year vacancy. I am troubled that some of these pages were not updated for 4 or more years. I am also looking for references to folks that made recent moves, for example we have a new Alabama Attorney General, because the old one joined the Senate to fill Jeff Session's seat. JDano (talk) 02:56, 18 February 2017 (EST)

Conservapedia IRC channel

Our Internet Relay Chat article claims that we have channel on freenode. However, it has not been used for quite some time (last used April 6th, 2008 at 17:52:59, to be exact). Has the channel been moved, or does CP no longer have IRC? If it exists, I'd like to join it. If not, someone should delete that statement from the IRC article. Thanks! --David B (TALK) 16:48, 16 February 2017 (EST)

Uncategorized images

All the images on the page Railway track are uncategorized. Could they please be added to a category, such as Category:Rail transport. I cannot add them myself because they are protected. Desmonduk (talk) 11:29, 23 February 2017 (EST)

That's a good idea. I've been pushing for a image categorizing project for a while, but the problem is that only full admins can unprotect images. That would be a massive undertaking, and they have other more time-sensitive things to work on. Therefore, this just doesn't get done. The site software automatically generates a list of images which as not categorized here: Special:UncategorizedFiles. If you can make progress with this, that would be great. However, you will need a full administrator to do it. Here is a list of registered admins, but most of them seem inactive now. Jpatt, Karajou, Aschlafly, Conservative, TerryH, and Ed Poor are the only once I can remember seeing contribute in the recent past. You could ask them, but you may have the same luck as me. --David B (TALK) 12:17, 23 February 2017 (EST)
Thank you. Desmonduk (talk) 18:06, 23 February 2017 (EST)
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