Conservapedia:Quick reference

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This is a Quick reference guide to contributing and enjoying Conservapedia, with particular reference to ways that Conservapedia differs to what you may be used to on other sites using Wiki software.

Some of these peculiarities are due to Conservapedia being the focus of myriad vandals wanting to undermine or destroy the conservative point of view. Conservapedia articles' tone, style, and content should be written with an American, conservative and/or Christian orientation or focus.

We recommend that you include this page on your watchlist (click the "Watch" tab above) so that you can be alerted to updates to this page.

Terms explained
  • Administrators, also known as sysops, are editors with the ability and authority to enforce Conservapedia's rules and resolve disputes.
  • Bureaucrats are Administrators with the additional ability to change user rights.

Purpose

Conservapedia is a Wiki-based encyclopedia coming from a conservative point of view, and does not pretend to be neutral, but does strive to be accurate and fair, and allow other points of view. It is also designed to be a useful resource for students and therefore a family-friendly one, which means that some topics will not be allowed. See the Conservapedia:FAQ page for more information.

Rules governing use

The Commandments and Guidelines govern your conduct on Conservapedia.

The Commandments and Guidelines are deliberately kept brief, and the Administrators have broad discretion to protect pages from editing and block or ban editors for defying the spirit as well as the letter of the Commandments and guidelines.

We also recommend that you read up on Editing Etiquette.

Registering an account

Offensive user names will result in that user name being blocked and perhaps the IP address being blocked. Frivolous user names, names of prominent living persons, and user names consisting of, for example, all capital letters or all the same character, may also result in that user name being blocked. User names based on your real name or initials are preferred. Do not create multiple accounts.

If you get blocked

If you get blocked, it's probably because you (1) broke the rules and (2) ignored hints, requests and/or warnings. So the first thing you should do is review your communications with others here, particularly those who are admins. Have you been trying to get along by following our practices and supporting our goals, or have you been trying to change our ways? If you are new here, it's best to go along to get along. After you have contributed a lot, we'll be more likely to listen to your suggestions, but breaking the rules will just end up with eliminating you from the project.

Perhaps upon reflection you may realize that you'd rather be part of the project than insist on your own way. You might want to apologize and get unblocked.

If you want to discuss your block, do not create a new account. Rather, use one of the following methods to appeal the decision (listed in order of preference).

  1. Contact the person who blocked you (see below).
  2. If you get no reply after a reasonable amount of time, you may contact any Administrator.
  3. Email cpwebmaster@conservapedia.com giving the name of the Administrator or editor who blocked you, and the date, and it will be forwarded on to them.

If you contact more than one person about this, please do them the courtesy of letting them know who else you have tried contacting.

Contacting an Administrator or editor can usually be done by one of the following methods:

  • Use the "Email this user" link in the toolbox. This, however, will only work if both you and the Administrator or editor have enabled this on your/their respective accounts.
  • The Administrator or editor may have provided an email address or other contact information (e.g. AIM) on their user page.

Conservapedia does not allow liberal censorship

See also: Conservapedia:Tolerance and Edits to blocked editor accounts ratio at a wiki

Conservapedia is an encyclopaedia with articles written from a conservative viewpoint. All articles should adhere to a conservative, Christian, and family friendly point of view. Conservativism may consist of several competing ideologies.

Conservapedia has come up with a key wiki metric that measures tolerance/intolerance at a wiki. Namely, the edits to blocked editor accounts ratio at a wiki which measures the close-mindedness/intolerance and groupthink of a wiki. Mathematically, the edits to blocked editor accounts ratio can be expressed as: Edits to blocked editor accounts ratio at a wiki = E % BE, where E is the number of edits to the wiki and BE equals the number of blocked editor accounts of the wiki. The edits to blocked editor accounts ratio was partly inspired by Andrew Schlafly's essay Quantifying Openmindedness. Unlike Conservapedia, Wikipedia does not have a policy where members of the public are free to set up debate pages and engage in vigorous debate where the debate pages are lightly moderated (see: Conservapedia debates pages).

Conservative views

These ideas are considered in the mainstream of conservative views.

Non-conservative views

These ideas are fundamentally antithetical to conservatism, and as such, must be represented as so if they are referenced.

Restrictions

  • Moving (renaming) pages
The ability to move (rename) pages is only available to Administrators. Please ask one if you would like a page moved. Please do not attempt to rename pages by redirecting an existing article to another name! This prevents the existing edit histories from following, which is why we prefer to have an Admin do it.
  • Creating new "Categories"
While this is sometimes needed, before undertaking larger projects that will have ramifications for many existing articles, please contact one of the Administrators on their talk page, and inform them of your idea.
  • Uploading images
The ability to upload images has been restricted.
In addition, all images should be protected from editing, to prevent vandals uploading and/or replacing existing images with offensive images.
  • Editing overnight (U.S. time)
The ability to edit on Conservapedia is often restricted while it is late-night in the Eastern, U.S. time zone, 1-6 AM.

The privilege to upload images and to edit while editing is turned off can be granted to editors with a proven good record. See User rights for more information.

Templates

Conservapedia requires that all templates that you create are properly documented.

  • See here for basic instructions for creating templates, and also for how templates are to be documented on Conservapedia.
  • See here for instructions on how to use templates, if you are not already familiar with them.

See also