Difference between revisions of "Essay:Truth and accuracy matter"

Revision as of 15:08, August 17, 2017

When reading or writing always keep in mind that truth and accuracy matter. The Conservapedia logo bear the caption, "The Trustworthy Encycolpedia," and hundreds of volunteers have worked hard over the past decade to build a reliable resource aimed at high school students and a high school reading levels.

This is important work because printed encyclopedias have gone out of business and the most popular on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia does have a noticable bias. In response, Conservapedia was founded to provide an unbiased resource particularly for the home-schooled student. The basic idea is for Conservapedia to earn the respect and trust of its readers by providing what the best of the public believes to be unbiased facts. When there is a difference between viewpoints, we state both viewpoints and allow the reader to decide. (Although the encyclopedia is called Conservapedia, we are striving for an unbiased article, not an article with a conservative bias. We are not expecting each user to compare both Conservapedia and Wikipedia and somehow average out the two to come to a middlepoint.)

Bias can come in two forms: selectively covering topics and leaving out facts inconsistent with a view point or presenting the facts in a biased way. Because Conservapedia is a volunteer project and people write about what interest them, some bias in selection of article topics in inevitable. While we cannot prevent that, we can remain open and welcoming to users who add new articles. If an entry does not reflect a general unbiased consensus, it can be added as an essay (like this one).

However, what topics Conservapedia does cover must be written in a careful unbiased manner to maintain the trust of our readers. Our articles should be carefully footnoted and our words should be chosen carefully to accurately explain the facts and to avoid exaggeration. Conservapedia is not written to persuade or to argue -- the best of the public knows and understands the facts, and we are not here to convince anyone to support a political party, a politician, or a particular policy position. We can leave such advocacy to the editorial pages of the newspapers.

We must be careful in making absolute generalization. We only write "All A is B" if that is always true, not just most of the time. We also avoid name-calling, by adding unnecessary adjectives in front of the subject of a sentence. We must also avoid exaggeration. We can criticize an environmental advocate for using five time the average household electric usage in his state without coming up with a statement that he uses 34 times as much due to a faulty comparison. Finally, we can treat both our readers and our article subjects with respect. A biography should not be an "attack piece" and should not include gossip about the subject's love life. We should also not try to shock our readers with swearing.

Conservapedia editors are dedicated volunteers and should be treated with respect. Every editor's opinion matters and we should work to make Conservapedia a pleasant place to work.

In an era of fake news, foreign governments using social media to manipulate public opinion, and impolite public discourse, Conservapedia maintaining high standards is more important than ever. We are the trustworthy encyclopedia.