Conservapedia (/kənˌsɜː(r)vəˈpiːdiə/; kən-SU(R)-və-PEE-di-ə) is an English-language, wiki-based, online encyclopedia written from a self-described American conservative[2] and fundamentalist Christian[3] point of view.

Conservapedia views Albert Einstein's theory of relativity as promoting moral relativism,[9] falsely claims that abortion increases risk of breast cancer, praises Republican politicians, supports celebrities and artistic works it believes represent moral standards in line with Christian family values, and espouses fundamentalist Christian doctrines such as Young Earth creationism.

[13] Schlafly expressed the hope Conservapedia would become a general resource for American educators and a counterpoint to the liberal bias that he perceived in Wikipedia.

[22] Regular features on the front page of Conservapedia include links to news articles and blogs that the site's editors consider relevant to conservatism.

[15] The site's "Conservapedia Commandments"[28] differ from Wikipedia's editorial policies, which include following a neutral point of view[29] and avoiding original research.

[14] In a March 2007 interview with The Guardian, Schlafly stated: "I've tried editing Wikipedia, and found it and the biased editors who dominate it censor or change facts to suit their views.

[19] On March 7, 2007, Schlafly was interviewed on BBC Radio 4's morning show, Today, opposite Wikipedia administrator Jim Redmond.

The copyright policy also states: "This license is revocable only in very rare instances of self-defense, such as protecting continued use by Conservapedia editors or other licensees."

For example, U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales was said to be "a strong supporter of torture as a law enforcement tool for use against Democrats and third world inhabitants".

[36] Initially, Schlafly[13][37] and other Conservapedia editors[25] considered Wikipedia's policy allowing British English spelling to be anti-American bias.

The commandments also cite United States Code 18 USC § 1470 as justification for legal action against obscene, vandalism or spam edits.

[38] Because of Schlafly's claim that Wikipedia's allowance of both Common Era and Anno Domini notation is anti-Christian bias,[32][33][34] the commandments disallow use of the former.

[40] In addition, it supports the theory that Barack Obama's published birth certificate was a forgery and that he was born in Kenya, not Hawaii.

On March 19, 2007, the British free newspaper Metro ran the article "Weird, wild wiki on which anything goes", articulating the dismissal of Conservapedia by the Royal Society, saying: "People need to be very careful about where they look for scientific information.

[49][50] An article on the "Pacific Northwest Arboreal Octopus" received particular attention, although Schlafly asserted that it was intended as a parody of environmentalism.

Attention was drawn to the article by a Talking Points Memo posting that reported on Conservapedia's entry and stated that Schlafly "has found one more liberal plot: the theory of relativity".

[57]: 1 University of Maryland physics professor Robert L. Park has also criticized Conservapedia's entry on the theory of relativity, arguing that its criticism of the principle as "heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world" confuses a physical theory with a moral value.

[64] The Conservapedia entries on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama are critical of their respective subjects.

Some Conservapedia editors urged that the statement be changed or deleted, but Schlafly, a former classmate of Obama, responded by asserting that the Harvard Law Review, the Harvard University legal journal for which Obama and Schlafly worked together,[65] uses racial quotas and stated, "The statement about affirmative action is accurate and will remain in the entry".

[66] In addition, Hugh Muir of The Guardian mockingly referred to Conservapedia's assertion that Obama has links to radical Islam as "dynamite" and an excellent resource for "US rightwingers".

[18][68] Mark Sabbatini of the Juneau Empire described the Conservapedia entry on Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate for the 2008 U.S. presidential election, as having been written largely by people friendly to its subject and avoiding controversial topics.

For instance, in May 2009, Vanity Fair and The Spectator reported that Conservapedia's article on atheist Richard Dawkins featured a picture of Adolf Hitler at the top.

[16] Wired magazine observed that Conservapedia was "attracting lots of derisive comments on blogs and a growing number of phony articles written by mischief makers".

[15] Matt Millham of the military-oriented newspaper Stars and Stripes called Conservapedia "a Web site that caters mostly to evangelical Christians".

[75] The project has also been criticized for presenting a false dichotomy between conservatism and liberalism, as well as between Christian Fundamentalism and atheism, and for promoting relativism with the implicit idea that there "often are two equally valid interpretations of the facts".

[79] Writing in The Australian, columnist Emma Jane described Conservapedia as "a disturbing parallel universe where the ice age is a theoretical period, intelligent design is empirically testable, and relativity and geology are junk sciences".

[18] Matt Barber, policy director for the conservative Christian political action group Concerned Women for America, praised Conservapedia as a more family-friendly and "accurate" alternative to Wikipedia.

[4][72][83] Wikipedia's co-creator Jimmy Wales said about Conservapedia that "free culture knows no bounds" and "the reuse of our work to build variants [is] directly in line with our mission".

"[18] On June 9, 2008, the New Scientist published an article describing Richard Lenski's 20-year E. coli experiment, which reported that the bacteria had evolved, acquiring the ability to metabolize citrate.

[90] The exchange, recorded on a Conservapedia page entitled "Lenski dialog",[91] was widely reported on news-aggregating sites and web logs.