CreationWiki is an online collaborative documentation project that is dedicated to the promotion and advancement of the various forms of creationism, with an emphasis on young earth creationism and creation science. Though it is a community-based collaborative effort, it is only open to editing by "creationists" — i.e. those who conform to the views of creationism, saying, "Only those who believe the universe and life on earth were created by God are permitted to contribute to this archive of knowledge."

Founded in the summer of 2004 by the Northwest Creation Network, a Mountlake Terrace, Washington-based organization active in the promotion of creationism. The Northwest Creation Network produces the annual Seattle Creation Conference, public access TV broadcasts, and donates creationist literature to public and private libraries. Northwest Creation Network also provides free web services and site hosting to creationist organizations, speakers, and facilities, including the websites of the Design Science Association and the Creation Association of Puget Sound.

The CreationWiki runs on the same MediaWiki software as does Wikipedia, but it is not part of Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation and its policies are significantly different. In addition to the restricting of editing privileges to registered users who must also be believers of creationism, CreationWiki does not allow editors to delete, revert or edit actions or edits made by the CreationWiki administrators. Editors are also not permitted to delete content that is in dispute, e.g.; old earth creationists are not allowed edit young earth content or visa versa. It should be noted that many links on the front page of CreationWiki do not actually lead to existent articles.

As of December 2005 CreationWiki was relatively small, with a total 435 registered editors and 4 admins. The current number of articles was 905.

CreationWiki and Wikipedia

CreationWiki has the following in its article about wikipedia:

Wikipedia is a free on line wiki encyclopedia that any one can edit. It claims to take a "No Point of View" (NPOV) position on topics and seem to follow it quite well for most topics. However when it comes Creation science and Intelligent design, it has a definite negative point of view.

Some times this bias simply results from contributers who do not like or in some cases show a clear hatred for Creation science and Intelligent design, but sadly it extends to the sysops as well. One example is the fact that they classify Creation science and Intelligent design as pseudosciences which is a standard anti-Creation tactic.

CreationWiki therefore accepts Wikipedia to a large extent, except with regard to Intelligent Design and Creationism and all scientific evidence and arguments opposing it (such as carbon dating, falsifiability, evolution), citing bias on the part of the users of wikipedia.

Several CreationWiki authors have abandonned Wikipedia after having discovered Wikipedia, while claiming to have a Neutral Point of View policy, is so flagrantly biased against creationism as to be laughable. They point to the fact that all creation science articles on wikipedia are categorized as pseudoscience, despite the fact that NPOV requires that articles neither state nor imply that a particular point of view is correct or incorrect. Further, cited, sourced creationist perspectives are routinely censored from articles on creationism. Given the fact that Wikipedia editors are incapable of following their own rules, CreationWiki editors seeks to accurately portray creationism in an environment free from Wikipedia's flagrant systemic bias against creationism.

Criticisms of CreationWiki

Critics of CreationWiki cite the bias inherent in only allowing those having a particular viewpoint to make changes. If a wiki is created such that only people believing that gravity doesn't exist can edit it, the wiki will likely state that gravity does not exist and that any wiki stating otherwise is biased. Additionally, because CreationWiki is identical in format to wikipedia, users may be led to believe that it is as freely editable as wikipedia is. Critics also cite that CreationWiki purporting itself to be an "archive of knowledge" is misleading because the "knowledge" must be consistent with a particular viewpoint which itself is neither provable nor disprovable.

External links

The CreationWiki website

Guidelines

Additional reading

Wiki