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Screenshot  RationalWiki Main Page as of March 11, 2019[update] | |
Type of site | Wiki |
|---|---|
| Available in | English and 16 other languages[1] |
| Owner | RationalMedia Foundation[2] |
| Created by | Volunteer contributors[3] |
| Key people | Trent Toulouse (operations manager)[4] |
| URL | rationalwiki.org |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional |
| Users | |
| Launched | May 22, 2007; 18 years ago (2007-05-22)[6] |
| Current status | Active |
Content license | CC BY-SA 3.0[7] |
| Written in | MediaWiki software |
RationalWiki is an onlinewiki which is written from ascientific skeptic,secular, andprogressive perspective. Its stated goals are to "analyze and refutepseudoscience and theanti-science movement, documentcrank ideas, exploreconspiracy theories,authoritarianism, andfundamentalism, and analyze how these subjects are handled in themedia."[8] It was created in 2007 as a counterpoint toConservapedia, aChristian fundamentalist website, after an incident in which some editors of Conservapedia were banned.[6][9] RationalWiki has been described asliberal in contrast to Conservapedia.[10][11]
In April 2007, Peter Lipson, a doctor ofinternal medicine, attempted to editConservapedia's article onbreast cancer to include evidence against Conservapedia's claim thatabortion waslinked to the disease. Conservapedia is anencyclopedia established byAndy Schlafly as an alternative toWikipedia, which Schlafly perceived as suffering from aliberal,atheist, and "anti-American"bias. He and Conservapedia administrators "questioned [Lipson's] credentials and shut down debate". After being reverted and blocked, "Lipson and several other contributors quit trying to moderate the articles [on Conservapedia] and instead started their own website, RationalWiki".[9][12]
Prior to 2010, RationalWiki's domains were registered to Trent Toulouse, and the wiki was hosted from a server located in his home.[6] In 2010, Trent Toulouse incorporated anonprofit organization, the RationalWiki Foundation Inc., to manage the affairs and pay the operational expenses of the website.[2] In July 2013, the RationalWiki Foundation changed its name to the RationalMedia Foundation, stating that its aims extended beyond the RationalWiki site alone.[13]
In April 2025, the RationalMedia Foundation was sued for defamation by various plaintiffs who were covered on RationalWiki. In the same month, despite concerns about the foundation dissolving, it reached an out of court settlement with the plaintiffs where it agreed to delete their articles.[14]
RationalWiki aims to provide information aboutpseudoscientific theories[16] and to educate "individuals with unorthodox views".[17]
RationalWiki differs in several ways from the philosophy of Wikipedia and some other informational wikis. It is written from a self-described "snarky point of view" and "scientific point of view" (both abbreviated as SPOV) rather than a "neutral point of view" (NPOV), and publishes opinion, speculation, and original research.[18] Many RationalWiki articles satirically describe beliefs that RationalWiki opposes, especially when covering topics such asalternative medicine orfundamentalist Christians.[12]
Some activity on RationalWiki was used for critiquing and "monitor[ing] Conservapedia".[9] RationalWiki contributors, some of whom are former Conservapedia contributors, are often highly critical of Conservapedia. According to a 2007Los Angeles Times article, RationalWiki members "by their own admission" vandalize Conservapedia.[9] Lester Haines ofThe Register stated: "Its entry entitled 'Conservapedia:Delusions' promptly mocks the claims that 'Homosexuality is a mental disorder', 'Atheists are sociopaths', and 'During the 6 days of creation G-d placed the Earth inside a black hole to slow down time so the light from distant stars had time to reach us'."[12]
Both Yanet al. 2019[10] and Knocheet al.,[11] two articles about classifying a writer's biases via text analysis, asserted that Conservapedia was "conservative" and RationalWiki was "liberal".Mic described RationalWiki as "progressive".[19]
When Krebset al. 2023 compared text on controversial topics across multiple community-managed wikis, they found that content and contributors on RationalWiki leaned liberal while Conservapedia leaned conservative. In contrast, Wikipedia's content was comparable to theEncyclopedia Britannica, leaned slightly liberal and its editors leaned centrist. Both RationalWiki and Conservapedia were "more loaded with moral content".[20][clarification needed]
Andrea Ballatore, a lecturer inGIS atBirkbeck, University of London, categorizes RationalWiki as similar in tone toSnopes in a 2015 study, finding it to be the third-most-visible website when researchingconspiracy theories in terms ofGoogle andBing search results, and the most visible among those sites that made openly negative value judgments about conspiracy theories.[21] InIntelligent Systems 2014, Alexander Shvets found RationalWiki to be one of the few online resources that "provide some information about pseudoscientific theories".[16] Likewise, Keeler et al. believe that sites like RationalWiki can help to "sort out the complexities" that arise when "distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people".[8]
A 2019 study of bias analysis based onword embedding in RationalWiki, Conservapedia, and Wikipedia by researchers fromRWTH Aachen University found all had significant gender biases, reflecting classical gender stereotypes, but these biases were less pronounced in RationalWiki.[11]
InCritical Thinking: Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, Jonathan C. Smith lists RationalWiki in an exercise on finding and identifying fallacies.[22]
Writing inThe Verge, Adi Robertson stated that RationalWiki provided a good explanation ofTime Cube, though conveying the "full impression" of the original Time Cube website was all but impossible.[23]
RationalWiki tries to track all the places they are either mentioned or cited.[24]
Media related toRationalWiki at Wikimedia Commons
