OK, I can understand copying Wikipedia and setting up your own special interest wikis all over the place—it’s an admission that your goals are too dorky or too stupid to survive outside your own special little incubator—but if you’re going to set up your own social networking site, why would you copy MySpace, the ugliest, most awkward, most annoying such site on the planet? It’s like declaring that not only do you lack any creativity or imagination, but that you are totally tasteless, too.
Behold: His Holy Space. It’s like an online ghetto for Christians. Take the cluttered, disorganized look of MySpace and drape it with Kincade paintings and animated doves and angels, and you’ve got His Holy Space. Why, I don’t know. Some things are just mysteries.
(via The Friendly Atheist)
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
If I were young and had the energy to put into it, I’d be sorely tempted to put up a rival site, just so I could call it His Holier Space.
Well they have a picture of a sparkling angel on their website. You’re just jaelous that you don’t have a sparkling caphalopod on yours.
Quick! Someone sign up as an undercover atheist. (Actually, I might do that myself. Occasionally I drop into religious blogs and type something absolutely silly and then watch while half a dozen people agree with me. Those places are full of so much “encrusted woo” that they have a great deal of difficulty in working out whether you are serious or not.)
PZ,
you really don’t «understand copying Wikipedia and setting up your own special interest wikis all over the place–it’s an admission that your goals are too dorky or too stupid to survive outside your own special little incubator».
It is not that at all. (Or at least it does not have to be.)
Firstly, note that one thing is Wikipedia (or rather many language-based independent Wikipedias), something other is a wiki. While a wiki is a piece of software suited for collaboritive content editing on line, Wikipedia is a wiki-based encyclopedia with its own strict rules.
Then, some stuff just doesn’t belong in Wikipedia. Fictional universes presented in character are a prime example of that, but there are others. Wikipedia doesn’t allow original research, opinion, and other non-encyclopedic content.
People interested in all this stuff unsuitable for Wikipedia can however gain from a wiki medium to exchange and publish information. Wheather that will be dorky and stupid or brilliant and insightfull that’s a tottaly different question. (And Wikipedia is not free of dorky and stupid stuff, in spite of many admins’ efforts!)
(P.S.: I manage one such wiki, about an sf universe. Great fun, although its Biology is sadly a mess.)
PZ,
you really don’t «understand copying Wikipedia and setting up your own special interest wikis all over the place–it’s an admission that your goals are too dorky or too stupid to survive outside your own special little incubator».
It is not that at all. (Or at least it does not have to be.)
Firstly, note that one thing is Wikipedia (or rather many language-based independent Wikipedias), something other is a wiki. While a wiki is a piece of software suited for collaboritive content editing on line, Wikipedia is a wiki-based encyclopedia with its own strict rules.
Then, some stuff just doesn’t belong in Wikipedia. Fictional universes presented in character are a prime example of that, but there are others. Wikipedia doesn’t allow original research, opinion, and other non-encyclopedic content.
People interested in all this stuff unsuitable for Wikipedia can however gain from a wiki medium to exchange and publish information. Wheather that will be dorky and stupid or brilliant and insightfull that’s a tottaly different question. (And Wikipedia is not free of dorky and stupid stuff, in spite of many admins’ efforts!)
(P.S.: I manage one such wiki, about an sf universe. Great fun, although its Biology is sadly a mess.)
So, does anyone else find the fact that the Google Adsense ad on the home page is for cheap (probably fake) Roiexes significant? I mean that’s worse taste than the Thomas Kinkades (and I hate Thomas Kinkade.)
“His Princess”??!?!?? How’s about a little warning next time for those of us who have weak stomachs, eh?
Another on the list of specialized myspace networking sites, but with it’s own special extra bit of classy:
http://niggaspace.com/
It seems some people have already started to mess with the thing. It will be the same as conservapedia, they will have to shut down free new registrations after a while.
Religion 101 Final Examination
“…an online ghetto for Christians.”
You say THIS like it’s a bad thing, too! Let them go save each other, hahaha.
Whoa! Hold off until we get the DICKOPEDIA up and running!
The best thing about Dickopedia, is it’s not limited to Dick’s although, you DO have to be a *REAL DICK* to qualify, so this ties in nicely with your earlier Tony Snow article…and of course, Pres Bush certainly qualifies!
Another important note, is the history involved with Dickopedia.. this is not just some Newbie offshoot of Wickopedia! Nope… we have very early records, going back to the Roman Empire, with Biggus Dickus as an early entry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0nDbqvmo8c&mode=related&search=
And of course, all the Biblical Prophets were some of the Biggest Dicks around, so they have earned a spot in Dickopedia. Perhaps there are people in your classes, Departments, of offices that could be nominated as well with their Very Own Entry in Dickopedia!
Remember the slogan of Dickopedia: You don’t HAVE to be a dick to be in Dickopedia… But it sure helps if you are!
PS: I BELIEVE THIS ENTRY QUALIFIES ME FOR 25 MOLLY POINTS!
Bonus points should be earned for every mention of Biggus Dickus, and Super Bonus Points earned for every reader that laughs at Biggus Dickus throughout the day.
Thank You for your Support.
Someone needs to set up a atheist “space” that’s sleekly designed.
It should only minimally customizable. Most people, frankly, can’t
design their way out of a dancing gerbil box.
This site is a good template.
http://www.paperthinwalls.com
Here’s a good site that maps out how NOT to totally screw up when designing a site.
http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/web-2.0-design-style-guide.cfm
We in the Church of the SubGenius have had at leat one wiki up and running for ages.
“…an interactive directory of the Differently-Saned to which you can add your own favorites!”
notice how the “men who serve him” are above the “women who serve him”
Just in case you haven’t seen it-
http://www.uncyclopedia.org
It’s completely sophomoric, and most of the content is lame to so-so, but every now and then, very funny.
Whaddya expect, matthew? It’s called the missionary position.
In their TOC’s:
You cannot post or distribute Content that is patently offensive to the online community, such as Content that promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual.
Unless it’s from the Bible, of course.
I woulda used Facebook as a guide myself…
I looked at the home page, and one of the randomly profiled women had the screen name “Arise, Elijah! Arise!” Ribald jokes write themselves in 3…2…1…
Speaking of Uncyclopedia, here’s the Uncyclopedia page on Michele Bachmann.
Tuválkin (#5) makes all the points I had wanted to make. A wiki is just a tool for collaborating on content, and doesn’t have to have any aspirations to scholarship. (My friends and I have used one for several years to write spoof musicals we perform to incoming MIT freshmen. You have no idea how many different lyrics can be written to the tune of Aqua’s “Lollipop”, all of them improvements on the original. Someday, we might even be able to work in my song, “Objectivist”, to the tune of Duran Duran’s “Notorious”.) Wikipedia has its own set of policies, which make sense for an encyclopedia but could easily be irrelevant or counterproductive elsewhere.
Sometimes they even cause problems on WP itself. When you have a strict rule against “original research” — i.e., everything you say has to have a footnote pointing to somebody else who said it first — how do you handle a crackpot perpetual motion machine, somebody’s wild rant about quantum mechanics being the path to telepathy, or a Paleyist screed based on misrepresenting a new biology paper? All of these can be debunked easily enough on a site like TalkOrigins, and in fact the debunkings often exist prior to the bunk itself, since pseudoscience is highly repetitive. Still, even asserting that prior debunking of perpetual motion machine X applies to new perpetual motion machine Y is, by Wikipedian standards, “original research”.
The best we Wikipedes have come up with so far is the Fringe Theories guideline, which I had a hand in writing and which I advise anybody interested in this sort of problem to read.
Is it really even humanly possible for me to not read these profiles aloud while drinking with my friends this weekend? Is it? I don’t think I’ll bother trying to resist.
Oh come on Christian types! If you’re gonna rip off something that belongs to Rupert Murdoch, at least have the sense to change the names of your css files to something other than “Myspace_css.css” when you copy and paste. I mean honestly, is it any wonder they can’t form a coherent opposition to the ‘myths’ of ‘Darwinism’?
I don’t even give them a week before the lawsuits start.
This is about the third such post I’ve made today, but it seems to me like Christians are trying to set up an alternate world so they don’t have to interact with people on any level that aren’t Christians. So they can walk around in a narco-religious haze.
Er, I’m mostly all for this, I should add. Let them opt out of the world! I just wish they’d get around to opting out of politics.
Chris Bradley wrote:
You mean, the Rapture happened and the fundies all went off to their own corner of cyberspace? Suits me.
Christianity has always done this; look at Christmas or Easter (Christmas especially). They seem to have no creativity, or perhaps it’s become reflexive for them to try to worm their way into others’ lives, whether it’s lifting a popular web site’s style or the trapping of pagan holidays… or checking up on your bedroom behavior (or what they imagine it to be, which is always going to be weird because they have weird thoughts about sex).
Haha, yeah, one of the great things about the internet is that people can put all kinds of nonsense online, where everyone can see how nuts they are.
If you really want to find a stupid wiki, look up the “Joe Cell” plus “wiki” and you’ll find a website talking about Orgonne Energy allowing you to run a car off water! Yes they believe it works.
Actually, I’m in the middle of founding a wiki of my own, I’m putting together the backbone of it, but its intended purpose will be far more useful than these other ones you’re citing.
And I’ve spent hours getting lost in SciFi-related wikis. If only we could get that kind of scholarship on a science-related wiki. I can say no more.
Blake Stacey, thanks for the link to the fringe theories page, that will come in handy for mine.
psycotic_furby declared thusly:
Well, they tried praying REAL HARD but found that as a programming interface, it was somewhat lacking.
It seems that conservapedia has toned down their stupidity, if only just a bit. Now they refer to “creationists” as a group, instead of just being the ones who write their crap.
Many of the entries have been edited to be more palatable, but they still underlie blatant lies and creationist schemes, only much more subtly. See evolution, homosexuality, the infamous kangaroo entry, etc.
Some, like gravitation have been edited altogether to a regular encyclopedia definition, with not much bias besides a little too much emphasis on the word “theory” and stuff like that.
Gee, ‘Alishas (sic) Husband’ looks positively Satanic.
Looooove the heraldic aspect of the site.
Now all the twits will be in one place for a change, ending the diaspora of the wankers.
Hm. I’ve set up HintWiki, a wiki for hints (rather than walkthroughs) of adventure games, because I wanted to combine the no-spoilers aspect of UHS Hints with the community participation of Wikipedia.
Is that dorky? I’d like to think it’s not stupid.