Is RationalWiki a trustworthy source?

Personally, I often find that Wikipedia articles, especially on Anglophone right-wing personalities, tend to be overly verbose and diplomatic; they meander and don’t get to the point. When I want to get the straight dope on them, I go to RationalWiki: they don’t mince words. They’re highly opinionated, but in a similar way to me.

Media Bias/Fact Check rates RationalWiki as “left-center bias, high reliability”, which strikes me as fair (as Mark Hershberger points out, they don’t even claim to strive for neutrality! They’re unabashedly biased). And quite remarkable for a snarky wiki organised in a quite anarchistic way, originally founded for the sole purpose of making fun of a loopy, incredibly US-centric right-wing wiki (Conservapedia)!

Keep in mind that I’m from Europe, where Bernie Sanders would be a random centrist that nobody gives a damn about, Obama would be centre-right, Hillary would be a hard-right conservative, and the Republican Party classified as far right. The mainstream political spectrum here pretty much ends where the US mainstream spectrum begins: the fringe of the European mainstream right-wing (Christian democrats) is effectively almost like the American left-wing fringe (Bernie), and in some ways even more progressive (because they’ve traditionally supported a social democratic welfare state, even if they erode it in neoliberal ways currently, at least in Germany). That’s how right-wing the US are in 2018 (it hasn’t always been this way, of course). Personally, I’m certainly not neutral: I identify decidedly as a leftist, which Americans tend to read as “foaming-at-the-mouth Stalin-worshipping SJW”, but I don’t care. America isn’t the centre of the universe, even if most Americans may believe it is. In terms of developed countries, it’s an outlier. To find more conservative countries, you need to go to the Middle East.

And that’s why “liberal” here refers to socially liberal pro-business pro-capitalism types, somewhat similar to US right-libertarians (especially the more moderate ones), who may be described as centrist or centre-right but certainly not left-wing in any way.

So when Stephen Colbert says “And reality has a well-known liberal bias”, it needs to be viewed in that context. Liberalism is not a particularly extreme ideology for global standards. It’s pretty milquetoast (even reactionary in the eyes of leftists). Not only do liberals typically detest Marxism, they are generally less left-wing than even John Stuart Mill, a key figure of classical liberalism, who was really a bit of a socialist, judging from some of the things he wrote.

First of all, like Wikipedia, the quality of articles varies greatly. Also, like Wikipedia, you can usually tell from the tone and clarity of the article, plus the quality of the citations, whether to take it seriously or not.

If you find an article in either place that has a calm, expert tone, and has citations to the reputable places you’d expect to find good information, and you check a few links and they actually say what the article says they say, then you’re on reasonably safe ground.

RationalWiki has lots of one-sided rants, the kind of stuff Wikipedia is very good at weeding out. It tends to be very negative, most authors seem less interested in promoting truth than punishing falsehood. That means you can’t count on it to explain honestly and seriously what the opposing view is, nor to give arguments that will be convincing to someone who didn’t start out in agreement.

On the other hand, on a lot of issues clear opinion saves a lot of time. Whereas Wikipedia works to get articles that reflect all points of view, for some topics that means treating nonsense seriously.

For example, compare the articles on UFOs. Wikipedia gives a measured and accurate summary of evidence, but one that I would argue is too polite to people who believe there is any good evidence for sightings of extraterrestrial ships.

Studies have established that the majority of UFO observations are misidentified conventional objects or natural phenomena—most commonly aircraft, balloons, noctilucent clouds, nacreous clouds, or astronomical objects such as meteors or bright planets with a small percentage even being hoaxes.

Between 5% and 20% of reported sightings are not explained, and therefore can be classified as unidentified in the strictest sense. While proponents of the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) suggest that these unexplained reports are of alien spacecraft, the null hypothesis cannot be excluded that these reports are simply other more prosaic phenomena that cannot be identified due to lack of complete information or due to the necessary subjectivity of the reports.

RationalWiki is mean and less accurate, but it saves a lot of time.

Ufology is the "study" of UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects). This mostly consists of people saying "wouldn't it be cool if they were alien spacecraft".

Similarly, the Wikipedia article is long and detailed with hundreds of authoritative links and citations. RationalWiki makes fun of UFO-believers for a few paragraphs, supported by four links (one broken) to laugh at.

First of all, RationalWiki is not an encyclopedia, nor is it a primary source. Rather, it is a group blog that breaks down the complexities of science into digestible chunks and then summarizes it in an extremely informal way so that the general public can get the general idea. As it is a group blog/wiki, RationalWiki fails Wikipedia's reliable source policy.

From my own personal experience, RationalWiki is a very trustworthy source when it comes to the more rigorous hard science-related topics such as medicine, food conspiracies, health, alternative medicine, global warming, etc. Generally they present the scientific consensus on the matter and call out BS from quacks and conspiracy theorists. An example is the aspartame controversy, in which they call out the anti-aspartame crowd for their poor science and certain aspects of "Big Pharma". As scientific facts are not a democracy, RationalWiki does a great service by summarizing the scientific consensuses on hard science matters, all while rebutting and scoffing at the anti-science and anti-intellectual movement.

When it comes to social issues, the quality gets a bit iffy. Many articles are clearly ideological, and often make bold and non-neutral claims that are uncited. Unlike Wikipedia, RationalWiki uses original research, and often writes large sections based on it; the reliability is questionable. An issue I have with the site is that a lot of the time, the articles are written in extremely oversimplified language that is intended to preach to the stupid (this might be beneficial because a lot of people don't think too hard), which oftentimes leads to the misuse of certain terminology for emotional effects. They also unfortunately have a policy called "Snarky point of view", in which the articles generally are supposed to be written in the most snarky tone possible. This at times leads to a deterioration of quality.

Overall, RationalWiki is a great starting point for research and also for getting the general gist of things accurate without having to think very hard. However, it's not a reliable source it and of itself, and its content should be taken with a grain of salt, particularly when they do original research.

No, not in the very least.

Imagine Tumblr users trying to write wikipedia pages.

I am pretty left-leaning, but that site is so far left that it does the full loop and goes extreme right. It is extremely misandric.

It has hundreds of entries about how all the different flavours of feminism are wonderful, and an equal number about how any consideration of men’s issues is just misogynistic patriarchal bile.

For example, it says anyone who claims they are “egalitarian” is a misogynist. Yup!

As someone who made the mistake of trusting IrrationalWiki’s statement that “if you don’t agree with an article, edit it and improve it yourself” before having my edits reverted and the pages subsequently protected (then being insulted by the staff as being a “raving idiot”, I’m pretty sure the website isn’t trustworthy. Not saying Conservapedia is any better, but “Rational”Wiki is supposed to be all about being open-minded, not shills for pharmaceutical companies and SJW’s.

They are huge shills for establishment medicine and doctors, and insist any criticism of them is “conspiracy woo” (even if doctors actually are paid off by medicine corporations to give wrong prescriptions to stay in the up-and-up with their constituents). If there are unconventional methods of self-help that was achieved by defying a doctors orders, they call that woo too.

On a side note if you spend enough time on their website, you’ll eventually notice they seem to lack a concept of malice. Instead they just insist that any bad behavior or thinking is caused by stupidity or ignorance. That’s pretty disingenuous too.

I’m going to go ahead and say absolutely not, because it labels itself “RationalWiki”. If you actually read anything it says, it’s all social justice warrior nonsense. There is nothing rational or scientific about it… it is a glorified blog.