What do you think about Rationalwiki?

Personally, I would never ever recommend RationalWiki for any type of research. The articles they have are written often in a comical and snarky way, and at times they might even be insulting. Additionally, the authors of these articles are clearly biased and have no neutral stance, as it has been pointed out in another answer. If you want to do reliable research, neither of the above can be true of a source you use.

Now, mind you, I have not used this website extensively (precisely for the reasons mentioned above); in fact, I think I have visited it only a few times in my whole lifetime. However, the articles I have seen—usually on the topics of the Old and the New Testaments—were not impressive at all. The biased view the authors had was so clear that even I, being an atheist, felt really uncomfortable while reading.

For example, if you open an article “Evidence for the Historical Existence of Jesus Christ,” what is really striking is that the author(s) clearly favour(s) arguments against Jesus’ existence. As a result, whenever an argument for Jesus is mentioned, the author(s) strive(s) really hard to mention counter-arguments in a way that paints those counter-arguments as if they were commonly accepted in the field of academia. Additionally, there is a clear straw man fallacy in the subheading “Gospels as Historical Documents.” For instance, the author writes, “But with the Gospels the only time they agree on events is when they have been copied nearly word for word. Even if historians assume these are good sources, which book is to be trusted about the events of his life?” The author writes about the discrepancies between the gospels and says that they make the gospels unreliable. However, the author does not mention at all how the gospels are actually used as sources for Jesus. Those gospels are not entirely unreliable; they are merely problematic, and, as a matter of fact, historians use those exact discrepancies as evidence for Jesus, which the writer is completely unwilling to mention. For the sake of comparison, I opened the Wikipedia article about historicity of Jesus, and it does, in fact, mention how the gospels are actually used by historians: “Scholars use a number of criteria, such as the criterion of independent attestation, the criterion of coherence, and the criterion of discontinuity to judge the historicity of events” (“Jesus”).

To ensure that your research is reliable, I would advise anyone to use sources that are provided by people who, firstly, name themselves and, secondly, who have a degree in the subject in question or other type of honorary recognition. Of course, if you want use some source for just a starting point of the research, you can use websites like Wikipedia; however, even in this case, I would advise to avoid RationalWiki because of its unprofessional way of writing articles.

Edit: I forgot to mention something else about RationalWiki’s article on the existence of Jesus. To add to what I already wrote, the author(s) also call those who believe that Jesus existed “apologists,” implying that only Christians defend the historical Jesus. This is unacceptable by any standards since many of those who defend the existence of the historical Jesus are not apologists at all—such as Tim O’Neill, who, to my knowledge, is atheist.

RationalWiki has a very toxic culture, comprised of many ‘bad seed’ Wikipedia editors who manipulate RationalWiki for editorial payback against individuals they have grudges against.

RationalWiki trolls have stolen my narrative, and I want it back.

RationalWiki’s continual pattern of impersonating targets and creating revenge articles on critics.

I’m very familiar with it and sometimes use the site myself. While I do agree with most of the material on there the few issues I don’t agree with them on kind of offsets everything else nevertheless.

I still view it more as a propaganda website than an information website. They’re extremely hostile to any dissenting stance and have unfairly targeted some great minds, minds that are probably far more intelligent than the goons who edit the propaganda on there. They even bashed Sam Harris because he’s open to psi (and dissents on a few other issues they hold dear).

It is a decent information website for many topics though, but I’d suggest using extreme caution regarding being too reliant on them for accurate information. Some of the respected scholars they’ve bashed they did so by using straw man arguments and cherry picking. Science is not supposed to be dogmatic, but yet they’ve managed to turn it into a dogma anyways.

Honestly, it would have to be one of the funniest websites I have seen. I love the way it pretends to be a wikipedia (it has a formal structure, it’s organized into categories) yet things are presented in such a biased and satirical way.

If you’re going to use it for research, I’d take a grain of salt with whatever you read on that site. Even a cursory glance through its pages will tell you that is has an extreme liberal and secular bias. Now, in and of itself, those aren’t bad things, but they do inevitably affect objectivity, and thus, the site’s credibility as a research source . Read their page on the famous Australian Creationist Ken Ham and Wikipedias and you’ll see just how biased RW can be.

It has pros and cons:

Pros:

• RationalWiki provides information on plenty of things that it can be rare to find information on any other way
• They have some well-written articles.
• They occasionally can be funny at times
• The site is very easy to navigate.

Cons:

• What they have articles on is very bizarre.
• Some of the articles are very badly written, and do not have enough science.
• Their use of the word woo is puzzling, and seems to be to deter outsiders.
• They often get way too excited and write in ALL CAPS

I think it is fine to read, and to cite in informal discussions on some topics, but would be displaced by a better alternative.

I mostly don’t like it.

One thing I do like about RationalWiki is that they, on several occasions, take a rather nuanced view on various social justice issues that you don’t typically see from either SJWs or anti-SJWs themselves.

However, if you’re open-minded to the paranormal in any way… you don’t even have to be a 100% true believer in the paranormal, just be open to the possibility of it… then the editors there pretty much don’t like you.

It’s possible to be critical of the authoritarian aspects of organized religion without feeling a need to look down on people who are spiritual in the slightest.

So maybe a little more science, and a little less snark.

I had never looked at rational wiki before today, but after looking at a handful of “articles”, I think they're more overblown opinion pieces, but all of them had a serious left leaning theme. All of them. So to me its just another example of liberal/socialist propaganda that they love to pretend is news, or news worthy. In other words its b.s. and don't waste your time on it.