RationalWiki is a politically left-leaning website that skews towards atheism/agnosticism in terms of its worldview. RationalWiki has a pro-atheism bias. For example, one of its articles is entitled FAQ for the Newly Deconverted.[3] RationalWiki has a small fraction of the web traffic it had before October 2019 (see: RationalWiki and web traffic).
The Innis Maggiore Ad Agency, which works with major corporations, says concerning rebranding/repositioning: "When a brand’s meaning is strongly established in the mind, it’s extremely difficult — if not impossible — to change. It is possible to refine, adjust and hone a brand’s meaning when necessary. But repositioning a brand with a wholesale change? Hardly a chance."[4]
Margaret Thatcher said: “Being powerful is like being a lady... If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.”[5] So perhaps the name RationalWiki was a poor website name if RationalWikians wanted to convey that its contributors and web content is rational. RationalWiki has been called irrational by so many people that it created an essay at its website entitled I thought this was supposed to be RATIONALWiki which is highly linked to on its website.[6][7] RationalWiki, by its own admissions, has experienced various incidences of mental illness being displayed on its website (see: RationalWiki and mental illness).
RationalWiki contributor User: User:TornadoLTS wrote:
“ | But to give a more complete picture, there is a concept in branding that "Everything counts". Everything that an organization does either creates and builds its brand or weakens and/or destroys its brand. If there are any incongruencies or inconsistencies, it is harmful to a brand. I will give an illustration. I was in communication with a RationalWiki contributor who was unhappy with the amount of dysfunction that was happening at RationalWiki at the time. He was complaining about User:Oxyaena, User: GrammarCommie and others. And he made the charge that there was a lot of mental illness among RationalWiki contributors. If his charge is true, that would be a brand incongruency/inconsistency for a website called RationalWiki.[8] | ” |
RationalWiki users have a higher incidence of mental illness than the general public which is common for the Western atheist and Western secular leftist population as a whole (see: Atheism and mental illness and Secular leftists and psychogenic illness).
The abstract for the journal article Health and Well-Being Among the Non-religious: Atheists, Agnostics, and No Preference Compared with Religious Group Members published in the Journal of Religion and Health indicates: "On dimensions related to psychological well-being, atheists and agnostics tended to have worse outcomes than either those with religious affiliation or those with no religious preference."[9]
According to an article published in the Los Angeles Times in 2007, RationalWiki members "by their own admission" vandalize Conservapedia. So early on, RationalWiki had a branding problem.[10]
Seer Interactive is a big data digital marketing firm with many Fortune 500 clients.
Seer Interactive points out "When branded traffic is down year-over-year or month-over-month but organic visibility has not fluctuatuated, this may indicate a decrease in either brand demand or brand awareness. By leveraging Google Trends, you can quickly understand if interest in your brand has changed." When Seer Interactive refers to "organic traffic" they are referring to a website's Google traffic going to its website.
Snark is mocking in a sarcastic way. There is a logical fallacy called the appeal to ridicule logical fallacy. From a branding perspective, RationalWiki readers may have the perception that there is an incongruence between the name RationalWiki and a website that is overreliant on mocking. And because RationalWiki covers a lot of medical science topics, readers may feel uncomfortable with snark because it involves humor and the public doesn't usually associate science with sarcastic humor.
The RationalWiki Moderator Bongolian wrote at RationalWiki: "Over time, RW has clearly become less snarky over time, particularly in 2017 when the Scientific Point of View became favored over the Snarky Point of View when there was any issue over SPOV." [11] Historically speaking, atheists have a reputation for having an overreliance on mockery in terms of their rhetoric (see: Atheism and mockery).
RationalWiki tripled its organic traffic from 2017 to late 2019 in a big way and then various things happened to cause a massive decrease in organic traffic in November 2019 and beyond (See: RationalWiki and Google referral traffic). Google Trends data from 2017 to November 2020 indicates that worldwide Google searches for the keyword "RationalWiki" bounced between a somewhat narrow range between 2017 to June 2020 (The range on a relative scale varied between 67 and 90) which presumably was due to websites with large amounts of web traffic mentioning RationalWiki periodically during that time (see graph to the upper right in this section). Starting in June 2020, worldwide Google searches for the keyword "RationalWiki" saw a significant decline.
The data does not support the notion that a change from a less Snarky point of view to a more Scientific Point of View made a big improvement in RationalWiki's brand awareness. RationalWiki's brand awareness stayed about the same from July 2014 to June 2020 even though its organic traffic tripled during some of this time period. And then, as noted above, something happened around June 2020 that caused RationalWiki's brand awareness to go significantly down.
As noted above, the RationalWiki Moderator Bongolian wrote at RationalWiki: "Over time, RW has clearly become less snarky over time, particularly in 2017 when the Scientific Point of View became favored over the Snarky Point of View when there was any issue over SPOV." [12]
As noted above, worldwide searches for RationalWiki did not go up post 2017 despite RationalWiki adopting a less snarky point of view (see graphic above). But as noted above, RationalWiki tripled its organic traffic from 2017 to late 2019 in a big way and then various things happened to cause a massive decrease in organic traffic in November 2019 and beyond (See: RationalWiki and Google referral traffic). In addition, starting in June of 2020, the Google search term "RationalWiki" started seeing a big drop.
Although RationalWiki is strictly not an atheist/agnostic website and it has some theist contributors, it is worth noting that worldwide Google searches for the term "atheist" began to see a steady and consistent decline from the period April 2015 to 2018 before largely leveling off again (see graphic above). So RationalWiki decision to use a less snarky point of view may have had a modest effect. Starting in June of 2020, the Google search term "RationalWiki" started seeing a big drop and so the use of a less snarky point of view seems to have had little to no effect on its brand awareness during this time (But RationalWiki's massive decrease in organic traffic beginning in November 2019 somewhat clouds this issue).
In June of 2022, SimilarWeb reported that RationalWiki received about 40% of its traffic from the United States. Given that most of the websites with a large amount of traffic and most of the news websites with a very large amount of traffic need to know about RationalWiki in order to mention RationalWiki (Most such websites are in the United States), RationalWiki's loss of an enormous amount of Google referral traffic makes it less likely that such websites will mention RationalWiki in the future. Also, trust in major news organization is very low in the United States at this time.[13] Furthermore, the atheist movement has died (see: Decline of the atheist movement).
RationalWiki users have a higher incidence of mental illness than the general public which is common for the Western atheist and Western secular leftist population as a whole (see: Atheism and mental illness and Secular leftists and psychogenic illness).
The abstract for the journal article Health and Well-Being Among the Non-religious: Atheists, Agnostics, and No Preference Compared with Religious Group Members published in the Journal of Religion and Health indicates: "On dimensions related to psychological well-being, atheists and agnostics tended to have worse outcomes than either those with religious affiliation or those with no religious preference."[14]
See also: Atheism and social outcasts
In 2020, at the RationalWiki Discord server, the RationalWiki Administrator and RationalWiki Media Foundation board member DuceMoosolini said the RationalWiki website attracts "all sorts of weird people".
Atheists have an above-average incidence of autism and Asperger's syndrome (see: Atheism and autism).
The atheist PZ Myers and his blog audience scored higher than average on a Asperger's syndrome test (see: Atheist PZ Myers' blog audience and their reported Asperger's quotient test results).
Atheists are known for having poor social skills (see: Atheism and social/interpersonal intelligence). According to an international study done by William Bainbridge, atheism is frequent among people whose interpersonal social obligations are weak and is also linked to lower fertility rates in advanced industrial nations (See also: Atheism and fertility rates).[16] The RationalWikian user/editer base has a significant number of quarrelsome, socially challenged males as evidenced the archives of the dispute resolution areas of their website - specifically the archives for RationalWiki's "Chicken Coop" and the archives for RationalWiki's "All things in moderation".
See also: RationalWiki and its web visitor interest in pornography
See also: RationalWiki and web visitor interest in pornography
On the mainpage of its website, RationalWiki indicates a primary purpose of the website is to engage in "Explorations of authoritarianism and fundamentalism".
See also: Atheism and leadership and Atheism and social skills
The godless have a reputation for having poor leadership (see: Atheism and leadership) and as can be seen below RationalWiki is no exception to this matter which helps explains its socially challenged atmosphere and impoverished state as well as it falling web traffic and falling influence. See also: Atheism and social skills
On July 14, 2022, during the election process for the RationalMedia Foundation board of directors, RationalWiki users admitted that RationalWikians were offering weak candidates so far.[21]
See also: GrammarCommie
GrammarCommie (GC) is largely a former RationalWiki administrator. He retired and vowed to never come back a few times (He came back a few times. His last post was July 13, 2022).[23]
He formerly served on the RationalWiki Foundation board of directors until he had a mental health crisis which consisted of him threatening to cut himself and commit suicide in order to get his way at RationalWiki (See: Screenshot captures of RationalWiki posts related to GrammnarCommie). He is an atheist and leftist.
GrammarCommie has anger management issues which sometimes results in him angrily posting abusive posts in all caps laced with profanity (see also: Atheism and anger and Atheism and profanity).[24][25] The RationalWiki admin who goes by the moniker CorruptUser wrote about GrammarCommie on March 25, 2021: "GC has this belief that there's a Certain Way you have to make arguments, and seeing anyone deviating from that Certain Way results in him losing control, and he has little ability to regain his composure. During this time he will write vicious screeds, make threats, or engage in blockwars including removal of rights."[26] See also: Atheism and social/interpersonal intelligence
GrammarCommie frequently bans people which contributes to RationalWiki being a wiki that has a low edits to blocked editor accounts ratio at a wiki. He also frequently reverts other editors. A wiki with a low edit to block ratio tends to be a closed-minded wiki that is dogmatic and intolerant (see also: Atheism and dogmatism and Atheism and intolerance).
He is also known for his bullying. Research on the dark triad of personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) indicate a correlation with bullying.[27] See also: Atheism and narcissism and Atheism and psychopathy
In June of 2022, GrammarCommie was banning and unbanning himself. Before banning himself initially, GrammarCommie said that RationalWiki was "half-dead" and filled with "twits".[28] Specifically, he wrote: "You know what, fine. Take your half dead site, where most of you twits obsess over one or two articles and et the rest of the site rot, where I can't even perform basic category maintenance without someone getting on my ass, which by the way is why i haven't touched mainspace in ages, where trolls are humored as long as there's the barest minimum level of plausible deniability, and shove it right up your f**king *ss."[29] In reply, the RationalWiki user 2friedeggs said: "This site is dying for a reason" and he indicated that GrammarCommie was chasing good faith editors away. On July 3, 2022, the RationalWiki Moderator LeftyGreenMario gave Grammarcommie an ultimatum. He could either unblock himself and "contribute to the community without taking swipes at other people" or he could stay blocked.[30] In response, GrammarCommie replied: "@LeftyGreenMario What, exactly, am I supposed to contribute? I try to deal with trolls and asshats, I get burned. I try to clean up categories, I get burned. So. What, exactly, am I supposed to contribute?".[31]
GrammarCommie often pontificates about politics and economics and sees himself as very knowledgeable about these areas despite describing himself as being lower middle class. On July 30, 2021, GrammarCommie wrote: "I asked for data, not random factoids. Just as we can't infer that every white person lives at the lower middle class level because I do...".[32] He is also known for correcting people's grammar and being intolerant of people's grammatical errors.[33]
GrammarCommie describes himself thusly, "Deeply cynical and borderline misanthropic. Very much not Utopian. Unconventional left-winger. If you want more info engage me in a conversation. I'm an asshole, but I'm honest."[34] GrammarCommmie is admin at RationalWiki, which is a wiki that intentionally lies about its web traffic statistics on its article about itself in that it greatly inflates its web traffic and global market share
See also: LeftyGreenMario
LeftyGreenMario (LGM) is a lady RationalWiki (RW) moderator and administrator. She is also a RationalWiki Foundation trustee. RationalWiki.org is a politically left-leaning wiki website that skews towards atheism/agnosticism in terms of its worldview. LeftyGreenMario became a RationalWiki moderator in January of 2018.[35]
LeftyGreenMario is a feminist, self-described asexual, atheist, evolutionist, proponent of abortion, environmentalist and a video game enthusiast.[36] LeftyGreenMario is a student of Herbert Marcuse's partisan tolerance, and almost singlehandedly destroyed what little bit of balance and tolerance of diverse viewpoints existed in the Rationalwiki community since its founding in 2007. As a Trustee of the RationalMedia Foundation,[37] LeftyGreenMario has led the project down the road of leftist intolerance. Many longtime contributors abandoned the project after her rise as a central figure. See also: RationalWiki and web traffic and LeafyGreenMario and Google referral traffic
Google has a number of quality indicators by which is rates a website. According to SEMRush, RationalWiki had 1.49 million monthly referral visits from Google in January of 2018 (which is when LeafyGreenMario became a RationalWiki moderator). According to SEMRush, RationalWiki's peak Google referral traffic was 3.5 million visits per month in August 2019. In June of 2020, according to SEMRush, RationalWiki had 464,000 monthly referrals from Google. In January of 2022, according to SEMRUsh, RationalWiki had 185,661 monthly referrals from Google. RationalWiki has lost a massive amount of web traffic since its peak in August of 2019 (see: RationalWiki and web traffic).
LeftyGreenMario is not sure if she has bad judgment (see screenshot graphic to the right). She feels as if she is a bad person due to her gossiping about other RationalWikians at the RationalWiki Discord server.
She was threatened with impeachment by a former RationalWiki Moderator and current Administrator of RationalWiki, who goes by the username Ace McWicked, due to her involvement in the RationalWiki GossipGate scandal (She gossiped about Ace McWicked). She apologized to Ace McWicked to turn things around, to no effect (see screenshot graphic to the right).
As noted above, RationalWiki has a pro-atheism bias. For example, one of its articles is entitled FAQ for the Newly Deconverted.[40]
Concerning distrust of atheists, sociological research indicates that atheists are widely distrusted in both religious cultures and nonreligious cultures.[41][42][43][44] According to a study published in the International Journal for The Psychology of Religion: "anti-atheist prejudice is not confined either to dominantly religious countries or to religious individuals, but rather appears to be a robust judgment about atheists."[43] The study found that many atheists do not trust other atheists as well.[43]
On August 15, 2022, KarmaPolice wrote: "I have... come across RW articles which had lessened authority due to it being a stub, being too America-centric and/or being outdated. RW also lacks 'authority' in the plethora of articles which it perhaps could/should have but currently does not."[45]
The full-service marketing and branding agency Hanlon indicates that three of the keys for an organization to repair its brand is humility, acknowledging problems and asking for forgiveness.[46] Since atheists have a reputation for being very proud and unforgiving, the probability of RationalWiki repairing its brand is low (see: Atheism and arrogance and Atheism and forgiveness).