User:Ed Poor

Hi, I'm Uncle Ed from Wikipedia. I'm one of the earliest remaining contributors there. I used to be a Developer and Bureaucrat - but I didn't scale well with the project. People said I was throwing my weight around too much, so I resigned bureaucrat and was later de-sysopped.

I was the driving force behind a few important software features and social innovations at Wikipedia:
 * 1) The ability of bureaucrats to promote sysops with a mouse click (instead of needing a developer to write a SQL query each time)
 * 2) The ability of "blocked" users to post to their own user talk page.
 * 3) The convention of "transcluding" text in AFD discussions, et al.
 * 4) Tim Starling credits my extensive use of date-calculating templates as the impetus for his decision to write ParserFunctions.

There's more, but you guys hate it when I brag. ;-)

Two small thoughts
"What we believe about God is the most important thing about us." -- A.W. Tozer

"A lot of atheists hide behind rationalism; when you start probing, you find their reactions are quite emotional. In fact, I've never met an atheist who wasn't angry." -- Rick Warren

A scientific American's idea of being rational
First, then, let us, as rational creatures, be ever ready to acknowledge God as our Creator and daily Preserver; and that we are each of us individually dependent on his special care and good will towards us, in supporting the wonderful action of nature which constitutes our existence; and in preserving us from the casualties, to which our complicated and delicate structure is liable. Let us also, knowing our entire dependence on Divine Benevolence, as rational creatures, do ourselves the honor to express personally and frequently, our thanks to him for his goodness; and to present our petitions to Him for the favors which we constantly require. This course is rational, even without the aid of revelation: but being specially invited to this course, by the divine word, and assured of the readiness of our Creator to answer our prayers and recognize our thanks, it is truly surprising that any rational being, who has ever read the inspired writings should willingly forgo this privilege, or should be ashamed to be seen engaged in this rational employment, or to have it known that he practices it. --Rufus Porter

My support for this project
I suppose I should submit a writing plan:
 * 1) I'm interested in analyzing the anti-science movement, particularly ideas which attract support from powerful organizations or are widely held by laymen without any evidence - or even in despite contradictory evidence.
 * 2) I'm curious about crank ideas, but actually sympathetic to cranks (the people who espouse them. Every once in a while a crank turns out to be right, like that Viennese doctor who claimed an "invisible substance" was killing women with childbed fever.
 * 3) I despise what political authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism have done to retard scientific and social progress - but I'm inclined to respect authority in general and have strong religious beliefs. This might seem a bit contradictory to some.

Please feel free to comment, but I'll see your replies more quickly on my user talk page.

Don't tase, me bro!
I enjoy being teased; the worst thing you could do to me would be to ignore me. --Uncle Ed bug me 08:54, 27 October 2007 (EDT)