Conservapedia:The Zeuglodon Blues

I'm certainly not suggested [sic] TK be brought back into this discussion group. Not unless we can be sure he'll keep these discussions confidential; and his hot temper argues against that.

In March 2010, a discussion board of the sysops at Conservapedia was leaked.

Most probably authentic and spanning the time from early 2008 to early 2009, the discussion brings back fond memories of cherished Conservapedian moments. As every reader finds his own nuggets of lulz, feel free to add.

Common themes
Looking beyond individual discussions, several things came up again and again throughout the year.

The most striking issue was that Andy's personal opinion was explicitly regarded as The Truth. This is why Conservapedia labels itself as a fact-based and trustworthy encyclopedia while at the same time simply being Andy's blog. Not toeing the party line (or even openly discussing with Andy about such things) was viewed as insubordination. TerryH, in particular, seems to have placed Andy in his personal pantheon.

This also resulted in the growing trend that public discussions in general were highly undesirable. Not only was discussing regarded as a waste of time, but some sysops figured that Conservapedia would be able to attract high-ranking conservatives like William Bennett or Ann Coulter if only people stopped questioning obvious truths like Obama using his mind control powers to win the election.

In fact, most CP sysops had a general problem with people who disagreed with their views and described the opposition in ways that would make WW2 propaganda posters jealous: Anybody who disagreed with any of God King Andy's views was a liberal, and when liberals are not busy shoving drugs and aborted babies into family's faces or burning churches, they are trying to force conservatives to think like them. The only group worse than regular liberals are RationalWiki members whose sole goal is to destroy Conservapedia. The war against RW will only be won when one of them is in prison.

Another trend was how the "Sysops are not allowed to undo another sysop's blocks" rule was handled. Sysops were supposed to discuss these things in private or in the discussion group because they wanted to present a united front to the public. Questioning a sysop's decision in public was undermining his authority. Similarly, those who questioned even the strangest blocks were accused of aiding liberals and saboteurs who aimed to destroy the site; new users were regarded as undercover saboteurs until proven otherwise. There were two ways of proving yourself; either by gaining Andy's favor (e.g., noted parodists Bugler and Rod Weathers) or by providing evidence as to one's real identity.

Andy displays his monumental gullibility
Andy explains his reasons for reappointing TK as a sysop during the 01 January 2009 promotions:

Andy
From: Judd Gregg 

'''From: Tom Moore & Phil Scheur blocking decisions

Nuggets of Wisdom from Uncle Ed
'''From "How long are we going to tolerate TK?" (part 1):'''

'''From "How long are we going to tolerate TK?" (part 2):'''

From "Guidelines Change/Quality of Sources: On whether books or internet sources are better:

From "Socialist Healthcare Files" On use of the International Phonetic Alphabet spellings at Wikipedia:

'''From "Old sysop RobS"

From "Inappropriate block by bugler, followed by 'edit warring' over it"

From "Unencyclopedic?  Ed "Stubby" Poor, explains why he knows what constitutes an encyclopedic entry:

From "Problem with Math entries" 

From "Curses and insults 

Nuggets of wisdom shit from TK
From "whraglyn":

From "The After-effects of RodWeathers and Bugler (or why TK doesn't think wiki-admin is necessary)

From "HelpJazz

From "Fwd: Conservapedia e-mail

Geo.plrd
From:"Inappropriate block by bugler, followed by 'edit warring' over it" (With that kind of thinking, no wonder conservatives lead us into things like Enron and the Credit Crunch.) From:"Massive attack on site"

Lenski affair
From folder 610, file eafacd8f8

'' Summary: PJR (notably one of the more intelligent members of Conservapedia by an order of magnitude) has reservations about Andy's letter to Lenski. DanH and TerryH can't imagine what could possibly go wrong, with TerryH proclaiming ironically that evolutionists are so over-confident that they never expect to be discredited. LearnTogether senses that it might be wiser to follow the lead of AiG or other experienced groups. Then Lenski's reply arrives at Conservapedia, creating a shockwave of pwnage which was still measurable on its fourth passage around the earth. Ed Poor reads Lenski's reply and declares victory.''

Read your own name
The first thing for a man of some vanity is to search for his own name to appear in the discussions...

DiEb
... only appeared two times, in 490 and 500, when Philip J. Rayment says to Ed Poor: You've been known to misconstrue comments before (e.g. DiEb), and ''And no, it's fallacious to argue that a legitimate newbie would surely find a way to get in touch with us and convince us of their sincerity. DiEb is an example: He sent numerous e-mails to various people, and got only /one/ response! And even then it took an effort, because we are not inclined to believe people who say that they are innocent!''

Sid
Mostly a bad memory of CP's ancient past, but every now and then becomes a looming threat at the horizon despite not having raised a finger on CP since his banhammering. As TK speculated in the 230 folder: Remember, the guys there, have several names, like GhengasKahnt/BrianCo, who is also MadMin there, CatWatcher, etc., etc. I am pretty sure Bugler is Sid or Wikinterpreter. Major claim to fame would be the (quickly obsoleted) anti-hack script from the time someone rewrote CP's links. But alas, it looks suspicious with the rw mentions in there as Dean noted in the 530 folder...

Qwest
From folder 120: Karajou: "QWest may have shot himself in the foot when he posted that bit of garbage (the Conservapedia hitlist), and if it suggests something worse than political assassination we can go after him.  I suggest notifying his ISP as to what transpired. Then I suggest notifying each of the senators on the list, as well as the state governors mentioned in the article." Followed by TK: "YES. I have no idea how to, but put it into his block to scare him."

Ace McWicked
In 450;1c70320451ecdedb, Ace McWicked is identified as various "Bill" characters, BillC, BillD, BillE etc. This leads to the quip by Brian MacDonald that Ace "displayed too much of a persistance in getting into Conservapedia under whatever name he can create". Obviously, he may not have noticed the unusable names game.

In 460;0d375229566cf1c0:

[Ed. Emphasis added, pipes removed and IP addresses obscured]

Plan approved, execution delayed

 * On March 17, 2009, Conservative suggested to install social networking buttons on his pet articles (or the entire site, whichever would have been easier). CPWebmaster and Andy approved, yet one year later, we still can't dig it up.
 * Ed suggested at least twice to allow users to edit their own talk page after a block or ban in order to communicate more easily with the blocking sysop and to quickly clarify if there had been an error. But even though it's just a simple option and nobody was against it, the proposal was never implemented.
 * Namespaces for essays and debates have been suggested since at least April 2007 (making it older than the Night of the Blunt Knives). In June 2008, the topic was brought up again, and Andy promised to make it a priority. The proposal will soon have its third anniversary without being set into motion. Although this useful proposal languishes, 8 namespaces were created for the quite useless "Contest"; setting these special namespaces up was actually more difficult than setting up the proposed namespaces, because the contest namespaces had associated user groups and visibility settings.
 * Even though mentioning "RationalWiki" in any way on CP is absolutely forbidden, Karajou had planned to dedicate a CP article on it in 2008.
 * Another of Karajou's stillborn suggestions was that CP be divided up into various "curriculums", with a sysop heading up each one. Examples included Religion, Christianity (which had to be kept separate from Religion... interesting), Science and History. However, apart from TerryH leaping in a declaring himself "professor and chairman" of the Department of Bible Study, and at least as "adjunct professor" in the Departments of Astronomy/Cosmology and Creation Science nothing happened.

Misc. observations

 * The Information Warrior's Handbook was cited frequently and has completely warped the perception of how a trustworthy editor should act. Apparently, because several passages of the Handbook basically instruct socks to act like normal good-faith editors, people who act normally have to be socks and those who don't act normally while still toeing the party line are fine, right? Hilarity ensued, and the fallout included:
 * blocking zero-edit users after a certain delay (between 48 hours and some months)
 * suspecting HelpJazz to be a deep-cover parodist because he had been helpful and had stuck around for a long time,
 * justifying Bugler's blocks even after he had been identified as a parodist, reasoning that - according to the Handbook - socks are supposed to act like good Christian conservatives and not to block innocents.
 * Ken made a thread to announce that two atheists have created YouTube videos about his Atheism article and (maybe rightfully) thinks that a video of Andy promoting his pet article would have a brown note effect on atheists. The reaction of his fellow sysops is eccentric even by their own high standards: The discussion instantly turns to THE RAPTURE.
 * Filed under "Policy Proposals from Hell", Ed Poor made the suggestion to put all new users on probation and to ban them unless enough sysops approve of them. In the same vein was his suggestion to block them for a month if they don't contribute good content regularly. Nobody reacted to this proposal, likely because CP had already been operating under a much stricter code of conduct: Ban them if at least one sysop disapproves.
 * PJR provides a bit of information on how much RW influences CP pageviews - one day, he created two articles. One was mentioned on RW, and two days later had 273 views. The other, un-mentioned article had 11.
 * Karajou - "This user is in violation of 90/10, but he agrees with us. Let's change/ignore the rule."
 * Karajou: "Sorry to bust your bubble, Phillip, but when I say so-and-so troll is AmesG, he's AmesG." Sadly, everybody appears to be AmesG.