Conservapedia:Ed Poor

This Conservapedia-related article is of largely historical interest and is no longer the focus of RationalWiki today. Conservapedia (and religious fundamentalism to an extent) was a major focal point in the early history of RationalWiki, but long ago ceased coming up with new ways to appall and amuse. Our energies are now spent debunking other, fresher examples of pseudoscientific claims, authoritarianism, and deceit. For RationalWiki's less ancient content, try the Best of RationalWiki.

Ed Poor "on campus"

Trus me Conservapedia

Introduction

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Commentary

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In-depth analysis

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Fun

Article Matrix Greatest Insights Parthian Shots v - t - e

“”I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer

“” expect more movie articles about teenage girls rather than preadolescents.

“” I think it's time for Jews to grow up and show some adult responsibility.

Ed "Don't be a dick" Poor (AKA User #188) is an awful person and overpoweringly stupid (even after applying the substantial curve that applies to Conservapedians in general). He was a Wikipedia (WP) sysop and bureaucrat before coming over to Conservapedia (CP). "Uncle Ed" (as he styles himself in his sigs) has been a member of the Unification Church since August 1977 and often decidedly conservative in his contributions.

For the most part he was a well-respected and highly valued contributor at WP, with much good work under his belt, until 2006 or so, when he started letting the power go to his head. After several incidents led to RfCs and eventually to the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, Ed lost almost all of his privileges above basic editing.

For some reason in his lengthy history on Wikipedia he didn't learn how to write even a halfway encyclopedic article (even on topics where he shows no bias). For example, he often starts very short articles consisting of one or two sentences consisting almost entirely of someone else's quote which he is unable to even reference properly.

Ed the Conservapedian

A screencap of the masterpiece

He is now a respected sysop at Conservapedia, where his biases and power games are welcomed and allowed to run rampant. He has created a vast number of absurdly short stubs, usually consisting of a single, vague quote (possibly inspired by Conservative). His relics include the "Communism and feminism" article , the "Platypus jokes" section and the fabled "Two meters". For some reason he thinks this is worth reporting to his master, who then feels he must compliment Ed (the same way a parent compliments his child when s/he makes horrible drawings).

Ed is King Midas, except that everytime he touches an article, it turns into crap: The Poor Touch. He also manages Conservapedia's slave labor through the use of writing assignments. According to Ed, refusing such an assignment is a valid reason for a block.

Ed the Wikipedian

Ed currently (26 Apr '11) has 136 subpages on WP

Ed was not only among the earliest Wikipedia administrators but was also promoted to bureaucrat. However, his POV pushing, controversial editing and administrative manner, resulted in him losing most of his elevated rights. In true conservative style, Ed portrays himself as the victim, claiming his demotion was due to WP employing "the principle of 'truth in numbers'" to marginalize all but the Liberal viewpoint on all serious matters of disagreement." However, despite his lowly status he never tires of reminding people he was Wikipedia's 188th user, as if it was an achievement.

One seriously excellent contribution Ed made to Wikipedia, which he deserves credit for, was his contribution to the Neutral Point Of View policy: the concept of "writing for the enemy" in which he lauds the "try to 'walk a mile in their' shoes instead of judging them" attitude towards dispute resolution. Sadly he has not carried this through to CP.

He has the rare distinction of a place in the Village stocks, for an act of Wikipedia boldness way back in 2005, where he deleted the entire articles for deletion process, and briefly broke the entire website because the servers couldn't keep up.

He was the first author of Wikipedia's page on fart lighting.

Check out Ed's contributions to Wikipedia. There's always a laugh to be had somewhere in there. His MO is to create drive-by stubs, often with a single quote, just like he does at Conservapedia. When he isn't creating janitorial work for other users, he's demanding they help him maintain his delusions. "Uncle" Ed is little more than a Wikipedia parasite.

A rather amusing entry on his WP "user talk" page:

== You have no conscience ==

The fact that a philistine like you contributes here is a testament to why wikipedia will always fail. Read a book sometime. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.16.202.101 20:59, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Ed Moon

He has reverted critical edits to, and subsequently locked, the articles about the Unification Church and Rev. Moon, blocked the editors who made these critical contributions and is now deleting all articles about Unification Church-affiliated organizations/"fronts". In August 2006, it was noted at dailykos.com, by someone commenting under the handle "lotlizard":

"A timely warning that includes the netroots too"

We mustn't let our guard down here either. Web communities and media projects are just as susceptible to this kind of manipulation. Consider the editing of the Sun Myung Moon article on Wikipedia. The article's content has been heavily influenced, if not controlled outright, by a self-appointed gatekeeper known by the userid "Ed Poor" (comments are signed using an alias "Uncle Ed"). According to his own declaration, "Uncle Ed" has been a follower of the Unification Church since 1977."

Ed has responded to this statement:

Nah, I put half of them back. I just objected to their plagiaristic nature. Take a look at 'em now!

Ed Catches Ed the Plagiarist

Ed also cares about catching plagiarists. In October 2010, he found that Wikipedia's article on ice cores was plagiarized from a far-right report on climate change. Will Ed ban the plagiarist? Of course not. Ed caught himself!

Ed at other wikis

Ed Poor has accounts under his name at Citizendium (CZ) and a Storehouse of Knowledge (aSK). At Citizendium, he introduces himself and presents his academic achievements:

I am a computer programmer, with a concentration in user interface design and database programming. I pushed for several improvements in MediaWiki, notably the feature that lets blocked users edit their own talk page; and I got them to program MediaWiki extension ParserFunctions, which enables users to perform simple mathematical computations. (My Template:Age is embedded in thousands of Wikipedia biography pages.)

I am strong (if not vociferous!) advocate of neutrality in encyclopedia articles, particularly when they touch upon controversies of great public import.

I am also a sysop at Conservapedia (where I was voted in unanimously by the student board after only 6 days there).

I work well with young people, encouraging them to be polite and work hard for the common goal of writing clear, factual, interesting and relevant articles.

Academic qualifications:

I have no degrees; I'm a self-taught amateur in just about everything I know. However, I scored 760 on the math SATs in 1973 and got a 3 in AP calculus.

I understand formal logic and the scientific method well enough to tell whether a theory has been proved or not.

As at 18th Feb '11 his last (numerous) edits on CZ were on the 28th & 29th April '10. He seems to have a strange fascination with Alice (the Wonderland one).

At a Storehouse of Knowledge, he is willing to let others benefit from his experience:

I was an early, possibly influential contributor to Wikipedia. I helped New World Encyclopedia get started 5 years ago. I'm also a sysop at Conservapedia.

I'm hoping to provide the same level of devotion and loyalty to the aims of this project that I provided to the aforementioned.

Wikiversity

In July 2008 he became active at Wikiversity (he joined in March 2006) and asked "Should I apply for adminship here?" (in the edit comment). He's raising the spectre of those evilutionists again, complaining about being outnumbered on Wikipedia.

Infobitt

A new, rather terrible project to collate the news (by creating bulletpointed lists) was started by Larry Sanger in 2015, and Ed was an early adopter. A typical Ed Poor contribution is:

• Tea Party bigwig Judson Phillips said: Many conservatives are shocked to discover tolerance isn’t what the homosexual rights movement wants. It wants tyranny.
  • There is no tolerance for religious beliefs from the homosexual movement nor the radical left (i.e., the Democratic Party). If you dare to stand up for your religious beliefs, you will be bankrupted.
  • American Christianity and the Party of Treason are now on a collision course. Only one will survive.
  • The Christians are tolerant while the Party of Treason, the name real Americans have for the Democrats, wants complete obedience to the leftist orthodoxy.

Sourced to the also-nutty Washington Times, of course. Other contributions by him include "President Obama blames our current malaise on everything except for his own failed policies." and "Tammy Bruce accuses liberals of deliberately creating an illiterate underclass who can't help but vote for the failed liberal policies that keep them down." And, of course, "The London Dail[y] Mail on Sunday presented irrefutable evidence that official predictions of global climate warming have been catastrophically flawed." - which, to anyone who knows the Daily Mail, is hilarious.

Ed-isms

When the Eds rise, civilization will fall.

Ed the blocker

Ed bollocks blocks unfairly.

Ed Poor also blocks without warning, giving block reasons inconsistent with contributions.

Ed and young women

Sometimes, Poor can become really creepy when discerning unhealthy erotic undertones from sundry topics:

• First inklings of Ed's shame with his lurid fascination for slutty teens and schoolgirls panties schoolgirls' panties^img?

• Talking of which, 6 years is a long time to bear a grudge just because you didn't get to pop that "slutty heathen's"^img cherry.

• Too much pretty girl^img on view!

• One girl with a camera is enough!^img

• Get those pants off ladies!^img

• Ed wrote an article about Daisy Duke^img, but none about her cousins Bo or Luke. Notwithstanding the item just above, he seems to have no problem with the kind of pants that Daisy wears.

• Although, he is also concerned about "short skirts that would expose private parts^img".

• He wants teens to enjoy Conjugal Love^img. Someone else pointed out^img that contraceptives help against pregnancy, also that teenage marriages may become unhappy later. Ed reverted^img it and warned^img the contributor. Does he prefer it if teenagers marry young and are unhappy later? If he lives in a Moonie community he may not know very much about how men and their wives manage in normal homes.

• He really respects his wife^img

• Turned on by Star Trek babes^img

• Magical sitcoms of the 1960s - "all with pretty ladies having the magic"^img.

Ed the Wikimeister

OK, someone else can do the hard work..

• Does anyone know how to work the "gallery" feature?^img

• The classic Two metres^img (merged from the original).

• The undeservedly overlooked Rows and columns^img.

• Ed constantly boasts that he created the age template on wikipedia - the single most used template. However the first four edits by him don't work. Initially template was up for deletion. It wasn't until Misza fixed it that it worked.

• "I'm not a scholar and I suck at research." Really?

• Can someone else do the work please? ("I'm making a new, simple intro for developers"). No ref section, no category, no incoming links, no intelligence!

(Ed has been known for his (lack of) sourcing since at least 2003. "See Ed, you *can* source things when someone pushes you: now how about doing it without being pushed, as routine?")

• "Blah, blah, blah, blah and ... okay, someone else finish it"
• Ed takes his ball and bat and goes home
• Ed has taken to sticking poorly attributed quotes in undocumented templates and transcluding them into one or two articles. Perhaps he imagines the quotes' genius rubs off on him for finding them and that throngs of Edloving CP editors will jump to use them enough to justify a template. Or, more likely, he has a childlike fascination with the magic of wp:transclusion, as he continues the practice on CP after having its idiocy explained to him on WP. Not one single other person has followed his " lead."

Ed the Moony

• Er, didn't the Moonies already do this?

• Poppa Moon never said that! It was merely unofficial notes by an audience member... published on one of the Moonies' official sites...

• Ed defends linking to teh Moony Encyclopedia on WP (& is subsequently pwned).

Ed and furriners

• Who is welcome? Not uppity ragheads, that's for sure!

• Temporarily sworn off the kiddies-and-sex crusade, you just know Ed's gotta have a dabble with the "Nigger"

• Ed's type always "start with the Jews" - what do those kike faggots expect?

• Letting a Moonie edit about Judaism is akin to letting bin Laden edit about America
• "We in the West are still waiting for the official apologies from Japan for the Rape of Nanking" (said to Japanese editor, JessicaT, as if the whole thing was her fault. Also, you'd think any such apology would be owed to the Chinese rather than Westerners.)

• And don't forget, Jewish boy scouts eat babies, too

Ed and the queers

• Homosexuality is a mental disorder.

• Statistical objection to gay kissing.

• Homosexuals must refrain from sexual activity.

• Or be locked up^img in insane asylums and prisons. Not literally!^img

• A torrent of homophobic nonsense^img.

Ed the mathematician and educator

• Math teacher Ed can't describe a bell curve, but he knows it has something to do with those stoopid lawn jockeys, right Ed?

• Come on now, be honest: do you actually mean that you help your kids with their homework Ed? As opposed to formally teaching "SAT math prep"^img?

Ed and others look after Jesus

SandraD who had already been warned^img replaced Conservapedia’s Jesus article with RationalWiki’s Jesus^img. Chungpennac noticed something and added his own touch^img. Ed Poor reverted back to RationalWiki version^img. TK made a minor revision^img leaving RationalWiki’s article roughly as it was. It took 4 revisions before Eddie noticed what was wrong and reverted RationalWiki’s article.

Naughty Ed

• It seems he edited someone else's comment deceitfully. Then he felt guilty or guessed he'd get found out. So he punished himself^img. But he carried^img on^img doing it^img anyway.

Uncyclopedia knows how to punish such behaviour.

Ed & Porn (Naughty "Uncle" Ed 2)

"Uncle" Ed seems to be a little bit confused about just what is acceptable on a "family friendly" site. For example:

• He deletes^img an image of a cartoon French maid, claiming that it's "a little bit too sexy for a “family” site."

• He removes^img references to the victims being prostitutes in the Jack the Ripper^img article, replacing the word "prostitute" with "women", whilst exclaiming "Don’t make it so lurid – I’ve got kids" in the edit comment.

However, as much as mention of French maids and prostitutes might make him flustered, Ed has no problem:

• Inserting into an article a joke about "santorum", the frothy mixture of lube and feces that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex, a colloquialism named after sainted wingnut former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.
• Adding a reference to "rimming" as an unsafe sexual practice in cp:Gay Bowel Syndrome

• Creating^img a typical Ed stub article, called "Sex with Animals", later moved (by Ed) to cp:Bestiality

• Creating^img "Hard-core Pornography" , which redirects to pornography^img... another article in which Ed features prominently in its editing history.

From Talk:Hard-core pornography^img Do we want an article on this? I have a lot of information, but it might disturb members of our target audience. --Ed Poor 08:47, 17 April 2007

This probably isn't somebody you should give your real name and phone number, even if he does ask nicely to "get in touch" off-site.

Modest Ed

Ed Poor's user page at Wikipedia

Ed claims to be modest but never seems to miss an opportunity to boast.

• "I am a SYSOP on this site, elected unanimously by the student board on my 6th day here."

• "...it just so happens that nearly every word I type, link I create, article or template I start - gains instant and widespread acceptance."

• "I've also taught SAT math prep, so if your article has any errors in arithmetic or statistics, prepare for a shock. I might just delete your entire contribution.
  I'm also pretty good at science, logic, history, etc. "

• "And since I'm user #188 at Wikipedia..." (should one remind Ed that Judas Iscariot was [allegedly] one of the first twelve to follow Jesus?)

• "I have a fairly good idea of what is encyclopedic. I have extensive experience in this matter, on two major online encyclopedia projects. One is Wikipedia, which I helped turn into the world's top ten website (Our emphasis). Another is the New World Encyclopedia, where I influenced hiring decisions of top management personnel (4 out of the 5 people I recommended are still there). I got the managing editor his job. I trained the area editors, then taught the managing editor's wife how to do this training in my place. I influenced the hiring of the physical science editor, the philosophy editor, and the social science editor. If deciding what is or is not encyclopedic is a crime, then I plead guilty as charged.

• "Ed is one of the first 200 contributors to join Wikipedia and is one of the top 200 contributors (by number of edits)." Ed lists his awards on his Wikipedia user page, the awards in question being ones that editors award themselves on reaching a certain length of service and number of edits. It's easy for Ed to achieve the long-service, since he appears to have little else to do with his life, but the number of edits is pretty meaningless. Ed appears in the top 200 because he is indeed a regular contributor, but it's helped by his habit of compulsive saving in between minor edits. This practice, while not incorrect, results in a convoluted article history and a great big edit count for Ed. If Ed were a student sitting in an English exam, he'd write three words and then call a teacher over to count the number of words he's written, repeating that process every few words until he had completed his 4000 word essay. Ed's edit count is also unimpressive in light of his habit of creating stubs.

• "WP has arrived, whether we like it or not. (And the work I did from 2001-2004 helped solidify WP's future.) "

• [Liberals] think they also respect the fact that it's very difficult to trick me or get anything past me. I have this pesky habit of demanding proof and evidence for everything! They also like the fact that I am willing to be held to the same standards of scholarship that I expect of everyone else. (our emphasis)

• I have been a member the Unification Church my entire adult life and am the Internet's leading authority on it. (our emphasis) And yet he also claims to be Jewish .

The old Ed

“”March 30, 1999, on Career Guide for Engineers and Computer Scientists: I'm a college dropout (actually, "required to withdraw" from Tufts), and I've managed to flunk freshman English nearly ten times. But I'm making $75,000 a year as a computer programmer, using virtually nothing I ever was taught in my computer science courses. Moral of the story: forget about degrees, it's accomplishment that counts. Sorry, I have to go because my non-technical boss will fire me if I surf the Internet any more today.

—source, Presumably the Ed we know and love?

If this is Ed, how come he's teaching writing classes?

Ed the computer expert

In 2010 Ed, continuing his "stub habit", turned his hand to computer-related articles. The articles in question seem to be based on problems Ed encounters while using Windows Vista, his personal opinions on the policies of Microsoft, and odd little factoids that would seem more appropriate to Microsoft's support website.

• False error messages^img: This is Ed's rant against Microsoft user-interface quirks. In his words "False error messages in Microsoft software cause distress and confusion for its users, but Microsoft has no plans to correct any of these". He then goes on to complain about mail applications returning unhelpful errors messages when being unable to attach files that are already open in another application.

• 32-bit Windows^img: Encyclopedia users often wonder how to determine whether or not their version of Windows Vista is 32-bit or 64-bit? Ed comes to the rescue.

• Show Windows previews (deleted by JacobB in June 2010): Ed explains how to enable document previews in Windows Vista. In February the value of this one-line and oddity of an article. JacobB helpfully explained "Ed Poor contributes to this project in many ways. One of his methods, I've noticed, is to come up with an idea for an article, and rather than lord over it like many of the editors at Wikipedia, encourage other editors to constructively contribute in a truly collaborative effort." In other words, the purpose of Ed is to create random stubs for others to deal with. In the way that a muse may inspire creativity, Ed inspires people to wonder what the hell they can do to transform Ed's droppings in to something of encyclopedic value?

Ed's lust for wiki-power

• "If you give me developer access, I can look into this for you."
• "I turned Andy's remarks about deletion into a policy proposal: http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:Deletion. Ed Poor (A former Wikipedia Bureaucrat)"
• "If Andy will tell the webmaster to give me developer access, I can look into some of these things - although with my new job my programming time is very limited."
• "Larry Sanger over at Citizendium might be able to help us, by the way. He's a friend, even if he *is* an atheist."
• "It's possible to have Sysop-only pages, but I don't know how to set it up. .... Ed Poor (an experienced wiki tech guy)"
• "I helped organize Wikipedia's anti-vandalism campaign, and it has been very effective. There only real problem is "content distortion". But vandalism has been minimized there, indeed almost neutralized. Ed Poor (an old Wikipedia hand)"
• "Or if you give me MySQL access to the mwiki database, I can do it for you. (Check with Mr. Schlafly first, of course!) I am an experienced database programmer, and I used to do things like this for Jimbo Wales at Wikipedia, back in the early days of 2001 to 2002."
• "I wonder if this is an authentic software glitch, or the result of someone cracking security. If Andy would give me developer rights, I could check this easily."
• "No harm done, but we need to make sure that SQL deletions tie up the loose ends. If you grant me access to the database, I can take care of that sort of thing for you."
• "I plan to get started this week, after I confirm that CreationWiki is willing to give me developer access to their website."
• "I am a web developer, maintaining several online databases. I used to have developer access at Wikipedia....If you all support me and trust me to be very, very careful then perhaps Andy will grant me developer rights."^{Emphasis added}
• "All right, in case Andy doesn't want to approve developer access for me at CP, how about letting me into CreationWiki?"
• "If Terry can arrange for me to have developer access at Creation Wiki, I can write some scripts there."
• "*Sigh* I wish you guys had agreed to let me be an assistant webmaster. All these problems would have melted away. You know, I used to coordinate technicians at ABC. And since leaving the corporate world, I've supported websites on three different servers. I'm the "go to" guy, when you need technical help. I find the right person to talk to; I explain the problem; I request immediate assistance; and the problem gets solved. Should I have boasted sooner or louder? I'm a shy, humble man. So I don't like to exalt myself, but Conservapedia is the target of a coordinated Denial Of Service attack, and I'd like to help. Andy, would you like to give me the authority to deal with this problem?

Ed the master of the obscure

As already mentioned, Ed favors adding stubs rather than serious contributions to Conservapedia. This could be taken as a sign that he's lazy, but Ed's contributions also tend to be a little esoteric. An unkind observer could describe Ed's contributions as being an attempt to live blog his steady descent into madness.

Generally his brain farts consist of creating a stub consisting of a quote supporting an opinion he has on something odd, but Ed outdid himself when he created the category Movies about football coaches with 11-year-old daughters^img. Some would consider this to be a very limited genre, and sympathy must be shown for the poor sod receiving a writing assignment to create articles to fill this category. At the time of this writing, Ed had found two movies that fit this genre, although no sane person could even speculate as to why anyone would ever wake up one morning and wish to find a list of football movies containing coaches with 11-year-old daughters.

Other

(Please help by sorting these)

• "Don't taze, me bro!"

• Ed on being non-judgemental

• This dig was lost on Ed, who probably thought it was praise

• Ed has been gently invited to play nicely many times, but somehow can't grasp the concept

• A candid insight, and perhaps the source/sauce of Ed's ills^img *glug glug*

• If only Ed could be trusted to keep his word...

Sysops page!

• He couldn't keep his word after all, and is caught dabbling with incest, which he assures us is something that "happens"

• Oh really? We never noticed

• Can I hear a "Zieg heil!"? Ed polishes the jackboots with some of that "Divine Principle" wax

• What you talkin bout Derek?? In Ed's atlas, the whole continent is simply labelled "Here Be Coons"

• Freudian slip or cosmic truth? I LOLd when I read this: meet Ed, get blocked

• Are you sure this isn't a misspelling of block and revert, Ed?

• Its not Hate speech - it's just Ed's "love mumbles". No offence.

• Let's get this down to a size where we can brush it under the carpet, or make it wear big sun glasses for a few days, right, Ed? Besides, she asked for it. Bitch.

• Too late, Edzilla

• Some ho' asks for cooperation and maturity... Ed gives it his best shot... but has already been spotted leaving the 7/11 with a brown paper bag

• If `this^img is how he treats his favourite users^img, lor' ha' mercy 'pon the rest of you!

• Of course not, Wilbur^img! Why, bless him, Ed thinks every white man should own one. And thanks for asking.

• I'm surprised that anyone would question my philosophical expertise; those who feel entitled to do so ought to review Conservapedia:Avoid personal remarks.[1]^img

• "No one here has rights."^img

• Ed on Conservapedia's tolerance: "But senior staff have been amazingly tolerant of opposing ideas here so far and I reason to hope they will continue to do {sic} so." (From his user page 01 Dec 08)

• "Blind faith in socialism is worse than any plague or narcotic.

• An Ed link" is when one casually converts a term into a dead end wikilink without trying to write an article about it, or thinking about whether it's even needed in the first place. Sort of like this.

• (That's enough Ed. Ed)

Ed covering his arse

From "User:BertSchlossberg" (Nov 2008)

This man has never caused trouble. He just writes on his topic (the KAL 007 shootdown). Why not give him sysop rights? Same for JessicaT, the Japanese Christian. Is there anyone here who distrusts Bert or Jessica? If not, please let's promote them.

From "Jessica (Kotomi) removed" (May 2009)

I never believed that the JessicaT persona was a genuine Christian, or a native speaker of Japanese.

+

Awards

This is to certify that Edmund Poor was voted CONSERVAPEDIA'S BIGGEST IDIOT By RationalWiki, on June 30, 2008

This is to certify that Ed Poor received the JESSE HELMS MEMORIAL AWARD FOR BIGOTRY From RationalWiki, on November 21, 2008

This is to certify that Ed Poor received the ED POOR IDIOT OF THE YEAR AWARD From RationalWiki, on November 21, 2008

This is to certify that Edmund Poor received the PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY MARITAL RAPE AWARD FOR MISOGYNY From RationalWiki, on November 21, 2009

See also

• The basic laws of human stupidity
• Dunning-Kruger effect