[WikiEN-l] Re: Please stop bashing me

Fri Oct 10 02:37:50 UTC 2003

Ed Poor wrote:

>Sheldon Rampton is annoying me. I wish he would be more affable.
>
>In previous posts, he's wished aloud for the ability to murder me by
>electrocution.

Ed is referring to a joke I made in February in which I proposed 
adding a feature to the Wikipedia software that would provide "the 
ability to push a button that will instantly send one million 
megavolts coursing through the body of Ed Poor. (Just joking.)" Of 
course, we all know that it is impossible to add such a feature to 
the software, so I think it should have been obvious that I wasn't 
really "wishing for that ability." Even if that were not the case, 
the phrase "just joking" made it clear that this was a joke and not a 
wish. I find it hard to believe that Ed regarded my comment as a 
threat to commit "murder," as he now claims.

>I don't appreciate personal remarks like
>* "I don't think Ed is a total jerk" -- Is he calling me "a jerk", or
>what?

Here, Ed is complaining that I said I DON'T think he's a jerk. In 
retrospect, I suppose I should have left out the word "total." In any 
case, my intent was simply to make it clear that I think the guy 
possesses some redeeming qualities. OK?

>On several occasions he has tried to discredit me with unfair tactics.
>Ironically, a central theme of his books and websites are that SKEPTICS
>try to discredit environmentalists with unfair tactics.

I don't think my tactics have been unfair at all. Our first clash 
occurred nine months ago when Ed attacked me repeatedly without any 
provocation on my part -- an attack for which he eventually 
apologized. (I made my joke about sending electricity through his 
body after the apology. The intent of the joke was not to attack him 
but to lighten the mood through humor.) Since then, I have said 
nothing whatsoever about Ed until now, when I felt compelled to 
respond to his attack on others.

Ed began this thread by accusing several dozen other Wikipedians 
(including William Connolley, an actual working climate scientist) of 
"junk science." Ed declared that he was "hopping mad" and sick of 
having to fix their willful errors, and asked Jimbo to back him up 
when he banned them. All I have done is show how Ed himself has 
introduced errors that reflect his point of view regarding global 
warming and demonstrate that the people he accuses of "junk science" 
have actually adhered to higher standards of accuracy and scholarship 
than Ed himself. I don't think it's an "unfair tactic" for me to 
point this out in the context of Ed's stated intention to ban them.

>I beg Sheldon to ask himself sincerely if he's giving me
>a fair shake or not; whether he's treating me the way he wants to be
>treated himself, the way he wants environmentalists and scientists who
>agree with his POV to be treated.

Yes, I  do sincerely think I gave Ed a fair shake.

>I wish he would stop taking one minor counter-example to a trend and
>calling it representative of a supposed counter-trend.

I presented an example here of Ed's error with respect to the 1975 
NAS report on climate change. That was indeed only "one minor 
example," but I could present many other examples of tendentious 
errors that Ed has introduced into the global warming article. 
(Fortunately, most of those errors have subsequently been corrected 
by others.) I have not attempted to present a full enumeration of 
Ed's errors here because (1) the normal wiki process is fixing them 
anyway, and (2) I don't think anyone here has the patience to read a 
full list of these errors. As several people here have stated, the 
proper place for that sort of discussion is on a Wikipedia talk page, 
not here.

Please note that I am not proposing banning Ed from participation in 
the global warming article (even though he proposed banning others). 
Everyone makes mistakes, myself included, and in some ways even Ed's 
errors have had a beneficial effect by obliging others to refine 
their explanations and improve the level of detail in the global 
warming article.

The only reason I brought this up at all is that Ed used this 
listserv to accuse others of "mistakes" as a prelude to banning them. 
Moreover, he went further by singling out another Wikipedian, William 
Connolley, by name for criticism. Ed accused Connolley and "three 
dozen other contributors" of "using smear tactics" and "injecting 
bias." He then self-confidently characterized himself as "slowly and 
patiently undoing each mistake and explaining it." Since Connolley 
and many of the others do not subscribe to wikien-l, they are not in 
a position to defend themselves here against Ed's attacks, and I 
therefore feel that it was reasonable for me to defend them. And 
since Ed himself brought up the issue of "mistakes," I think it was 
entirely fair for me to demonstrate that Ed himself has made errors.
-- 
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------