Conservapedia:A Naive New User Gets a Taste of Conservapedia
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On 13 August 2007, a new user, SimonJohnRitchie, appeared. He made a number of edits, generally minor, including some relating to the large category of ships. (You may recall that that category suffered a serious proliferation-of-garbage problem during the great "article creation drive". Many articles were created that failed to point out that the thing being discussed was a ship.) He tried to straighten out that mess, one ship at a time, and discussing his problems with other users.
This of course came to Andy Schlafly's attention, and he stepped in with his usual tact and considerateness toward the people trying to help him:
- Um, are you saying that you just made up all those edits that you added? Is it too much to ask you to clean up your own mess? I hope you can do that. Please let me know if you refuse.
SimonJohnRitchie, not realizing that the slightest criticism of the sysops is punishable by banning, made the naive mistake of talking back, and, what is worse, being unaware that Andy Is Not To Be Crossed.
- 'Made up' edits? 'Mess'? 'Refuse'? I'm sorry, what side of bed did you get out of this morning?
The end followed quickly, of course. The whole incident appears to have occurred within the space of two hours. His contributions are here, and his block message here. His account was deleted, of course, and, in true Conservapedia "burn all the evidence" style, his user page and talk page were expunged. Fortunately, we managed to save the talk page. Here it is:
I noticed you voiced frustration with those ship articles. There's alot of them. Someone copy/pasted what must be hundreds from the online Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. They are all very dry and long-winded, as since they're written as part of a directory of ships, they didn't feel it was necessary to identify them as such. So if you want to improve them all you will have your work cut out for you, just so you know. PortlyMort 16:31, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
Uhhh....thank you! I had jumped into the Wanted:Dead End Pages category to help out, and one after another entry was ship after ship, without even mentioning that it was a ship - just a strange title/name! It's crazy! The reader has NO idea what the article is about! I think I'll give up on this.... SimonJohnRitchie 16:34, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
- You might also notice that the references don't all point to the right page. I went through the category and changed every ship that begain with the letter "a" and some that began with "b" and just got tired of it. Enjoy :) Jazzman831 16:38, 13 August 2007 (EDT) PS: Check out this.
- Also this is an easier way to find all the ships added during the contest. There are some other ships floating around (heh, no pun intended) but those are a little harder to find.Jazzman831 16:40, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
Yes, that's pretty hilarious, there must be not just hundreds, but thousands of ships here, at a glance. Oh well, over time the problem might be fixed, I suppose. But I know nothing about ships and suddenly realised I was calling them all USS, when they may well not have been. I'm steering clear of that category now. SimonJohnRitchie 16:41, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
- Um, are you saying that just made up all those edits that you added? Is it too much to ask you to clean up your own mess? I hope you can do that. Please let me know if you refuse.
- No, I don't think there are thousand of ships here, but there are tens of thousands of ships in history. So I do hope that we will have thousand of ship entries here eventually.--Aschlafly 16:46, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
- While we're discussing this, Andy, we might want to set a guideline for what is and isn't a notable ship; I doubt we want to start reading articles about southern Alaska Sockeye fishing boats. I'd be glad to start a discussion regarding this at Conservapedia talk:Manual of Style. --Ħøĵímαζĥŏήğθαλκ 16:48, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
'Made up' edits? 'Mess'? 'Refuse'? I'm sorry, what side of bed did you get out of this morning? I followed a link which asked for help, and found thousands of very confusing articles. I helped those articles by adding USS where appropriate, and pointing out that they needed disambiguation, but stopped the moment I came upon a ship which I was uncertain was a USS, so I did not add it. I'm certain the info I did add is correct, I pointed out many other problems, and I'd thank you if you didn't come here on my own talk page abusing my help. I'm sure the owners of this site wouldn't appreciate your sharp tongue. I don't much feel like helping now. SimonJohnRitchie 16:53, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
- SimonJohnRichie, Mr. Schlafly is the owner of the site. I'm sure this simple misunderstanding may be worked out. --Ħøĵímαζĥŏήğθαλκ 16:55, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
Oh?! Well, that's kind of worse actually. Talk about not rolling out the welcome mat! I don't have much time for rude people - Goodbye! SimonJohnRitchie 16:57, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
