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.