I was a Conservapedia Administrator

Administrators

"Administrators" are the users granted special authority to police Conservapedia. It often seemed as though there wasn't a sane administrator among the lot (me excepted, of course!). However, this is probably because the "sore thumbs" tend to be noticed more. Although everyone has their faults, some administrators were, for the most part, quite reasonable. But the less reasonable ones tended to have a much larger presence than the more reasonable ones.

Administrators have more power—that's both abilities and authority—than other editors. Unfortunately, they seemed to forget (or not realise at all) that with greater power comes greater responsibility.

I sometimes felt that I was spending more time "discussing" things with the other administrators than constructive editing on Con­serva­pedia. Just like in a television show where the various characters all have unique and exaggerated personalities, it seemed each of the senior, and some of the other, Con­serva­pedia admin­istra­tors had their own, umm, 'unusual' aspects, but in a very obvious way.

I don't want to talk too much about particular personalities here, but in some cases at least, people familiar with Con­serva­pedia will easily recognise individuals from the descriptions, so there may not be much point in them remaining anonymous. But there are a few things that many of them had in common.

Power corrupts

For one, it seemed as though the power went to their heads. Anything that they did was beyond question. I was the only one to put a note on my user page that, although I was an administrator, unless it was clear that I was speaking as one, any comments I made, and any edits I made, were to be taken as though made by an ordinary editors. That is, they were not sacrosanct simply because they were said and made by an administrator.

The Body of Conservapedians

The Bible says that a body is made of many parts: "The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body"¹. Following this theme, it adds that "The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!"². But on Conservapedia, all we "needed" was people to write articles, and this attitude came from the top. Mere "housekeeping"-type jobs didn't really count. As explained in chapter 3, the user named Learn together didn't get promoted to administrator for many months, because his many, many housekeeping-type edits (for which having administrator powers would have been useful) didn't count as "sub­stant­ive" contributions. Yet most of the senior administrators generally didn't sully their typing fingers with this type of work either. Adding categories was viewed with suspicion, correcting spelling and grammar, although not unwelcome, didn't count for much, and hardly any effort was spent on setting style standards, such as how references should be formatted, whether article titles should be in lower case or title case, and so forth. Of course, writing new conduct rules that must be obeyed was a different matter, and despite the main rules page saying that it was the only page of rules, other "guideline" pages—which must also be obeyed—proliferated.

"On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are in­dis­pens­able, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the mem­bers of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it."³

Rules are for other people

The rules also seemed to apply to everyone except the administrators them­selves. So despite the rule requiring editors to be civil and forbidding them from bullying, ridiculing, or denigrating other editors, administrators would often tell someone that they were "clueless", threaten them with blocks despite not having broken any rules, and call them "liberal" simply because they disagreed with an administrator.

Do as I say, not as I do

One administrator in particular was quite inconsistent in his actions. For example, he created numerous trivial articles, such as this one...

... but at other times objected to small articles, and deleted the following article written by others on the grounds of it being "insubstantial"...

Personal comments not allowed—unless I or someone I like makes them

One of the administrators often chided (or worse) others for making "personal comments", despite ad hominem arguments being frequently employed by Andy and a number of his administrators. This administrator removed me from the Administrator e-mail group for making "personal comments" within that group, but when TK sent me an abusive e-mail, with copies to three others, including this administrator, he said nothing. I even appealed to him to be consistent, but his only reply was dismissive.

I didn't reply to TK. Instead, I wrote to the administrator (one of the ones who received TK's e-mail) who had removed me from the group citing a "Shame on you all" remark that I had made to the other administrators in the group (for ignoring the evidence I presented of TK working against Con­serva­pedia).

His reply completely sidestepped most of my e-mail to him.

I tried again.

I initially got no reply. A follow up to prompt a reply resulted in this:

1. 1 Corinthians 12:12
2. 1 Corinthians 12:21
3. 1 Corinthians 12:22-26