I was a Conservapedia Administrator

Philip J. Rayment

RationalWiki content

This is part of a user talk page of RationalWiki Mk I, demonstrating that at least some users there were planning on deliberately trying to undermine Con­serva­pedia.1

Ok, I'm new

I'm trying to get a handle on what to do over there. Yesterday I just tried a little rabble-rousing by bringing up [rubbish] that was addressed previously-- e.g. the whole cult thing.

How do you think I should proceed here? I guess I'm looking for tips on making this more fun for all of us. Zero 08:48, 26 April 2007 (CDT)

Fantastic. I don't know whether to feel warm and fuzzy by all this or like I'm stuck in a Battle of Algiers sequel. Whatever the feeling, I like this idea.
Getting down to it: My main goal is to be a time burglar, too. I find it is easiest to take one of their issues, like scientology, and look through the archive for contentious debate. better yet, look for debates on Wikipedia and bring the edit war to their shore. That's all I did for scientology.
What I am really trying to find--the holy grail (if you will)--of my CP plot is to find and issue of disagreement within the admins and Andy. I don't know how possible that is or if it could last that long, but it sure gets Flippin hard. I would run for admin myself, but my earliest edits were as a parody and I can't seem to get foxy-proxy to work on my computer. More thought.
On a personal note, I am a professional editor in North Dakota, working on Ethanol plants by day and fighting facism, well, by day, too. That's my stake. Man, I'm glad I found this group. Zero 11:07, 26 April 2007 (CDT)

This is an extract from another user page, discussing a method of vandalising Conservapedia pages.1

Testing....

Instead of poking fun at me you want to help. Say i included this template in a user box template, how would i make it float outside the userbox column? -Icewedge 20:54, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

My first response is that the hacks you are pulling off are way beyond my primitive wikibilities. You never told me how you did that thing that made a page uneditable, for instance. So, anyway, istead of it turning up under every UXB, you want it out to the left in the main user article space? I take it this is a land mine you are going to infect CP with? (by the way, a funnier thing is to edit their UXBs to make them stupid, like some asshole wrecked the cabal UXB) How about a single line, that says "this user is XYZ", where "XYZ" is pulled from a short list of possible random words, like "gay", "a virgin", "assfly's fellatrist", etc.? Can you pull that off? Anyway, I think what you want to do will be tough - isn't the uxb template basically a table, with alignment and some sort of text-wrap instruction, like the image tag?
Clue me in more and I'll try to help. Wiki resources for doing this stuff? Huw Powell a/k/a human 21:01, 15 May 2007 (CDT)
This thing im doing i think is actually pretty clever. Observe. I was spamming the parent userbox template last night and ashlafly locked it...but he didn't revert all my edits so the user page of my sock User:Box was included in as a template :). This means that whatever I do to that scoks page is immediately transfered to all the userboxes and then on to the user pages with userboxes on them. What i am trying to do is put a kind of recrutment banner on top of all there userpages saying "icewedge wants you to vandalize conservapedia". The best thing is that i figured out a way to make it almost untraceable. It should be worth a good 15 minutes of confusion over at CP.
Dont mess with it right now if we use skill we can cause a bit of chaos at CP. -Icewedge 21:15, 15 May 2007 (CDT)
Oh, I won't mess with it!
Anyway, with that awesome power at your fingertips, why on earth make it obvious vandalism? Why not insert tiny little things, like a semi colon, just to [mess] up people's pages? Then a couple of dashes? Then a "#$%$%@ it!". Try to go as long as you can, days if possible, with very small things, then after a week, you get to finally swap it to "Ricewedge Pwned You!" Even at that point, most users will probably just think it is a problem "with their set" and try to adjust the controls. Sweet pwnage takes time & subtlety. OK, I know you are specializing in big hit and runs, but still. Uze yr skilz! Huw Powell a/k/a human 21:21, 15 May 2007 (CDT)
Hell, there on to me, oh well, ive played my hand look here.
[Profanity removed] Bohdan.-Icewedge 22:17, 15 May 2007 (CDT)
What did you do, the favorite user box? By the way, if you're around, I want to know how you made that "no edit this page" thing. Was thinking of putting "retired" boxes on all my pages and making it hard for people to fix... alternatively, how about some fun? Can you icewedge all my pages tonight? If yes, I'll list the addresses here (there are a handful). Huw Powell a/k/a human 22:56, 15 May 2007 (CDT)
To make a page hard to edit put this in its source "<big><big><big><big><big><big><big><big><big><big><big> <big><big><big><big><big><big><big><big><big>(Any Text)</big></big></big></big></big></big></big></big></big></big> </big></big></big></big></big></big></big></big></big>"
-Icewedge 23:19, 15 May 2007 (CDT)

And another example of them talking about vandalism.

OK, here's the "basic plan" as I see it. The 10,000 article milestone will probably encourage assfly to do a press release to the Washington Times and the National Enquirer, so then would be a good time to [Profanity removed] up the site wholesale. Now, this is important. You guys realise that it is easier for a sysop to fix "simple" vandalism than it is for you to do it, right? They have a "revert" button, and as soon as they see vandalism, they can check the user contribs, block the user at the 2nd instance of vdism, and race through files reverting. I don't want my damage to be more a waste of my time than theirs. A classic way to mess with a wiki to do several consecutive edits, so only the last one shows on watchlists (at least). You make the last edit innocuous, and in an area of the article "away" from the true vdism. To work best, 2 or 3 people work together with a real time communication going, like AIM or something. So I go in and mess with part of United States, say. I also insert a typo elsewhere in the file. As soon as I hit save, person 2 immediately opens the typo section and fixes it, getting to "save" as quickly as possible. Ideally, a tag team of 3 or 4 people could mix up who does the "damage" and who does the "fixing" to make the trail harder to follow. You also do it late at night, after getting Rayment (in AUS) a date or something to keep him busy.

I would suggest practicing with your socks, if you can. I would also strongly advise avoiding "extreme" vandalism, like blanking pages or inserting obvious stupidity, or creating obscene pages. Inserting subtle wackiness makes much more sense (how can they tell?). Like cp:Axial_skeleton right now - the last edit was hilarious, and is either well-meaning stupidity or perfect vandalism. The worse the article is to start with (and the bigger), the better a target it is, like the middle of cp:United States - who can read that anyway?

D-Day sounds like maybe a week or two from now if we go with the 10k thing.

Well, that's my 0.02 on this, I'd really like to see some long-lasting messes made. If several teams worked at once, perhaps 10% of the site, 1000 "articles", could be hurt overnight, or over several nights. I doubt these idiots are smart enough to back up the whole site to save it, or to realize that their provider probably does every day. or that in their site logs they can probably "see" where people are coming from, and would have already found this site... Huw Powell a/k/a human 13:43, 9 May 2007 (CDT)


  1. The first two examples were copied and pasted into an e-mail as plain text, so any formatting they had was lost.

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Timeline

22nd November, 2006

Conservapedia is created

17th March, 2007

I join Conservapedia

3rd April, 2007

I am made an Administrator

25th April, 2007

First Admin. e-mail group.

25th May, 2007

Ed Poor proposes me as "template manager".

5th January, 2008

Letter to Andy about wise counsel

28th April, 2008

Bugler joins Con­serva­pedia

around June, 2008

I'm feeling more and more uncomfortable with associating myself with Conservapedia.

11th June, 2008

Bugler gains block rights.

17th June, 2008

I start writing these pages.

20th June, 2008

DanH quits.

31st December, 2008

Bugler loses rights.

1st January, 2009

CPAdmin1 quits.

2nd January, 2009

Bugler outs himself.

22nd March, 2009

I resign