"

 Statement 

I was angry at what I consider to be a massive campaign against Ed Poor's RFA. I rarely, if ever, agree with Ed on anything, but I felt the opposes were over the top. My comment about riff-raff is not uncivil. Riff-raff is a child's word, if I wanted to be insulting or uncivil I would have used much harsher words than that, I assure you. Further, I felt that many of the attacks on Ed by the opposers were far worse than that, even the before-refactored comment. I was responding to my believe that Ed Poor needs to be allowed to bring his dissent to the Intelligent Design and Global Warming articles, despite the fact I totally disagree with his viewpoint. Keeping controversial articles free of being walled gardens of woo is a goal that Wikipedia should seek. We cannot allow even the most righteous people WP:OWN whole swaths of subject matter. Not to be pointed, but the greater scientific community was patently wrong on eugenics, the popular bastardization of Darwin's natural selection, at the turn of the 20th century. I've been reading an excellent book, War Against the Weak by Edwin Black, which catalogs just how it was a group of determined American and British scientists popularized this hideous science and even directly inspired the tactics of Hitler. It is a chilling account of what happens when determined scientists insist their viewpoint is the only viewpoint that matters and how uncritical groupthink led to horrendous travesties being perpatrated against our poor and sick at that period of time. My point is that groupthink is bad. Refusing to debate opposing views is bad. Ed brings the necessary questioning which ultimately results in better articles because lazy and poorly sourced material is kept out, while some space is given for the opposing viewpoint. I feel that my fellow colleagues treatment of Ed, based mostly on his behavior on another project - which by the way is admittedly slanted (the ""conserv"" in CP should have been the hint) - was aweful. My comments were not directed at anyone in particular and were only meant as an attempt to console Ed on his good faith attempt to serve the community again. Please do not wheel war over this block. I will just go do some move to commons until it is resolved satisfactorily. Cheers!   "