He Who Laughs Last

I’ve sat here for ages thinking about how I’m going to word this, as there’s an awful lot that needs to be said and I don’t want to take up too much room saying it. It’s also a post I wasn’t expecting to be making for some time, but sadly things have changed, and there’s really no point in carrying on this subterfuge any longer. Besides, I think he’d want to go with a bang, while he’s still fresh in people’s memories.

I suppose I should start at the beginning, with the first of many confessions. Although it’s probably the worst-kept secret, let me come out and say for once and for all that, yes, I was the charming, funny, courteous and helpful Conservapedia sysop, JessicaT (宜しくお願いします!). Ironically, this will have the CP types who read this up in arms, screaming “Liberal!” and yet, they would be hard-pressed to find one thing that little Jessica did to harm CP while she was there. Except for her constant fighting with one Terry Koeckritz…

Now, Terry was generally disagreeable and easy to fight with. However, he was also remarkably clever – especially when it came to ferreting out “vandals and parodists” – even deep cover ones. He soon cottoned on that Jessica and myself were probably one and the same – hell, what are the chances of having 2 South Africans on two opposing wikis at the same time? He confronted us with this info,  back in August 2008, but instead of threats, it came with an offer.

You see, Terry’s star was on the rise again at CP, thanks mostly to Andrew Schlafly’s blind ignorance and Ed Poor’s ingratiating need for affirmation, both of which TK was able to use to his own advantage. Hence, Ed’s unblocking of TK, Andy ensuring the rapid return of user rights, etc. You see, TK was a man with both a mission and a grudge. He certainly hadn’t forgotten his previous demotion, for which he’d made public the old Special Discussion Group postings public. He also knew what the after-effects of doing so were. You see, there’s only so much overt damage you can do to Conservapedia, as witnessed by TK’s mass-blockings, support of parodists such as Bugler and RodWeathers and deletion of reputable articles. To hurt CP, he knew you had to hit them in their soft-spot – their behind the scenes activities, where the sysops’ true natures are revealed. Obviously, TK knew he couldn’t reasonably expose the lists again (by now the Special Discussion Group had moved to the strangely named Zeugloden Blues) and hope to keep his rights. Rather than try to blame another sysop, as he had with Rob Smith previously, what he needed was a scapegoat. And who better to blame than a disgruntled former sysop, who had access to the conversations anyway? Thus it was, that about a year after her banishment from CP, “Jessica” published the collected writings of the CP sysops. Sadly, we couldn’t print everything, as if anything dated after her banishment was included, suspicion would fall on somebody else. There was a momentary worry, when TK realised they’d been printed from his account, but fortunately, when I opened and re-saved them on my PC, the .co.za extension was affixed to some Google links, which made it possible to pass off TK’s account details as being forged.

Of course, it didn’t stop there. One of the easiest things to hide behind is a smokescreen of hate. Certainly, we didn’t especially like each other, but there was a common purpose between us. And the more I slagged him off here, and the more he wrote disparaging things about myself and Jessica to the other sysops, the less chance there was of anybody ever suspecting a link between us.

Sadly, in a fit of paranoia, the old ZB mailing list was destroyed by the other sysops, (It was my fault actually – Terry showed me an e-mail in which fellow sysop Jpatt was threatening to hire a private eye to search me out and I confronted him about it), and sadly, about a year’s worth of discussions went up in electrons. However, there were now two sysop chat rooms – the “Zeuglodon Blues” had been replaced with the plain “Conservapedia” and Ed Poor had created, at TK’s urging, a group called “The Fab Five.” The latter originally constituted Ed, TK, Andy, DeanS and (surprisingly) Geo.plrd, but has since grown to include all the sysops, except for Rob Smith and Conservative, who aren’t allowed to play with the big boys. Given that the Fab Five describes itself as “Here is where we discuss crucial issues of security, personnel, and so forth in an advisory capacity to Andy Schlafly – founder of Conservapedia,” one wonders why the “Conservapedia” group exists at all, apart from the fact that the sysops really don’t want to play with Rob Smith and Ken Demyer.

Unfortunately, as there won’t be anymore posts coming from Terry, I think the time is right to draw down the curtain for once and for all and realise his dream.So, here are the collected writings from the Conservapedia group, as well as the Fab Five group. It’s what that grumpy, crotchety old man would have wanted – a chance to have the last laugh over Andrew Schlafly.

(Disclaimer: the above, may, or may not be a true story – apart from the leaked documents, that is – it might just be a way of saying “I told you you so!” to Schlafly. But at the end of the day, I think it’s what Terry would have wanted.)