[Foundation-l] Re Greg Kohs

Sat Jul 23 21:13:39 UTC 2011

If anyone thinks The Kohser is just a maverick who asks awkward
questions, and rather more relevantly did some sockpuppetry and ran a
breaching experiment doing "unhelpful" edits to unwatched articles,
please read the thread at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2010/Questions#Thekohser

I have no problem with former vandals returning, one of the attendees
at our last London meetup started their wiki career winning a contest
amongst their schoolmates by doing 47 vandalisms before being blocked.

But before considering the return of thekohser I would like a better
answer to the question I posed to him last year:

>There's a lot of discussion on EN wiki about the compromised admin account that recently came into your possession. >Would you be willing to tell a check user whether you acquired it by purchasing it or by compromising it, and if you >purchased it who you purchased it from, and if you compromised it how you did so?

Tolerance of dissent and forgiveness for former miscreants are both
important feature of our community, but just occasionally it makes
sense to ban people. I'd be opposed to Greg Kohs returning unless I
had assurance that he'd fully explained to our checkusers how he
obtained that compromised admin account, and some assurance that he
was unlikely to doing anything similar again.

Regards

WereSpielChequerss

On 23 July 2011 19:01,  <foundation-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
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>   1. Re: Greg Kohs and Peter Damian (Mike Dupont)
>   2. Re: Greg Kohs and Peter Damian (Huib Laurens)
>   3. Re: Greg Kohs and Peter Damian (Andre Engels)
>   4. Re: Greg Kohs and Peter Damian (Mike Dupont)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2011 19:17:50 +0200
> From: Mike  Dupont <jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Greg Kohs and Peter Damian
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>        <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <CAF0qKV3nvKKZN0boR-Wp3ZBRRrDigbfW5=i4PSk_2xqW-Ew-mg at mail.gmail.com>
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>
> It looks like my message here was truncated from the mailing list archive,
> so I am reposting it.
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-October/061709.html
>
> Mr Kohs pointed this out here :
> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=34460
> thanks,
> mike
> --------------- Original Text ----------------------------------
>
> Hello,
>
> >From what I have seen about Greg Kohs is that he does have some
> interesting points to make, but I do see that he is jumping to
> conclusions and does seem to have a biased viewpoint.
>
> People want to make their own decisions and have enough information to
> do that. We don't want to have important information deleted away
> because it is uncomfortable.
>
> Banning him makes it less likely for him to be heard, and these
> interesting points which are worth considering are not heard my many
> people : this is depriving people of critical information, that is not
> fair to the people involved.
>
> Just look at this article for example, it is quite interesting and
> well written, and why should it not be visible to everyone on the
> list.
>
> http://www.examiner.com/wiki-edits-in-national/wikimedia-foundation-director-admits-to-sweetheart-contracts
>
> Deleting and banning people who say things that are not comfortable,
> that does make you look balanced and trustworthy.
>
> The Wikimedia foundation should be able to stand up to such
> accusations without resorting to gagging people, it just gives more
> credit to the people being gagged and makes people wonder if there is
> any merit in what they say.
>
> This brings up my favorite subject of unneeded deletions versions needed
> ones.
>
> Of course there is material that should be deleted that is hateful,
> Spam etc, lets call that evil content.
>
> But the articles that i wrote and my friends wrote that were deleted
> did not fall into that category, they might have been just bad or not
> notable.
>
> We have had a constant struggle to keep our articles from being
> deleted in a manner that we consider unfair. Additionally, the bad
> content is lost and falls into the same category as evil content.
>
> Also there should be more transparency on deleted material on the
> Wikipedia itself, there is a lot of information that is being deleted
> and gone forever without proper process or review.
>
> In my eyes there is a connection between the two topics, the banning
> of people and the deleting of information. Both are depriving people
> from information that they want and need in an unfair manner.
>
> Instead of articles about obscure events, things, and old places in
> Kosovo you have a wikipedia full of the latest information about every
> television show, is that what you really want?
>
> I think there should be room for things in places that are not not
> notable because they are not part of mainstream pop culture, we also
> need to support the underdogs of Wikipedia even if they are not
> mainstream, Mr Kohs definitely has something to say and I would like
> like to hear it. And the Kosovars have something to say even if the
> Serbs don't want to hear it. The Albanians have something to say even
> if the Greeks don't want to hear it, etc. There are many cases of
> people from Kosovo and Albania driven out of Wikipedia and depriving
> the project of important information because they are not able to get
> started and the contributions are so far way from the dominating
> political viewpoint of the opposite side that they don't even get a
> chance to be heard.
>
> We need to make a way for these people to be heard and to moderate the
> conflicts better, that will make Wikipedia stronger and more robust.
>
> thanks,
> mike
>
>