[Foundation-l] Re Greg Kohs

[Fred Bauder]

As they say, He is dead to me.

Fred

> 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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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>>   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>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>
>> 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
>>
>>
>
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