Greg Kohs has been WMF globally banned

[Strelnikov]

Read it and weep: They name MyWikiBiz alongside his thekohser account.

All the people they have banned since 2016:

Liliana-60, since 22 April 2016
John F. Lewis , since 22 April 2016
WayneRay, since 22 April 2016
Ktr101, since 22 April 2016
Styron111, since 17 June 2016
Jake Christie of Southern California since 8 October 2016
Reguyla/Kumioko since 13 April 2017
MyWikiBiz / Thekohser since 19 April 2017
Graaf Statler since 19 April 2017

Comments from the other board:

WO and the Hoser appear to be taking his ban pretty badly. Since tarantino announced it there, that thread is being assiduously ignored and the Hoser is quiet. Do you think they moved discussion of this to a private area? Seems like overkill.
- Flip Flopped

It is my sad duty (rofl) to report the global bannination from all WMF sites and events, of that most stellar of Wikipedia users, Gregory the Hoser.

This is the infamous WMF Office variant of the global ban, so it is permanent and immutable. There can be no appeals, there will be no explanations. He can, most officially now, suck it, for all they care.

It will do nobody here any good speculating as to why he was banned, all we know for definite is that he is now considered in the same threat category as real life stalkers and pedophiles. Seriously, nobody here has anything to gain by trying to figure out if Greg is a pedophile, a stalker, or something else equally bad. So just stop it, OK?

Neither will it be worthwhile speculating if this ban has been placed now because the WMF's legal eagles have been encouraged by Trump's election to believe that Gregory's long pending Supreme Court case against them for violating his rights to free assembly, expression, and profit, as well as profit, is now doomed.

My own personal theory, and I base this on nothing but things I have seen and read over the years (call them observations on facts if you will, if you still ascribe to the old world order of empirical evidence), that they have simply decided he was no longer a threat, that he had so thoroughly discredited his positions with his hypocrisy and transparent motives, and so much time had passed and so many people had stopped caring about his personal sob story given how often it was given an airing, that they can safely do this, and nobody will really complain. If they even notice.

It cannot be a coincidence either, that it has come to pass only after he has completely demoralised and discredited the critic movement, hollowing out his own site, draining what little credibility it had built, and certainly no longer petrifying any of the bad actors inside the cult. By grimly clinging on to it, his precious domain, he merely ensured the scattering to the four winds all manner of capable and motivated critics.

His followers, disciples, sycophants, they always said the WMF were too scared to ban him, to go this final step, fearing what he might or could do in retaliation. I said about a year ago on the site that finally sprang up to offer an alternative to his rotten platform, the time was coming, he was a fading force, and that it had been clear for a long while before then. It has now come.

It is the supreme irony here, that while others on the list of globally banned offer a very real and credible threat to the continuing success of the cult, Gregory's position on it has been earned because he no longer does. And with the benefit of hindsight, their idea that he ever did, was merely an illusion. He was an annoyance, a troll, a self serving merchant of spin. In other words, nothing special at all; they are certainly no stranger to that being an ever present if unwanted aspect of their existence. Like lice on a rat.

So now, true critics, faithful adherents to the One True Doctrine, come, look upon this miserable wretch's fate with pity. Learn from it. He was indeed, a very false prophet. Or profit. Do not give anyone any reason to doubt your criticism comes from any place but the moral compass that exists in any right thinking human who still understands what an encyclopedia is and has capacity for concern for all of his fellow man. Hate the players and the game, for they are indivisible and unreformable. And never, ever, blame the victims.
- The Dark Knight

http://wikipediareview.proboards.com/th ... end-banned

[Strelnikov]

It should be understood that they have the WR board rigged so that if you type "Kohs" or "thekohser" it comes out as "the Hoser"; possible board protection?

[ericbarbour]

Neither will it be worthwhile speculating if this ban has been placed now because the WMF's legal eagles have been encouraged by Trump's election to believe that Gregory's long pending Supreme Court case against them for violating his rights to free assembly, expression, and profit, as well as profit, is now doomed.

Please, spare me. It was always doomed. Greg occasionally talked big but I'm certain he's not foolish enough to spend millions of HIS OWN dollars to drag the WMF thru the federal court system so he can go back to openly paid editing (and calling Jimbo names on Jimbotalk). Paid WP editing just isn't a "major industry" or even a "major Internet industry" and it never will be.

It is likely that >90% of the complaints we will hear will come from sockpuppets of the man himself.

Also possible. And funny.

Kumioko is a nut but he's right about this:

The thing that really strikes me as bizarre is the way and when the WMF chooses to act. Grawp has been a problem for years, far beyond anyone else on the list of banned individuals and still the WMF hasn't banned them and there are dozens of others in the same category. Yet now the WMF is choosing to ban a couple people that have been vocal critics of the projects because the WMF is too chicken&@#% and complacent to do the right things to actually make the projects better.

[ericbarbour]

As TDK says:

They do not comment about the reasons. Publicly or privately. Neither to the recipient, or any concerned third parties. Not even their mothers, goddam it.

Please don't make me keep repeating this, it is established fact.

Not only that, they have an oversighter removing all traces of the edits adding people to the list (which are probably done by either Maggie Dennis or James "Need For Blubber" Alexander). Since mid-2016 people like Kumioko and Kohs just pop up on the list with no diffs visible. It's MAGIC!

[Strelnikov]

As TDK says:

They do not comment about the reasons. Publicly or privately. Neither to the recipient, or any concerned third parties. Not even their mothers, goddam it.

Please don't make me keep repeating this, it is established fact.

Not only that, they have an oversighter removing all traces of the edits adding people to the list (which are probably done by either Maggie Dennis or James "Need For Blubber" Alexander). Since mid-2016 people like Kumioko and Kohs just pop up on the list with no diffs visible. It's MAGIC!

I think when they banned me and they had no proof that I was a Wikipedian (sock-puppeteer or not), that was the point where they decided "nothing can stop us, let's clean house!", and they are chucking out anybody they don't like. This is a tacit admission that the Wikipedia project is falling apart, so why not make non-persons out of editors/administrators that annoy you? This is the mentality that has produced massacres in the past (the Malmedy massacre in WWII is a good example) so why not here?

[Flip Flopped]

As TDK says:

They do not comment about the reasons. Publicly or privately. Neither to the recipient, or any concerned third parties. Not even their mothers, goddam it.

Please don't make me keep repeating this, it is established fact.

Not only that, they have an oversighter removing all traces of the edits adding people to the list (which are probably done by either Maggie Dennis or James "Need For Blubber" Alexander). Since mid-2016 people like Kumioko and Kohs just pop up on the list with no diffs visible. It's MAGIC!

Here's the edit in which they were added to the SanFranBanned list: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=WMF_Global_Ban_Policy/List&diff=prev&oldid=16617590. I'm not sure where you found oversighting. I didn't find any oversighted edits here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=WMF_Global_Ban_Policy/List&action=history.

[ericbarbour]

I didn't find any oversighted edits here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=WMF_Global_Ban_Policy/List&action=history.

YOU WON'T. Because oversighting leaves no traces at all. The article content simply changes, and all you can say is that it happened sometime between Revision blahblah and Revision blahblah+1.

[HRA1924]

I didn't find any oversighted edits here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=WMF_Global_Ban_Policy/List&action=history.

YOU WON'T. Because oversighting leaves no traces at all. The article content simply changes, and all you can say is that it happened sometime between Revision blahblah and Revision blahblah+1.

Here is Strelnikov's ban diff
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... d=15947317

[Mutineer]

The administrative sector at English Wikipedia is a herd of stupid micro-bullies doing whatever it pleases. But for the WMF to do a SanFranBan is not as common an event. I wonder what happened to occasion it officially banning Kumioko and Kohs now.

The last I see from Kumioko (his current account name is Reguyla for those new to this) is from January on Meta (http://archive.is/cV6Kw). There's this WMF semi-employee Az1568 riding him, says he's being "disruptive" for complaining about his English Wikipedia ban. Well, Az1568 has to track and visit Kumioko's talkpage to be disrupted which he's keen on doing for whatever reason. It doesn't a lot of sense. Az1568 says any time Kumioko generically refers to administrators as bullies, it's a "personal attack." Which also doesn't make a lot of sense because doesn't one have to name a particular person to personally attack him or her?

If you look at the talkpage history Az1568 blocked Reguyla in January because of "inappropriate use of the talkpage." Oh that's a nice rule, except it's not a rule, it's just Az1568 (who is totally "involved" which *is* a rule, at least on English Wikipedia) throwing his weight around.

As for Kohs, did he do something lately? It does seem a little strange that WMF acts out of the blue, but maybe there's a context I haven't come across.

[Flip Flopped]

<snip>

As for Kohs, did he do something lately? It does seem a little strange that WMF acts out of the blue, but maybe there's a context I haven't come across.

I think they were waiting for WO to become the spent-force it is. The WMF always wanted to block Kohs. He had edited on Commons and Meta relatively recently.