Jimbo calls for global ban on Thekohser, and his bidding is done Options

[thekohser]

Jimbo must not like living in a trailer park. Seems he has a lot of pent up anger. I wonder what the specific crime was, to call for this today? It's gotta be the trailer park, right?

Kohs is permanently and globally banned from all Wikimedia projects.--[[User:Jimbo Wales|Jimbo Wales]] 04:04, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

This post has been edited by thekohser:

[thekohser]

It would appear that Abigor/Huib has demonstrated clearly that Wikimedia Commons is a community of Jimbo sycophants, choosing the line of "global ban means global ban".

Note that Wikisource and Wikinews have expressed their independence from Jimbo's antics by choosing to leave Thekohser free to edit.

Thanks to our thought-leader and his lackey Abigor, Commons will get no more photographic content like this, this, or this from me.

[Abd]

It would appear that Abigor/Huib has demonstrated clearly that Wikimedia Commons is a community of Jimbo sycophants, choosing the line of "global ban means global ban".

Greg, you're not helping. Abigor/Huib is not the Commons community. AFBorchert is closer to it. See the commons AN discussion he started and cited on your talk page. Abigor is an idiot and is clearly taking disputes from other wikis to Commons. He should be desysopped, from what I've seen, but wikis are pretty reluctant to do that. Nevertheless what he's doing should be made obvious. I'm not going to do much, I'm very new there, my concern is "cross-wiki issues," to be sure. It looks to me like the Commons community will handle this, though the tide could turn if you or one of your supporters get nasty.

Who is supporting the idea that "global ban means global ban"?

At that AN page, it's possibles: NW and Ottava Rima (though I wouldn't lock either one into that position). And definite support for blocking from Herbythyme and JzG (need I say more? Any surprises here?).

Apparently on the side of unblocking are AFBorchert (who was the blocking admin and is simply consulting the community), billinghurst, Erik Warmelink, and Guido den Broeder. EW has 7000 Commons edits, JzG has under ninety. AB and Billinghurst are Commons admins, as is Herbythyme.

NW is a Commons admin; Ottava is currently blocked on Commons. Mess. Ottava is a modest contributor at Commons.

What is certainly clear is that there is no consensus for a block, which will normally carry result in unblock, but not necessarily. My guess, though, is that AFB will unblock after a pause, or someone else will. Unless you really do want to be banned -- it might serve your purposes, possibly -- don't give the ones who want such a ban an excuse by being uncivil or socking.

[NuclearWarfare]

At that AN page, it's possibles: NW and Ottava Rima (though I wouldn't lock either one into that position).

I have already resolved to not get involved with either Mr. Kohs' unblock request or Sexual Content. Plenty of better things to do that don't involve locking up several hours of my life responding to posts.

This post has been edited by NuclearWarfare:

[gomi]

I have already resolved to not get involved with ... Sexual Content.

Ja, ja. Es ist besser, ein guter Deutscher. Gotta preserve time for that valuable Wikipedia admin work. After all, Arbeit macht frei.

Or, you could take the view that "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." How's "nothing" working out for you?

[Abd]

I have already resolved to not get involved with ... Sexual Content.

Or, you could take the view that "all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." How's "nothing" working out for you?

That's a bit much to infer from not being interested in (1) a troll, and Kohs is a troll, in fact. I just don't think people should be blocked for being trolls, per se, especially if they aren't trolling on the wiki in question, and (2) a flap about sexual content that ended up affirming what was actually an important principle: local autonomy for the WikiMedia wikis. That doesn't mean that they can get away with murder, so to speak, but that central control is, shall we say, deprecated.

Now, about that meta blacklist.... it's actually not a terrible problem, because local wikis can override it with the whitelist, and most of what ends up on the meta blacklist is genuine spam, but there are some serious exceptions, and they do impact editors who don't know how to request a whitelisting, or who run into opinionated admins, this seems to happen the most on Wikipedia, who have their own opinions about what is useful as an external links, say, so that they do deny, and routinely, good-faith requests on the basis that a site "isn't reliable," though that is, in fact, a page-by-page decision, properly. But give an admin some power, it cries out to be used....

NW, the issue about this block of Kohs is that he was a non-disruptive contributor there on Commons. And the general principle is that no matter what you have done elsewhere (on a WikiMedia site or elsewhere, with very few exceptions, little matters like death threats or the like, if you behave on a wiki, you can stay on the wiki. This provides a path to return to grace, so to speak (I'm aware of the irony), and it's one of the few ones that's been kept open for unpopular editors. What happens, though, is that the enemies of these editors follow them around and hassle them on the other wikis, and this is then "disruption." Yeah, it is indeed disruption, but not caused by that elsewhere banned or blocked editor. I'd say that a newcomer to a wiki, even if an established editor or even an admin at another wiki, who tries to get a nondisruptive editor blocked, is definitely being disruptive and should be warned and/or blocked. Not banned, and certainly not globally banned.

What is certainly clear is that there is no consensus for a block, which will normally carry result in unblock, but not necessarily. My guess, though, is that AFB will unblock after a pause, or someone else will. Unless you really do want to be banned -- it might serve your purposes, possibly -- don't give the ones who want such a ban an excuse by being uncivil or socking.

It has been my experience that when there is no consensus (as in typically the case), no action is taken. Usually what happens is that some admin either boldy affirms or boldy reverses the situation and hopes to survive any backlash.

I can supply details of the example I'm most familiar with, if you require it.

Practice varies, and it's a political decision. Right now, on Commons, there is an appearance of a sense that the block wasn't right, but there isn't a whole lot of comment from neutral editors. I get the sense that the blocking admin, taking this to Commons AN, is looking for cover to unblock, and may have received enough, we'll see. If he wanted Kohs to stay unblocked, he could simply have sat on it.

I've mentioned that Kohs is a troll. He's the kind of troll who gets abusive administrators into a snit. He therefore serves a useful purpose, if sufficiently contained. (Sometimes the only way to bring attention to abuse is to show just how crazy the abuser is.) I have no idea if he'd stay contained, I don't see that there was enough available patience to try it. The central question is whether or not he would follow reasonable constraints. Some gadflies can do it, some not. If he would usually follow such constraints, and if he did make useful contributions (and by that I do not only include "content"), he might make a mistake now and then, it's the balance that matters.