Wikipedia Sucks!

Kumioko linked sometime ago at some Wikipedia fansite to an RFA for "Lawrence Cohen" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Lawrence_Cohen. I think Cohen is a prior account of "Floquenbeam" a current administrator and failed (he lasted a few months, and then IIRC was seen spewing profanities and abuse at newbies and common editors, and goodness knows what else, it's probably rev-deleted now).

There are a range of reasons to suspect Cohen is Floquenbeam, one of the ones that struck me is Floquenbeam's claim in *his* RFA, essentially, "I do not have a prior account that failed an RFA." The rampant disingenuousness there is that Cohen's RFA was going down in flames like the Hindenburg dirigible, many people flatly opposing him, zero hope of success, but he seems to have engineered it to a "withdrawal," some sort of nullification that allows him to falsely claim, essentially, "well it didn't fail."

Floquenbeam frames his account change as a matter of privacy, but really, when your previous RFA has 47 opposes, and you're using a fresh account for another RFA, don't the people deciding whether you should be given power over other editors have a right to know about it?

I'd be interested if anyone recalls this guy and cares to share any insight on him. He's running around lately like a run-of-the-mill abusive admin pushing editors around and giddily scheming with his partners in slime to wipe them out here and there.

Been meaning to post this. In case anyone read the above comment as suggesting Floquenbeam is actually a guy named Lawrence Cohen, no he's not. He's another one of these administrators that use real-sounding pseudonyms.

sorry I missed this thread before. We have a file on the guy, and "Lawrence Cohen" is not Floquenbeam. Alison told me his old account was covered up in 2008 because it was absurdly easy to Google it and find the guy's real name and home address. Besides I think Cohen is from Seattle and Floq appears to be Australian. Everyone on Wikipedia, even his critics, seem to think covering up Floq's identity is a matter of great and serious concern. They won't tell me exactly why.

He was the main-iac who forced Good Olfactory off Wikipedia. You can read the whole sordid story in this Arbcom list leak. Fair warning, as with all the arbcom dumps on WR, reading this stuff will make you want to strangle some arbitrators.
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=34276

Floq didn't last on Arbcom very long....being a total asshole. For the last few years he's done very little real work, and lots of banning, screeching and threatening of various people on talkpages. I bet they regret giving him "special treatment" now....

Multiple indicators, that I'm not going to get into, point to Joe Szwaja, who was or is a schoolteacher.

ericbarbour wrote:Floq didn't last on Arbcom very long....being a total asshole. For the last few years he's done very little real work, and lots of banning, screeching and threatening of various people on talkpages. I bet they regret giving him "special treatment" now....

It's his nature.

Mutineer wrote:

ericbarbour wrote:Floq didn't last on Arbcom very long....being a total asshole. For the last few years he's done very little real work, and lots of banning, screeching and threatening of various people on talkpages. I bet they regret giving him "special treatment" now....

It's his nature.

Floq was also at least partly to blame for Tiptoety leaving as well. A couple weeks after floq told them to F off, they did and hasn't been seen since. My guess is they were already considering leaving and that was just the last straw.

For what it's worth, Floq recently asked for their Oversight privileges to be removed, removed mentions of them being an admin and posted a notice on their user page they will be unavailable till at least June. Good riddence!