I have a real life job that has me bouncing all over North America from one Holiday Inn Extended Stay Suites to another. If I'm lucky, I end up in a town where the company has a furnished condo waiting for me and I get to stay a whole month. (I also use a Sprint wireless account when traveling so I have even more IP addresses.) So I've been a Wikignome and RC patroller, using a steady stream of anonymous IP addresses for two years. I have corrected thousands of spelling, grammar and punctuation errors over the past two years, and caught about a dozen vandals.

The article is about FreeRepublic.com, a conservative Internet forum founded by Vietnam vet named Jim Robinson. User:Eschoir is a former member of that forum who was permanently banned in 1998 for creating nearly 100 sockpuppet accounts for purposes of disruption. He has been called "the ubertroll Eschoir," and the person using this descriptive term was clearly not biased against him by any sympathies with Free Republic. Eschoir was so disruptive that Robinson found it necessary to spend $110,000 on a federal lawsuit to obtain a permanent injunction against him. If he ever starts another account at Free Republic, he can be jailed for contempt of court. This is the mother of all WP:COI problems. Eschoir never should have been allowed to edit the Free Republic article.

Nevertheless, Fred Bauder was willing to AGF, as seen on Eschoir's User talk page. From that moment forward, Eschoir steadily transformed the Free Republic article into his own bitter little personal blog. It was an inventory of every petty little feud that occurred between Free Republic members, and every nutball statement that was ever said in a ten-year history of about 2 million posts in their forum. The article gradually moved farther and farther away from compliance with WP:NPOV.

One day on RC patrol, I noticed an edit on the Free Republic article containing the word "penis."

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=180999030

The Wikipedia editor, Eschoir, was describing an alleged event involving two real people: Kristinn Taylor, a prominent participant at the Free Republic forum, and another participant using the alias "Dr. Raoul." Since the article isn't about a topic dealing with sexuality or medicine, this immediately attracted my attention regarding a possible WP:BLP violation. (Since then, Eschoir has admitted that the alleged event never occurred.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=181533565

I reverted the edit, placed a final warning for vandalism on Eschoir's Talk page and started actively editing the article to bring it into NPOV compliance. Ever since that moment, he has been making false WP:SOCK accusations, claiming that I'm a sock of a banned editor called BryanFromPalatine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=181473596

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=181674584 see edit summary

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=181794396 see edit summary

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=181913616 see edit summary

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=181953936

There are lots more where those came from. On the article, Eschoir has occupied territory that's best described as a continuous violation of WP:NPOV, WP:TE, WP:DE, WP:AGF, WP:NPA and WP:DBAD. I've got plenty of diffs to support that too. I comp[iled all my evidence, and everything has been archived and tucked out of sight by the admins here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tal...c#Free_Republic

Eschoir expanded a quotation from Robinson into a blockquote, continuing his campaign of cherry-picking quotations that make Free Republic look like a collection of nutballs and criminals. He chopped up my Talk page edits into an incomprehensible mess by inserting a contentious and contemptuous response between the lines.

Eschoir then began to engage in a full-fledged edit war to revert edits that were supported by consensus, and clearly intended to restore NPOV. Eschoir completely refactored the article on a "sandbox" page. It's obvious why Eschoir wants to go with a reverse chronology. It enables him to stuff all of the following epithets, from recent critics describing Free Republic, into the first 161 words of the article:

* vile
* hateful
* besmirching Christian values
* some pretty sick people posting
* inciting the murder of Hillary Clinton
* racist and homophobic
* poor moderation
* victimized by a wave of purges

Eschoir has made continued efforts to demean anyone on the Talk:Free Republic page who doesn’t share his position. Here's Eschoir mocking the difficulties of User:Shibumi2, for whom English is not a native language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=186448194

Who gets permablocked? Me, of course. Meanwhile, here are the Wikipedia admins doing absolutely nothing about Eschoir:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm...t#Free_Republic

The community has risen up in defense of its troll.

This is definitely one of Guy's more bizzare blocks. Don't worry, it has a decent chance of being overturned.

NOTE TO ANYONE FROM WIKIPEDIA LOOKING HERE: THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR ON-WIKI ACTION. IF SOMEONE CHALLENGES THE BLOCK, THEY ARE NOT DOING SO AS MY PROXY. I WILL STEAL GUY'S CLUESTICK AND WHACK ANYONE WHO CLAIMS OTHERWISE.

I wish I didn't have to say that, but apparently that's what my comments are interpreted as.

Welcome to the Review Samurai Commuter! Enjoy your stay.

And for some reason this seems to remind me of the time Danny took OFFICE action over at the NewsMax article. I don't know why.

You know, after all the work I've done on Wikipedia over the past two years, I'm not even 100% sure I want to be edit Wikipedia again. Trying to direct admins' attention to this troll has branded me as a "disruptive SPA."

I think you'd be more efficient if you just put this in your signature ;-)

I don't quite understand why you haven't created an account prior. Two years is long.

Never saw any need for it. I thought creating an account on the Free Republic Talk page would lower the level of resentment and suspicion. Fat chance of that.

Concerning the Free Republic article, I was reminded of this edit by Carolyn Doran, former WMF COO and convicted felon etc etc etc, which removed a big chunk of infomration.

This took place in January, 2007 and has never been explained to my satisfaction...It would seem that the PTB have been following this article for quite a while...the question is WHY?

May I highly recommend the life of a "banned user"? It is actually much more fun than helping Wikipedia "temporarily improve" with constructive edits, because I assure you, most of the substantial improvements that rational people make to Wikipedia are eventually turned over into garbage again, with time. It isn't worth your trouble. Have FUN in life!

Greg

I should go back to writing magazine articles in my spare time. At least it made a little money.

By the way, the admins have tucked my complaint even farther out of sight:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm...3#Free_Republic

Inspector Callahan spanked them for blocking me and not blocking Eschoir:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&action=history


Inspector Callahan was reverted and permablocked for it within 20 minutes by SirFozzie. Then someone wandered in as an anonymous IP and spanked them for it again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=189283536


This time, it only took 15 minutes for a reversion by Thatcher: "rv banned user." I see that Wikipedia Review has Alison and SirFozzie as contributors. Perhaps they'd like to explain why they got rid of a Wikignome who's been editing without incident for two years, and protected a troll who literally has the mother of all COI problems.

Or perhaps they's prefer to avoid this thread like a minefield.

Think of this place as like going into Wikipedia rehab - only its more fun than normal rehab.

Think of Wikipedia as a powerful psychotropic drug and you've been yanked off the streets after being on WP for too long. Then you're sent here.

Its a group therapy session with fellow addicts.

Its healthier than editing Wikipedia. Believe me.

I appreciate the sentiments of everyone who has contributed to this thread so far. But I do not perceive WP as being beyond redemption. I'm personally burned out by trying to bring Eschoir to justice, and by facing admins' indifference, suspicion and hostility in response, but the project could be salvaged. It does not need to be scrapped. It needs to be overhauled, starting with this step: Jimbo desysopps the entire Cabal and does a high-visibility banning of its worst offenders, including its little groupies and wannabes like Lawrence Cohen.

There are admins there who are aware that there's a problem. They need to be empowered and organized to do something about it.

Maybe admins aren't monolithic, and thus see no need to explain why "they" did something, when only JzG really did it?

Oh, and SirFozzie quit (although that hasn't been helping him much in avoiding "YOU SUPPORT BANNED USERS").

You're only allowed to support banned users that the Cabal secretly agrees with. Seraphimblade and Acalamari can thus meatpuppet for Antidote socks.

The case now appears to be spilling over into the Waterboarding ArbCom proceeding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...arding/Workshop

I saw mention of a "Dr. Raoul."

Don't forget everybody's favorite bureaucrat, User:Rau654, who is striving for a doctorate.