Conservapedia:TK



The threshold for tolerating constant arguments and disputes is very low these days. It will get lower.

Terry "TK" Koeckritz, aka "The Knife", (1950—2010) was arguably the least productive and most sleazy of Conservapedia sysops. He was defrocked in late November 2007 after swearing at Schlafly in a private email, but was rehired to enforce Aschlafly's iron will at the end of 2008, where he was active until his death.

People tend to think he was loyal to nobody but himself, and terminally power hungry. When he talked, let no dog bark; indeed, you would do well to heed his roar. He walked among Conservapedians like a God among crazy men. He was inclined to be abrasive, and tore communities down skillfully.

According to the LA Times, he worked in Reno, Nevada.

Modus operandi
It's a pain to see a bully who has never written any actual content try to rule an intellectual enterprise by means of a billy club and a gallon of white out He preferred to contact users privately, through email or other means, so most of the community didn't see what was happening. He targeted new users who hadn't learned about his past, and showed them only his “better” side. These users ended up supporting TK against experienced users who knew him better as quarrels developed. Discussions got fragmented off via chatroom forums, instant messenger chat sessions, etc., where the rest of the community wouldn’t know what he was doing. He ignored reasonable discussion and imposed what he wanted. He was also an unrepentant bully, threatening people with actions outside of the wiki-verse.

Conservapedia
[O]h come on TK you're a mall cop, not an encyclopedist For some time TK was close to Aschlafly and ranked just below the Führer. He was notorious as the most tyrannical of the sysops at Conservapedia, and even the other sysops feared him. TK was enthusiastic with the banhammer and blocked large numbers of users. He even used range blocks against potential users who had done nothing. He banned a group of users who had got together and started RationalWiki 1.0 in the great purge (or "Night of the Blunt Knives").

After those blunt knives TK felt able to challenge Andrew Schlafly himself. He undid some of Schlafly's edits, and refused to accept The Boss's say as final, which was an Abomination. Schlafly turned around and stung TK by desysopping him...well, afterwards TK had to do without the special powers. Desperate for power TK tried to act as a sysop even after he had been desysopped.

Banishment and return


After an argument with Andy, TK opened up the secret Conservapedia Discussion Group to anyone and everyone and was subsequently banished from Conservapedia. TK temporarily moved on to plague RationalWiki, what he and Conservapedia stooge Rob Smith have continued to falsely allege is a Soros-controlled front group, where he succeeded in becoming one of the first users banned from RationalWiki with his near constant attempts at community-destroying trollery. The community does not miss his divisive and hateful demeanor. TK returned to Conservapedia on the 23rd of March, 2008, after being unblocked by Geo.plrd. Although he was supposedly on parole, the document that discussed the specifics of this status was quietly deleted (again by Geo.plrd) on 28th March with the comment "Per private discussion".

Between late April and mid November 2008, TK stayed away from CP. TK returned to Conservapedia in November 2008 with a vengeance and continued to be as active as he ever was until his death in late 2010. He got blocking rights within three weeks of his return. Several previously committed Conservapedia sysops say they left Conservapedia because of him. In his tell-most exposé, Philip J. Rayment wrote a chapter on his difficulties with TK, naming him one of the multitude reasons he left. There have been other prominent, probably futile letters of complaint. (See JessicaT.)

On December 1st, 2008, Andy reinstalled TK to near-sysopship with added checkabuser checkuser powers. TK was one of six people to receive full sysopship (in his case, for a second time around, of course) a few minutes before mid-night on the 31st of December 2008.

He was later given oversight powers, which enabled him to not only make edits invisible, but to remove almost any trace of them having ever happened. He subsequently accused RW of forging screenshots, later naming some real-life names.

Motives
TK had something in common with an Internet griefer. Conservapedia suited him — there are strong but arbitrarily enforced rules, behind-the-scenes administrative communications, a fairly clear ideology to abuse, and plenty of vulnerable normal users and borderline personality-disordered admins to manipulate. Last time, Aschlafly kicked him out before he could finish whatever he wanted to do. Theories include that TK:
 * Wanted to bring the site down.
 * Was playing some type of brinkmanship. "Let's see how far I can get before they block me."
 * Aimed to control the site, and even planned to manipulate Aschlafly to the point of TK eventually becoming the real power.
 * Learned from his last mistake, and would be satisfied once he controlled everybody except the Schlafly family.
 * Was just a dick.

None of these theories on TK's motives are ruled out by a quick look at a screenshot below, of the index from "Far from the Madding Crowd" — the web board TK ran for several years, starting during (or shortly after) his time at "Hot or Not" (see below).

The Early Days, part 1
Long before TK learned about Conservapedia and the opportunities it offered him, he was active online, in a rather *ahem* different environment, called Borrelwords (screen-cap alongside). Strangely, it would appear as if he was more on the *ahem* receiving end here, although it may just have been the proving ground for his later "jailer mentality" actions on Conservapedia.

The Early Days, part 2 — Hot or Not
Before joining Conservapedia or RationalWiki, TK was a moderator at the matchmaking site "Hot or Not". There, he fine tuned the skills he would use to such great effect on Conservapedia. He managed to install himself as James Hong's de-facto Number 2, and insisted that all communication be sent to James, via him. Of course, in a style that we became accustomed to, TK didn't want the other administrators to post their comments online, but rather communicate with him via IM or e-mail. This, of course allowed TK to filter the information he was passing on, and bend it to suit his needs.

However, there were times when TK did post on the various boards, and he showed a distinctly un-Christian attitude towards his fellow administrators and moderators. Proving that a small-minded internet bully can never change his spots, TK went about systematically harassing certain moderators, including a woman named Beth, who was the subject of the following tirade: What a stupid old cunt you are. I posted, you half-wit, before Tina, right after Jamie, that I was indeed willing to give it a try. I was gone all day, and come back to you flaming me and others in the poll forum. What a fucking cunt. It's quite remarkable — foul language aside, his tactic of playing the victim is very much evident.

Another example of TK's delightful intercourse with his fellow moderators can be seen from his reply to moderator Cindy, who posted "Call me shallow, but I can't love someone who only looks fine from the neck down," to which TK responded "So that explains that fat-arsed fake Christian bitch! She only-looks semi-good from the neck up." This habit of being obnoxious towards members of the fairer sex is something he carried over to Conservapedia, as can been seen with his interactions, both on-wiki and in TZB with editors such as HSMom, Jallen and JessicaT.

Just to give you an example of the discord TK was sowing, a user named bombardier36, called TK out on his bullshit. Terry, how can you have the nerve to post a pic stating "Keep hate off the web" after the pathetic cowardly attacks you and your gang of rubber spined friends have put Beth through in the last months or so? We all know the truth about why the forum has gone to rat shit. You are the main reason this forum and I'm sad to say the site has gone tits up. Your (sic) a fucking germ Terry. Once again, any similarity to the goings on at Conservapedia — where TK was surrounded by rubber-spined individuals and wreaks havoc with impunity — was purely coincidental, of course.

Finally, the administrators had had enough of TK's nonsense and he was demoted on 26 June 2005. The administrator who issued the demotion stated that he had "received many complaints about Terry, regarding harrasment, mysteriously deleted forum posts, abusive language, etc." However, he had held off on doing anything, as he had no first-hand experience of such events. TK managed to shoot himself in the foot by then calling Jimy and James Hong liars and made up assertions to bolster his claims. Based on this behaviour, TK was finally stripped of power.

Ironically, TK claimed to be on good terms with James Hong, although that claim has been disputed. In fact, it might be best to let James Hong have the last say in this matter:

The Early Days, part 3
While trolling Hot or Not, TK set up and administrated a parallel site known as "Far From The Madding Crowd". This was a private group for TK, as well as those he had coerced onto his side at Hot or Not. In typical TK fashion, members could "Name names; ruin others; Plague those you hate" in a room called "Cruel Intentions." A bit more disturbing was "The Fuck Shop" where members could "Talk about sex. Anything goes here."

All of this raises the question: why was a man with such tastes holding a position of power and influence on a website that purportedly caters to children of school-going age?

IP range blocks
Huge IP range blocks, taking out whole regions and/or ISPs, have been instituted by TK and Geo.plrd, apparently an ally in this endeavour. It appeared that TK was trying to stamp out the use of TOR and proxy servers by vandals, without caring how much collateral damage he did in the process. Another possibility is that he liked to minimize non-American involvement in Conservapedia. Either way, he refused to discuss the rationale behind these range blocks publicly.

TK had used range blocks deceitfully and vindictively to target individuals. When Sideways queried a fellow editor's block (our very own Human), TK responded not by openly targeting Sideways but by blocking IP range 79.76.0.0/16, effectively stopping a large proportion of a UK-based ISP's customers from editing Conservapedia. When Sideways used a proxy IP to further complain, TK banned him/her for "abusing multiple accounts", associating Sideways with various unrelated vandals who had used the same proxy.

A similar pattern shows up in TK's treatment of User:BRichtigen, whom it was likely that TK was deliberately targeting for BRichtigen's persistent insistence on fair treatment of editors by sysops. On 2nd December 2008, TK blocked IP range 81.210.0.0/16. BRichtigen then complained that he was covered by this block, along with many thousands of other households in Germany and Central Europe. Subsequently the block was lifted, but when TK blocked BRichtigen for two weeks, on 16th December, he again blocked BRichtigen's IP, this time for six months. Again, both blocks were lifted by other administrators. However, when Bugler blocked BRichtigen for a week, on 27th December, TK saw his chance again, and blocked the IP range for a full year.

It is likely that TK used this tactic consistently. A glance through his block log shows that he blocked almost as many IP addresses as user accounts, often alternating between the two. It seems probable that, as in the case of Sideways and BRichtigen, he barred users' IP addresses when blocking them, often for much longer than the user was blocked. He had also been seen encouraging other users with block rights to share information with him for the purpose of range blocks.

Playing the victim when queried
A commonly employed tactic — when his own behaviour was being questioned — was for TK to appear to go on the defensive and make it appear as if his questioner was making highly unreasonable demands towards him. If such an accusation was made on Conservapedia itself, TK would insist that all subsequent communications be via e-mail. Only here, and ideally with others watching, would he play the victim whilst at the same time making several counter statements, the sole purpose of which were to deflect attention away from the misdemeanour being questioned.

A good example of this occurs in the TZB, where sysop Jallen - herself an Australian - queries yet another IP range block.

By this point, TK is alluding to the fact that Jallen is accusing him in public — the "public" being the other six or seven sysops in the group. TK seems to think it unfair that she called him out in "public" and didn't accuse any other sysops. Add to that, the fact that she's "already told me several times that you do not trust me", inserting a clever suck-up to Schlafly ("only Andy's trust is important to me)" and he creating the impression that Jallen is ganging up on him.

But wait, there's more.

TK then posts a result from the APNIC Whois Database, which appears to support his claim that the IP range in question is not a private network, but one belonging to the Queensland Institute. However, he didn't reckon with the tech-savvy Jallen.

She then made the following request:

Remember, it was only a request to change the block that she made, that's all. TK, smelling blood, replies:

By this point, you can almost hear Jallen's teeth grinding together:

At this point, TK gets really sneaky. Somebody has dared speak up against him, and must be punished! The best way to do that is to show that she is breaking the rules, without Andy's permission — and, of course, TK is itching to run to Andy and squeal on her.

But, once again, the deceitful one is caught out:

That was clever of TK — he changed the blocking criteria, hoping nobody would notice. Of course, the evidence is there for all to see, safely stored away in Conservapedia's own logs.

Now then; is he gracious in defeat?

It would appear not. But he does reverse the block, to which Jallen responds:

But TK isn't finished just yet, as he's seriously butt-hurt. So, he manages to have a final dig and illustrate that Jallen was deliberately trying to humiliate somebody she doesn't like in public — instead of mailing him privately — where he could be his obnoxious self.

Of course, catching TK out at his deceitful games naturally makes you "mean and nasty" in his book.

Not content with all of this, TK then indulges in liberal dose of liberal last-wordism, wallowing in his usual "woe is me; this should have been done via private e-mail; why don't you trust me when Andy does" and concluding, in a healthy dose of pathetic sarcasm:

Also worth noting is that during this exchange, not a single other sysop had the balls to intervene, lest they themselves risk offending TK.

TK's official blocking policy
As extracted from his own Conservapedia user page:

Trolling his fellow sysops
In October 2010, TK posted a news item to CP's main page, chastising Obama for not striking sufficient fear into the hearts of terrorists. This drew opposition from an unlikely source - fellow sysop Ken DeMyer pointed out that the US-led War on Terror hasn't enjoyed much success, is counterproductive and comes at a huge financial cost that can't be sustained indefinitely. Pissed off at being called out on his bullshit, TK decided to take his trolling to new extremes by suggesting that the US should just resort to nuking its Middle Eastern enemies instead of fighting protracted wars, and that "turning what little remaining population Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan had against us" would be a small price to pay. According to TK, this opinion is shared by "most conservatives". When Ken objected to this insane suggestion and asked for names of actual conservatives supporting this position, TK chastised him for disagreeing in public, questioned his conservative credentials and continued with some more trollish statements praising the Crusades and prisoner mistreatments at Abu Ghraib. After it became obvious that Ken wouldn't back down, he proceeded to delete and oversight most of the conversation. This earned TK the dubious honor of being the only known person who lost an argument with Ken on the basis of reason.

Behaviour on Wikipedia
On March 22, 2010, Rob Smith kicked off a series of trainwrecks discussions on the talk page of wp:Conservapedia (and quickly branching off from there), claiming that there were issues with NPOV, BLP, privacy, article control, and more. And because things hadn't been messed up enough already, TK joined the discussions a day later in an effort to whitewash the article, remove all mention of RW and bury the last official link between his real name and Conservapedia by discrediting the 2007 LA Times piece.

Of course, it is impossible for TK to be anything other than TK, and soon he was up to his usual tricks. If he thought a Wikipedia admin could be helpful, he was sweetness and light in his discussions with them. Meanwhile, TK and Rob were acting like true concern trolls, as they took their original argument from the talk page of the Conservapedia article and proceeded to spread it across as many talkpages as they could.

Behind closed doors, Rob, TK, Karajou and Geo.plrd were frequently discussing the Wikipedia events, with Rob attempting to make the others follow his long-term plans and especially trying (and failing) to keep TK in check when the name "" was mentioned on the talk page. TK's epic drama meltdown over the bogus outing issue (and the reaction by the admins to it) was ultimately one of the nails in the coffin of Rob's Wikipedia operation.

Whilst this was going on, TK was up to his usual tricks. Any post to his talkpage was deleted as "vandalism" and he went on to issue several threats to RW editors. Finally, the powers that be clamped down on TK's antics - which he could not oversight away, and after some discussion, during which his deceit was highlighted and action was taken. Sadly, he was not blocked, but was blacklisted from using Wikipedia's Twinkle gadget He continued to edit his talkpage, resorting to describing the comments he deleted on his talkpage as thus, "Editor has repeatedly been asked not to post here, is Admin at known, identified vandal site by the press." Of course, he could say this, because the LA Times article mentioned this. It also means that we can call him.

It appeared as if TK was incapable of holding a conversation without having to resort to blackmail e-mail, or without the back-up on the banhammer and oversight.



Death
On 2nd February 2011, User:SusanG posted a link at the talk page of What is going on at Conservapedia? questioning the validity of what seemed to be a death certificate of TK, whose editing had ceased without explanation on December 16th 2010. Through some investigation RationalWiki confirmed that TK had died from cardiac arrest on December 17th 2010.

On Conservapedia
After TK's death had been confirmed by RationalWiki in early February, files from two Conservapedian discussion groups - the Conservapedia Group and the Fab Five - were leaked on 9th February 2011. From a Conservapedia Group thread on 2nd February it is apparent that the (now) "Fab Four" got wind of TK's death via the above thread on the talk page of WIGOCP. It wasn't until some hours after the information was made public on RationalWiki that Karajou first paid homage to his fallen comrade, followed by Joaquin Martinez a short time later. Jpatt, who was the only member of the discussion group who voiced any remorse in the noted thread (unless you count Karajou referring to TK's death as "very bad news") posted the following day expressing intentions of honouring TK's passing and Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday on 6th February at the top of main page left. After receiving no response for two days, he again posted on the 5th February saying he was going ahead with honouring the two of them the following day. This prompted Andy's first comment on TK's death, saying that honouring the ex-President was fine but on honouring TK:

Unfortunately, I don't think we can confirm or deny anything about TK at this time. He chose not to use his real name on Conservapedia, and I think we need to respect that. Posting about him might just bring out abominable, sick comments by liberals. In Christ, Andy Although there is no doubt that TK's fellow sysops would have known his name, his full name would not have to be used on Conservapedia to simply pay a respect. In the following months, asking questions about what had happened to TK resulted in the evasion of the question and/or the blocking of the offending user. However, on the first year anniversary of TK's death, sysop Joaquín Martínez posted a small in memoriam banner to the top of mainpageleft, proclaiming TK as "the greatest CP champion", with no public (and presumably private, given Andy's avoidance of the topic in the discussion groups) objections.

In character, TK's last few edits at Conservapedia on the evening of December 16th called Democratic Senator Harry Reid despicable and TK's very last edit at Conservapedia was telling liberals to run.

TK in the Social Security Death Index