To voice controversial statements/opinions, which he is far from shy about doing.

If cobra =/= theymos, then who is he, and what is the basis for trusting him with ultimate control over the domain names?

If memory serves me correctly, sirus and satoshi both founded the forum, so it would make sense for sirus to take it over when satoshi left, and theymos was active around here in the very early days, was made a moderator, made his way up the "ranks" to eventually be made an administrator, and presumably ran the forum well enough to eventually have control over the server.

From what I can tell, cobra just kinda appeared out of nowhere and was running things.