This is not a pitting but it was asked that discussion go here, so here is where I’ll put it.
First question, did we know any of the socks?
Second question:
I made a very similar statement upthread from Wee Bairn. Did you perform whatever kind of background check on me that you did on him, and did someone tip you off to this or was it a random sighting?
I was not involved in Wee Bairn’s demise, but I note that your “similar” comment simply asked about signing up at a free site with fake info, not subscribing multiple times under different IDs. (You might want to double check your second download from last Tuesday, of course.)
If Wee Bairn’s linked post is any guide, that’s a leap of logic big enough to make Superman green with envy. Or did the SDMB buy out Hotmail when I wasn’t looking?
Every once in a while, you FIND the WMD’s.
You will have to explain where the leap of logic occurs in your mind.
Wee Bairn made a point of (rather gleefully) asking if everyone had not created sock puppets for malicious purposes. This (paid) site has an explicit rule regarding multiple usernames.
Cisco’s post made no reference to creating sock puppets, only going to (free) sites and signing up using less than accurate information.
In other words, the two posts were specifically not similar in those areas that would attract staff attention.
Would it make anyone feel better if we ran a more thorough check on all their activity? If it would set anyone at ease, we can do that for them. (Please, not too many requests, it takes time away from out other duties and occasionally slows the board response time.)
It goes from his one brain cell to his other brain cell.
Uh, no, he did not. Here’s the relevant portion of his post:
I’ve bolded a critical phrase which seems to have escaped your notice. So, I ask again, how do you make the connection between someone admitting to creating fake Hotmail accounts and creating multiple usernames here? Because, I’m not seeing it.
Great, another moron who doesn’t know the difference between the SDMB and Hotmail.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I was following his thread in GD, saw that he was banned, went to ATMB, and similar to Q.E.D. saw that WB admitted to using fake e-mail addresses. I don’t see how he revealed that he created a sock.
The fact that you think that the “hotmail account” is the critical point seems to be your problem and I do not recall that even being mentioned in staff discussions. Fake accounts to mess with people was the trigger for the staff discussions and (answering the OP of this thread) Cisco never mentioned the same thing.
It’s pretty much irrelevant if you see it. For whatever reason, it made someone curious, that someone investigated, found evidence, ran it by the rest of us, and Wee Bairn was banned. It really doesn’t matter a bit what the reason was that spurred the investigation, only the results matter.
We don’t need probable cause to compare user profile information and IP addresses; most of the time we don’t have probable cause. We can run random checks. In this case, Marley23 noticed **Wee Bairn’s ** post. I don’t know if he even saw **Cisco’s ** post. In any case, Wee Bairn’s post made him curious. He investigated. He found stuff. I’ve seen the evidence. The administrators have seen the evidence. The guy had multiple accounts here on the board. His post merely got Marley23 interested in checking for socks.
The socks were discovered by the queries that were made subsequent to his mention of “fake accounts.” No one cared whether his e-mail addy was from hotmail and that did not get him banned.
He wasn’t banned for that post, which is of course not itself sufficient evidence to ban someone for sockhood. However, it did prompt questioning of whether he had created socks here. A quick check yielded concrete proof that he had in fact registered multiple usernames. Poof, no more Wee Bairn.
Pretty dumb, overall.
Mod quad post! Sweet.
So, Wee Bairn got banned for admitting to having multiple Hotmail accounts?
No.
Ok.
Now that’s some sweet mod attention. I figured that’s what happened… thanks for clearing that up.
This is very different from your initial post in this thread which was misleading, at best. You could have avoided all the subsequent confusion by simply stating the information which has since been posted. These aren’t State secrets, fer chrissakes.
And, Frank, you’re still a tool.