I understand that, in the event that you disappear the posts, but… you’ve already announced you’re not disappearing these due to volume. So in this case, the knowledge would aid continuity. Also the name by the post provides some context for the information within. Can you see the relevance there?
No kidding.
What the fuck, Giraffe? In this particular thread, Q.E.D. is correct. WeeBairn’s post was misrepresented by tomndebb for reasons that I cannot fathom in his first and second posts to this thread. Go back and reread them. He states that WeeBairn bragged about creating sock puppets. That is NOT what WeeBairn did. That leaves the question out there: how did Marley23 make the leap from “has fake hotmail accounts,” which is rather commonplace, to “has sock puppets on the SDMB”?
I think it would be common courtesy to tell us who the socks were. One of the nicest features of this place is that people have real identities here when you converse with them. We’d like to know who we were talking to. Why keep that from us? Seems rather patronizing and senseless to me.
Holy crap. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Giraffe mad.
Yeah, the leap from multiple Hotmail addresses to multiple SDMB accounts was a long one, but not impossibly so. Since mods don’t need probable cause, they could investigate everyone in an MPSIMS thread talking about darning socks if they wanted to. So, whatever.
Because one popular use of multiple email addresses is to create multiple accounts on a community site. Not that hard to grasp.
Well, that was mature. Good to know mod selection around here is up to its usual high standards.
It really isn’t relative. It’s rather mundane and pointless.
Someone registers a guest account. Posts for 30 days. He re-registeres a diff name, posts for another 30 days. Rinse, repeat. He’s not an over-the-top troll. Mostly mundane posts. He then decides to join the Dope.
NO, his posts are not all merged under one name.
No, it’s not a public board. It’s a private board. Bunch of Nazis run it.
Plus, if you were made a mod, nobody would question what “Best of the Worst” meant - it would be self-evident! 
Actually, we took his height into consideration when we chose him.
Why does that matter to anyone that is not interested in avoiding having their own socks discovered?
I could, if I chose and if I wanted to take the time, pick any member at random and do research on them; every member in a particular thread; every member that posted on a particular day. I have researched a member when a post made my eyebrows go up - usually it’s a waste of time. Not always. Should I check with the membership? “This thread made my eyebrows go up. Should I investigate?” Do I have to justify why my eyebrows went up?
It’s high enough to exclude you.
Not what tomndebb said, though. tomndebb said that WeeBairn admitted to
having socks here:
WeeBairn didn’t ask people if they all had sock puppets. He just admitted to having multiple hotmail addresses. I have multiple e-mail addresses. Does that mean I have socks here? I hope someone checks just to make sure. That’s some flimsy evidence there, and tomndebb did actively misrepresent it. Then he denied that he misrepresented it, and the mods circled the wagons like they always do when one of them does something wonky, and now Q.E.D. is getting insulted and shit on when he was right.
Something is fucked up here. I don’t know what it is, but the situation is weird. The fact that we can’t know who WeeBairn’s socks were for national security reasons is also pretty ridiculous.
Okay, I’ve got to know. What the HELL are the non-binding cotton diabetic socks that are showing up in the Google ads?
And, to be moderately on topic, if there are people using the internet who haven’t made throw-away free email accounts for one reason or another, it’s news to me. Maybe Marley23 should be writing an anti-sock investigation script to investigate us all?
I take no issue with the mod actions here, really. They just seem rather odd to me. To my mind mentioning fake hotmail accounts raises approximately as many flags as a quadriplegic semaphore operator.
I meant “public” in the sense that every post here is open to public view. We’re even warned by TPTB to be careful about what we say, because every post is a matter of public record. They make such a big deal about taking personal responsibility for the things we say and that being one of the key reasons socks aren’t allowed–so why protect a sock from having to take personal responsibility for all his posts?
Christ.
People, there was no leap at all. I would never ban someone for saying he’s got multiple hotmail accounts. Wee Bairn made his post, I replied, and a couple of minutes later I thought “He couldn’t have… naw, could he?” So I checked and found at least three other accounts that were definitely also his. If he hadn’t made that post I would never have bothered to check him out and found the other accounts, but when he said he’d made up email accounts to screw with people, I figured he might be the kind of schmuck who’d have multiple accounts here. And he was.
This banning was the SDMB equivalent of the Darwin Awards.
Well, that is a ridiculous fucking question, Frank. Because I want to know if I was talking to WeeBairn when I thought I was talking to someone else. Are you accusing me of having socks and wanting to cover them up? :rolleyes:
I know, Frank, you are extremely powerful and can do research on anyone at any time. I feel much safer here knowing that you can and do background check posters who make you go :dubious: . That’s all quite impressive. HOWEVER, tomndebb still mispresented what WeeBairn said as his reason for being banned. Nothing you say to intimidate me or act the internet tough guy yourself alters that. No amount of insulting Q.E.D. makes his reading comprehension incorrect in this case. So either tomndebb could admit he was talking out his ass, or that he was lying. It was either one or the other.
I remain suspicious about this banning. All the mods showing up to this thread to circle wagons and tomndebb’s inaccuracies are all pretty weird. I’m sure I’ll never know what’s really going on, and it’s probably not worth knowing anyway, considering. But the heavy handed bullshit doled out in this thread is really over the top.
Diabetics sometimes have circulatory and resultant foot issues, presumably these are socks that help to prevent amputations.
tom didn’t say anything about socks here, just that he’d admitted to creating socks in general. And I’d say that creating multiple email accounts for the express purpose of fucking with people counts as creating sock puppets. Admittedly, tom’s phrasing is ambiguous, but it’s hardly indicative of some sort of mod conspiracy.
I see no heavy handed bullshit except that dealt out by some members. Wee Bairn was banned for having more than one username. It’s really both simple and standard. Why are you suspicious?
Even though it’s been explained multiple times?
No, I don’t know why tomndebb said what he did. But he’s not the banninator, and what he says frankly doesn’t matter in this case. Marley23 made the collar, and his information has been consistent.
Ye gods, the level of mod-hate that goes on with so little reason…
Reasons why I am suspicious:
Was tomndebb lying or was he just talking out his ass? He came back at Q.E.D. pretty hard and claimed he couldn’t read, but we can all see that he was the one who was wrong. You don’t think that seems kind of odd?
I also do not remotely think admitting to have multiple e-mail accounts for whatever reason (which many people do) = having socks on the SDMB. Apparently it did in this case, but it doesn’t seem like any reason whatsoever to investigate someone. Was there something else?
Your total unwillingness to share who the socks were is quite suspicious. I want to know who they were. So do other people, and not because we all want to know how to better hide our own socks. The reason is simple: something we value about the Dope is knowing who we are talking to. Socks are not allowed because that sort of deception is not allowed here, right? So why can’t you tell us? Why keep it shrouded in pointless mystery?
Hate? The only person being hateful in this thread was Giraffe, towards Q.E.D., for absolutely no reason except his personal axe-grinding. Are you going to call him on that?
I am questioning what happened and wondering about board policy and the secrecy and defensiveness of the staff on this topic. Please do not mischaracterize that as “hate” in order to dismiss valid questions.