2 questions about Wee Bairn banning

[tomndebb]

@Rubystreak

He never said anything about socks. He said hotmail accounts. You were quite clear in your posts that you were stating that WeeBairn admitted to sockery on the SDMB (bolding mine):

@tomndebb

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.)

and

@tomndebb

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.

You definitely gave the impression, rather explicitly, that WeeBairn had outed the fact that he had socks here. He didn’t. He mentioned having fake hotmail addresses and then a logical leap was made. A correct one, and good for you guys for catching him. I mean that. I am not in favor of socks and I’m glad when they are eliminated. However, your posts were misleading. Q.E.D. got all kinds of slapping around for calling you on it and that was unjustified.

You might want to look up the meaning of the word explicit, because it does not mean what you think it means.

At no point did I imply, suggest, or otherwise indicate that Wee Bairn had bragged about having socks on the SDMB. What I said was that he bragged about having socks while Cisco did not. The thread in question was a lengthy discussion about activities on MySpace. Multiple subscriptions on MySpace is directly analogous to actual sockpuppetry on a message board. I said, further, that his post remarking on multiple subscriptions caught the attention of the staff prompting further investigation while Cisco’s post, only remarking on using fake personal information, did not set off the same alarms.

Now, I can see how you (coming from a perspective that I was not addressing) might infer that he had bragged about having SDMB socks, but I never made that claim either explicitly or implicitly.

[Omegaman]

@Liberal

Tuba was talking about a rabbit.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9810923&postcount=77

OH THE CATS OUT OF THE BAG NOW!!!

By his own admission, Marley23 has blown the cover off of this entire CONSPIRACY!!!

Where do the Nazi reptiles from outer space hold their meetings?

WE MUST FERRET THEM OUT !!! BURN THEM !! BURN THEM !!

We must remain vigilant. :eek:

[Q.E.D]

@Bricker

It’s not his fault. When someone is too stupid to remember to breathe, you can hardly be surprised when further brain damage follows from lack of oxygen. Pity and occasional shots of pure O[sub]2[/sub] are the charitable response to Q.E.D..

That’s twice now you’ve followed me into a Pit thread and dropped an unprovoked steaming load. If this is your new hobby, I suggest a new one. Otherwise, one might get the impression that you are a childish, petty and mean-spirited little man.

[Moriarty]

Wee Bairn is banned?

So is it okay to like Oprah now?

[FarmerChick]

@Giraffe

Fuck, Q.E.D., just shut up. No one cares what you think. Your snarky tough guy act is a pathetic charade, and having you yapping at people’s heels with snide insinuations and eye rolling is beyond tedious.

Just. Shut. Up. Everyone hates you, and for good reason. You suck.

(For the record, I am officially sick of Q.E.D.)

Best Reply Ever!

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

@Giraffe

OK, fuck it:

Wee Bairn, aka
Gene Frenkle, aka
Jean Poutine, aka
Jacob Silj.

Thank you, dear. I’d give you a big wet “thankyou” smooch, but the tongue kinda creeps me out, sorry.

[Triskadecamus]

I think, as an alternative to the current explanation of the exact methods used by mods, something like the following:

MODERATOR: I was hanging around in Cafe Society a few days ago, and something made my psychic senses twinge just a little. So, I went to the Secret Mod Cave, and hooked up the Super Secret Modulator Enhancement Device.

Suddenly it became clear. Timid User is a sock puppet!

So, I obliterated the pipsqueak, according to Jackboot Instruction 1506a.

Tremble before the might of the Modulator!

It would be much more polite.

Tris

[elbows]

Marley’s post, not so clear, really, on reflection. Did imply a pretty big leap. Not important as, in the end, the guy/gal *did *have socks.

**
Q.E.D.** stirring the pot at every opportunity, started with some on point questions, then strayed into same old, same old.
**
Rubystreak** didn’t seem to have read the thread very carefully and went all off on how QED was being treated. Once clarified (repeated what was already up thread) began to play nice again.

Talk about your tempest in a teapot.

Seriously though, Marley 23 started this by implying that he/her was banned for a veiled reference to behaviour on another site. I really like Marley 23 as a mod but I think it’s his bad here. And I did see where he already admitted as much.

Still, it’s not like it isn’t entertaining!

[Omegaman]

@Q.E.D.

That’s twice now you’ve followed me into a Pit thread and dropped an unprovoked steaming load. If this is your new hobby, I suggest a new one. Otherwise, one might get the impression that you are a childish, petty and mean-spirited little man.

He tried to dump one on me the other day but it blew up in his face. I’m done playing with him. He’s got no heart.

[E-Sabbath]

@RoOsh

I now discover he is a Man.
Alas. I weep. ;_;
This was truly a dream crushing Thread.

A Giraffe’s tongue is eighteen inches long and prehensile.

I also remember Jean Poutine, and I don’t know why. Huh.

[Bosstone]

@elbows

I really like Marley 23 as a mod but I think it’s his bad here. And I did see where he already admitted as much.

Apparently I was the only person who actually read and understood the ATMB post. Oh well.

[NajaNivea]

@samclem

Nope, they haven’t disappeared. We have too much to do to disappear hundreds of posts from 2006 Let me guess–you searched on a name, but forgot to set your search date parameter to “any date?”

Possibly true ;). I guess I assumed that was the default since I’ve never set the date parameter before. I searched all five names and came up with an extensive list for Wee Bairn but nothing for the others. I wasn’t, you know, cranky about it–just stating facts to save the hamsters the work of a million people all doing useless curiosity searches at the same time if there was nothing there to find.

@Frank

Serious question, really. What does that gain for you?

Nothing useful. Curiosity satiated. I remember having a brief relationship with one of the socks in a thread exchange and wanted to see how that compared to my impressions of Wee Bairn. Generally when people are banned, I don’t even notice. I very, very rarely read the pit except when the front headline catches my eye in the greater forums page, and it’s never been anyone I’d noticed or cared about. I don’t tend to pay attention to people who behave like trolls and socks mostly do, and so when they’re subsequently banned, I rarely have any idea who they even are. Non-notice, you might say.
It caught my eye that Wee Bairn had been banned for sockitude but only by virtue of the headline pit thread. Not knowing Wee Bairn to act like a troll, generally speaking, and generally enjoying his input to the boards, I was surprised and saddened to see that he had done whatever it was he had done. I wanted to see what other personalities he’d used and if they were ones that had affected me, in what ever way. It might change what I know about Wee Bairn when reading his posts. That’s all.

I don’t feel any hostility towards the mods or feel that, in regards to the sock issue, anyone acted out of line either in checking out the hunch or banning the socks. As he said, it was just a hunch. He checked it out. Turns out he was right. Sucks, but what’re you gonna do? Ban the socks.

I just thought you were acting with a bit of undue over-caution in protecting Wee Bairn from having been a secret troll. Turns out the names were mundane guests. If not having them released served some kind of purpose, I’d have been perfectly satisfied if someone had said “we have the list of socks, but they’re all mundane–no troll behavior, just multiple guests, so we’re not going to bother releasing them for X reason”. Hiding the information just seemed unnecessary, though, and absent any real reason not to release the names, why not release the names and satisfy people’s curiosity?

Anyway, I want to thank the mods for the work they normally do. I sure as hell don’t want the job. I get why y’all would be cranky, on occasion, and especially when a banning occurs. It’s upsetting.

[NajaNivea]

Oh, and to add to that, when it was said you weren’t disappearing the posts for the sake of continuity because there was just too many of them, that sure sounded like the socks were someone significant, to me.
Then I learned the names, and saw they weren’t high-profile trolls. I did a curiosity search and thought I’d found a number of insignificant sock posts disappeared, but Wee Bairn’s still in place, which made sense. I think in just about every case, secrecy gets people much more hyped up than clarity. If you wanted to draw attention to the issue, you’ve made that happen.

[rayh]

@Bosstone

Apparently I was the only person who actually read and understood the ATMB post. Oh well.

No, I understood it too, which is why I didn’t dump on the mods.

@Marley23

Mods are Dopers, not Nazi reptiles from outer space.

I am definitly going to need a cite for this.

[Contrapuntal]

Whet exactly is a fake hotmail account? If I set up 5 hotmail accounts, are 4 of them necessarily fake?

I have multiple e-mail accounts that I use for different purposes. Are any of them fake?

[Bosstone]

@Contrapuntal

Whet exactly is a fake hotmail account? If I set up 5 hotmail accounts, are 4 of them necessarily fake?

I have multiple e-mail accounts that I use for different purposes. Are any of them fake?

If you create a hotmail account with the purpose of creating an identity that is not your own, I think it can safely be said to be fake. There’s nothing inherently wrong with fake email accounts per se; it depends on the context in which they’re used.

[Eureka]

@Contrapuntal

Whet exactly is a fake hotmail account? If I set up 5 hotmail accounts, are 4 of them necessarily fake?

I have multiple e-mail accounts that I use for different purposes. Are any of them fake?

A fake hotmail account (at least in my opinion) is an account that purports to be from someone other than you–and generally not just a generic person who isn’t you but a specific person you aren’t. Like a friend of mine who sent an e-mail to a buddy pretending to be Tori Amos. The recipient thought “Wow!” then “Wait a minute” and soon thereafter figured out who really sent the e-mail.

That’s fairly harmless, but still fake. I don’t know if any of your hotmail accounts are fake. If you use one for Straight Dope friends, and one for college friends, and one to sign up for messageboards you don’t hang out at and keep one around just because . . . none are probably fake.

ETA: when I say specific person, I don’t neccessarily mean a specific real person. Representing yourself as an attractive, and youthful, female when you are in fact a middleaged male is a type of fake identity relevant to these purposes.

[Rubystreak]

@tomndebb

At no point did I imply, suggest, or otherwise indicate that Wee Bairn had bragged about having socks on the SDMB. What I said was that he bragged about having socks while Cisco did not.

Where did he brag about having socks at all?

The thread in question was a lengthy discussion about activities on MySpace. Multiple subscriptions on MySpace is directly analogous to actual sockpuppetry on a message board.

Where did he say he had fake myspace accounts?

I said, further, that his post remarking on multiple subscriptions caught the attention of the staff

Where did he “remark on multiple subscriptions” to anything?

Having multiple e-mail accounts is the only thing he admitted to in that thread, something which I would suspect many people are “guilty” of. He admitted to using them to mess with people. If that was the tip-off, OK, but nowhere in what WeeBairn said is there any indication or admission or hint of socking or multiple accounts here, as you have said. An intuitive leap was made.

You continue to be misleading about what you’ve said and to mischaracterize WeeBairn’s words. I reread his contributions to the thread that got him banned, and nowhere does he discuss anything but phony e-mail addresses. Yes, that’s what led to Marley23 checking, but no, there was no mention of subscriptions or fake profiles or anything remotely resembling sock puppetry, as you have said over and over.

I think you owe Q.E.D. an apology, but I know from experience that apologies are rare no matter how deserved they are. And since this thread has satisfied my curiosity, I’ve probably gotten as much benefit out of it as I’m going to.

[PunditLisa]

I really do try not to feed trolls because I understand that they are deliberately acting prickish in order to get attention. Giving attention to these sorts only encourages them to continue acting prickish.

However, I don’t agree that releasing sock names is the equivalent of feeding trolls. Quite the contrary. There are some legitimate reasons why releasing the names has merit:

1. It adds credibility to the banning. I’m not a conspiracy nut, but some people on the boards really do think that the Mods have it out for some people. By providing the list of socks, it proves that the Mods have, indeed, found concrete evidence against the poster and removes the air of suspicion that some people have about the Mods’ true agendas.

2. It would actually discourage people from creating socks - The SDMB equivalent of mounting their collective heads on the gate coming into town. I seriously doubt WeeBairn anticipated that he’d ever be banned AND outed. That’s a deterrent for anyone else considering doing such a thing.

3. It satisfies our curiosity - I don’t think I have a “right” to know, but I’m glad that Giraffe released the names. If I was so inspired, I could now do searches to see if any of the socks showed up in contentious threads to lend support to the Puppetmaster. There’s something particularly pathetic about that.

[Eureka]

Incidentally, I was shocked when I saw WeeBairn was banned. I won’t miss him much, but I thought it was a pretty big leap from his post about fake e-mails and such to actual socks on the SDMB. Now, I understand the bit about mods being able to look for evidence of sock-puppetry without any evidence whatsoever–and his attitude that everyone does it is certainly suspect–but I was shocked by how quickly he was banned.