I don’t remember reading a clause in the registration agreement saying that accounts would be deactivated after a certain duration has passed since the member’s last post. The closest approximation to such a clause would be:
There could be a simple reason why WizardX’s account was deactivated. Maybe WizardX registered before the board software was upgraded, and not all member accounts were properly transferred. However, if WizardX’s guess is correct, could someone point me to a more specific clause than the one cited above, which states that accounts will be automatically deactivated due to disuse?
SDMB accounts are not deactivated due to disuse. (That said, I can’t swear that an account that was created before the board software was switched to vBulletin and not used since then would still work.) More likely, a poster will simply have forgotten his or her password. If an account has actually been deactivated, it’s because it was deliberately done by a human being; in other words, the account has been banned.
If someone has on old account for which they’ve forgotten the password, or especially if the account appears to have been banned, that person needs to contact one of the Administrators, and not just create a new screen name. If it’s just a question of a forgotten password the Admins can clear that up, but creating a new account is a violation of the Registration Agreement. (And WizardX has already been contaced by one of the Admins to get that straightened out.)
Turns out, however, that WizardX’s old account is more than two years old, and he doesn’t remember the name or password or email that he was using then.
We’re allowing an exception in this case, so he will continue as WizardX, unless we can figure out his prior name, but this is a special exception.
We want people to have one identity, and one identity only, so that this becomes a “community” – people take responsibility for what they say, and bear the consequences thereof. There’s no shirking or hiding under aliases. That’s the reason for the one-person, one-name rule.
It would be freakin’ lot easier on Mods, if we could appear under a different name, vent at some jerk, and then pretend it wasn’t us. We’re not allowed that luxury any more, and neither is anyone else.
The mods have their methods, but I’m sure you can understand why they don’t want them to be public knowledge? Knowing how socks are detected would make it easier for a would-be sock to try to evade those methods.
But usually, it comes down to the fact that most sockers are idiots, and give themselves away.
That, and a bevy of trained linguistical analysists that create a statistical word study of each and every poster so that each unique ideogram can be corelated to every post…
Like Chronos (who used to be a moderator) said, the Mods have their ways. They’d rather not discuss them, because it can help puppetteers with their act.
The registration agreement and the desire to remain a member of this community. Sure, a person could probably go for a while undected, but if a guy posts from an account at work, and then replies to things directed at him from his home account, he’s gonna get caught. And we’ll ban both names.
Anyway, why would someone need more than one account? There’s nothing a guy can do with multiple accounts that he can’t do with one. If one has a desire to be a real member here, they wouldn’t risk it.
Also, generally speaking, if a member were to come forward, e-mail and admin/mod, and tell us he’d created multiple accounts, not out of deceit, but an honest misunderstanding of the rules, and gave us those account names, we’ll let 'em pick the one they wish to keep, and cancel the rest. With no black spot on his record. After all, it’s an honest mistake; we don’t punish people for that.