# Banning and being banned **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [January 27, 2010, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/banning-and-being-banned/526601 "2010-01-27T01:17:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ToeJam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dfb087/32.png) [@ToeJam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ToeJam)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/banning-and-being-banned/526601/41 "2010-01-29T01:51:21Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > ## I don’t get rude about it but I cite my expertise on a regular basis. > > Many people would deservedly be pissed at me because I’ve been lying to them but would this rise to the level of being a big enough jerk to get banned? I’d consider that Jerkish behavior. And i’d guess others would think it enough to pull out the banhammer as well. Especially if you used it to give yourself credence. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/banning-and-being-banned/526601/42 "2010-01-29T02:19:45Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Well, what is the current policy on lying? Suppose I decided that my posts on current affairs weren’t getting the respect I felt they were entitled to. So I started telling people I have doctorates in history and political science and teach these subject at an Ivy League university. I don’t get rude about it but I cite my expertise on a regular basis. > > A couple of years go by and somehow it’s revealed that I do not have a doctorate and I am not a professor. I’m a college dropout who works in a prison. Many people would deservedly be pissed at me because I’ve been lying to them but would this rise to the level of being a big enough jerk to get banned? Addressing this strictly as a hypothetical, I don’t think we’d care very much. Caveat lector and all that. Posts should be judged by their quality, not by the purported level of learning of the poster. If the person is making bad quality posts, anyone who puts more credence in them because of their supposed expertise mainly has themselves to blame. But we’d have to have a real instance to be able to judge the severity. In the couple of cases of misrepresentation that have been mentioned the posters were essentially trolling. ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/banning-and-being-banned/526601/43 "2010-01-29T03:18:49Z")
> [@Rack-a-Bones](#): > > Can I ask here what is the problem with “socks.” I know it is an instaban offense but I’m curious to why. There must be a thread somewhere discussing this but I couldn’t find one (though I admit, I didn’t try very hard). [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/faq.php?faq=vb3\_board\_faq#faq\_sdmb\_rules](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/faq.php?faq=vb3_board_faq#faq_sdmb_rules) > [@](#): > > **Only one screen name is permitted per user. If you wish to change screen names please email an administrator. Use of multiple screen names is grounds for revocation of your right to post under ANY screen name.** This has been in force for a long long time. It wasn’t so much when we were at AOL, where you could have multiple screen names and still be “legal” under the AOL Terms of Service (which we were bound by as well as the AOL members; that’s why you see older columns that have had all the cuss words taken out of them, that was AOL. But I digress.) After we got out on our own we insisted on one screen name to a customer, period. We enforce that today. ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/banning-and-being-banned/526601/44 "2010-01-29T04:10:05Z")
> [@](#): > > […]that’s why you see older columns that have had all the cuss words taken out of them, that was AOL. Ah! I’ve wondered about that before. I suspected it was something like that, but I did wonder if Unca Cece had gotten soft at some point. (Or I was just more easily shocked in my younger days and remembered more cursing than there was.) Censoring the “shit” in his column about Schrodinger’s Cat was like putting pasties on the Venus de Milo, however. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/banning-and-being-banned/526601/45 "2010-01-29T16:39:02Z")
**TubaDiva** said: > [@](#): > > This has been in force for a long long time. It wasn’t so much when we were at AOL, where you could have multiple screen names and still be “legal” under the AOL Terms of Service… > > After we got out on our own we insisted on one screen name to a customer, period. We enforce that today. Actually, that change happened sometime after the board changeover. I know, because I didn’t start posting until after the AOL days, and I remember when socks were legal. ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/banning-and-being-banned/526601/46 "2010-01-29T17:49:56Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > **TubaDiva** said: > > Actually, that change happened sometime after the board changeover. I know, because I didn’t start posting until after the AOL days, and I remember when socks were legal. No, not “legal.” We just couldn’t do anything about the fact that someone had more than one AOL screen name – it’s permissible under AOL’s Terms of Service. We’ve always discouraged having duplicate registrations, though when we were on AOL we didn’t have a lot of teeth to back that up. When we got out from under AOL we could insist on it, as we do today and have done for a long time. There were a few times on AOL when we had “masked chat” and people attended under different screen names, but those times were rare. That’s not socking. ---
**Author:** ![kidchameleon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/898d66/32.png) [@kidchameleon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kidchameleon)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2010, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/banning-and-being-banned/526601/47 "2010-01-29T19:31:57Z")
> [@pedescribe](#): > > Don’t make socks. > > Don’t threaten the Chicago Reader with legal action. > > Both of those are insta-ban offenses. Bah, I bet they’d ban people that threatened the Chicago Reader with _illegal_ action, too. Life is so unfair. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2010, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/banning-and-being-banned/526601/48 "2010-01-30T04:35:05Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > There was some kid that found a way to edit people’s titles. And there was somebody else who figured out a trick for posting under what appeared to be other people’s usernames. Wasn’t that what started the whole “Winter of Our Missed Content?” (Or else it was done by the same person?) ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2010, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/banning-and-being-banned/526601/49 "2010-01-30T04:42:28Z")
IIRC we had a server failure over several weeks – the system was supposed to be doing a backup every night and it had failed to do so for a while. This was part of the server failure problem and by the time it was discovered we could do nothing but move to a new server and start again with the most recent backup we had, which was several weeks old. This resulted in a gap of about six weeks or so of postings and registrations that vanished into the ether. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/banning-and-being-banned/526601.md?page=2)