I think you’re right on at least the first count - the “limited social circle” theory is particularly apt on my previous-moderator-board, because it is an oasis of the English language/Western culture in a foreign language/culture environment. But it could apply to any board, certainly one with the appeal of the SDMB.
I don’t know what to classify as “true mentally ill,” but I do wonder if some of the people who come back time and time again see themselves as playing a game with moderators - kind of a “serial killer lite” thing.
This is very rare on this board as well, as far as we can tell. I can think of only a handful of cases since I’ve been a mod. It’s generally too obvious to go on for very long.
Socks are overwhelmingly previously banned posters who try to come back. Occasionally someone will make a sock to discuss a subject they don’t want to have associated with their regular name, or sometimes to troll.
As samclem says, the most persistent ones appear to be mentally ill. They almost literally “don’t have a life” outside the board.
But how many socks have we discovered (rather than simply suspect) that even made a pretense of slowly learning the jargon and board culture? The vast majority of the time they either go in with guns blazing and don’t give a hoot for the board culture, or conversely claim that they are a long time lurker.
Some time back on another forum we had a regular poster who kept creating new sock accounts. They didn’t just invent a new username but would present themselves as being different races, genders, and sexual orientations. Oddly enough they didn’t even seem to be trying to change their distinctive posting style, so it would be almost immediately obvious what was going on. Yet whenever they took on a new name they would always claim at first to be a new poster only to eventually admit to being either the same person or at least a household member.
The really weird thing was that this was an unmoderated forum. This person had thus never been banned, so there was no practical reason for changing identities. IIRC they didn’t talk to themselves with their different accounts and other than repeatedly lying about their identity this wasn’t a controversial poster, so it’s not like they were trying to dodge responsibility for past statements either. I guess they were just an unusually polite troll who couldn’t stay away from the forum but also couldn’t resist “fooling” everyone with their “clever” new identities.
There was one individual, way back when I was a moderator, who once created twenty-six sock accounts in a single day, one starting with each letter of the alphabet. I don’t think it even got a chance to post with more than eight or ten of them before they were all banned.
Of course, that same individual, under yet another name, went on to open a Pit thread about how “those 26 people” were banned through no fault of “their” own.
Who was that guy in the pay to post period who kept making new accounts, then repeatedly used the O_o smiley and got instantly recognised and banned? The board must have made at least a hundred bucks from him.
okay, so ban them again. This type of sock deserves it.
But DON’T ban them! This type of sock is legitimate, and the Dope would be a better place if it was allowed.
There are lots of good threads in which sometimes a good, legit, long-time Doper is afraid to post, because it might come back to haunt them.
for example:
A thread about your company’s personnel policy.
A thread about the irritating co-worker who sits next to you.
A thread asking whether a certain sexual practice is weird .
A Pit thread about your stupid boss.
A thread inquiring about divorce laws in your area.
I am very careful about anonymity on the web (I even refuse to use Facebook ,for privacy reasons)
But someday, somehow, somebody who reads a couple hundred posts of mine might be able to identify me. So I censor myself here on the Dope (like most board members, I assume).
But if we were allowed to post occasionally under an anonymous name, the board would not suffer. And we would all feel a little more free to say what we want.
As newly elected king of the world, I propose that any poster with 2 years membership be listed in the database as “an okay kind of guy”, and therefore he is allowed to register a sock under the username “anonymous1” “anonymous2”, etc. (the number would be supplied by the software, unique to the specific thread.)
Oh, and just before this happens, the Messiah will appear on earth.
I can totally understand that with respect to legitimate advice threads.
But honestly, getting a different IP for such a purpose is about as hard as changing your underwear. I’m not advocating violating board rules, but I can understand why someone might do it for the reasons you specified above.
this is allowed on the other forum I spend time on. That sort of alternate id isn’t a “sock puppet” in the usual meaning of the word, and i find it slightly annoying that that called that here.
But… it’s not a terribly effective strategy. Regular posters are immediately recognized by their writing style. It probably makes it harder for a non-regular reader to connect the IDs, but i think the real takeaway is that it’s risky to pit your boss, etc., on line.
DON’T POST ANYTHING UNDER ANY NAME THAT MIGHT COME BACK TO HAUNT YOU.
First, it might be difficult to distinguish some of those from trolling.
Second, anyone who posts anything on the internet that they might find embarrassing or incriminating is a fool. You’re not as anonymous as you think you are. Someone who is dedicated enough may well be able to figure out who you are IRL from your posts - and because of elements of your style, even anonymous posts could be linked to your main identity.
We prefer a bright-line rule on socking. Something like you propose would just open up a can of worms and might well end up with people asking us to delete even the anonymous posts.
I’m not sure what the exact advantage would be in allowing this on this board when you can do the same thing on other boards with much less risk.
Besides, it’s not like advice threads here usually go very well. The person asking either doesn’t really want advice or doesn’t think the advice fits, everyone else gets mad that their advice isn’t taken, a few posters throw out lectures about how horrible you are for even asking, and then I have to fight the urge to lecture the lecturers back, and still wind up hated when I try to be nice to both sides, as it still comes out as a lecture…
I frankly marvel that we get advice threads here at all.
So what do you think I should do about this plague of brackets I have? [[[[[]]]]] I tried everything and [can’t] get rid of them.
I agree with Colibri in that the internet is still a public venue which is something a lot of people (especially on FB, it seems) forget. There are lots of ways of expressing your dissatisfaction by couching it in vague terms or hypotheticals and still get answers. You might not like them but as BigT says, but if you ask people for advice be prepared to not like some of it.
