Now I think (s)he meant messageboard, not forum, and I am sure (s)he is correct but it got me wondering.
Is “sock” determined by the mere fact of having more than one username in on the messageboard or by the nature of the intent.
For example my username and information shared makes my real life identity clear both to those who would read here who know me in real life and easily deduced by anyone who so cared to. Such informs both how I post and what I share here; that is not a bad thing in mind. I can however imagine a circumstance in which I might want to participate in a discussion sharing information without being so identified or easily identifiable. (Probably wouldn’t whether allowed or not as I do not presume anonymity actually exists, I am surprised by what people share under the belief they are anonymous, but no fighting the hypothetical.)
Would two usernames with one used to participate in those sorts of discussions be forbidden under the sock rule? My guess is it would be considered a sock offense despite the lack of ill intent.
Yep, one person, one username. If you want to participate in a discussion but don’t want people here to know it’s you, you have to go talk somewhere else.
Yes, we had a guy do just exactly that not so long ago. Due to some careless wording in one of his posts (IIRC), he was found out, and instantly banned.
You are correct. A second user name, even without ill intent, is not permitted here. It’s also an instantly bannable type of offense, even if you have been here for years.
Having two usernames is a bannable offense here regardless of intent. In the case you mention, that would definitely run afoul of the “no socks” rule, since the poster intentionally created the sock to disguise their identity. We want transparency here regarding a poster’s identity.
This said, we enforce the “no socks” rule on a case by case basis. For example, someone who created an account here 10 years ago, but who has forgotten the password, might be allowed to merge the accounts if they come clean if discovered. In this case the sock was not created in order to disguise someone’s identity.
We’ve had threads in the past where people have asked that the sock rules be changed to allow for cases like this (here’s one example). Such requests have always been turned down.
During the recent Outage, several people tried (with varying degrees of success) openly creating socks in an effort to post at all. Those people were not banned, though the socks they created were.
That seems like an exaggeration. There have been cases where someone was a member of the board for some time, dropped out for years, and then came back under another name. When that person mentioned their previous membership, they weren’t banned - their accounts were merged with no warning, banning or other action, apparently because there was no bad intent (and no simultaneous use of multiple accounts).
That’s pretty much exactly what I said. You edited out the part where I qualified my remark.
Having two usernames is against the rules, and you can be banned without warning for it. We may not enforce the rule if we are convinced there was no attempt to deceive.
The original term was sock puppet, but that meant having two usernames simultaneously and using them to support your own arguments. As we use it now, “sock” means a second username regardless of purpose, and it doesn’t need to be simultaneous. The most frequent motivation for a sock is for a banned poster to sneak back in.
