Same connection, different people.

Several of the people I love with, and share an internet connection with are interested in being part of the forum. If they sign up, will it be perceived as me having sock puppets?
Or will they be able to post as freely as I can?

People I live with, not love with

Something about this mispelling has me giggling like a schoolgirl :wink:

oops… beat me to it

the fact that it had me giggling too made me jump to change it.

The mods never even bother checking IP addresses unless they have some other reason for suspicion, so you should be OK. If you want to be on the safe side, you might want to e-mail TubaDiva or Lynn when the other folks sign up, and let them know. Unless all of their posts are “Yes, I agree entirely with gtzaskar00 on this, and on everything else he’s ever said”, they’ll probably take your word for it that they’re separate people.

If the people you love with do join, and if any of you use the same computer, make sure each of you logs out before the next one logs in. You can log out by clicking on the “log out” link at the lower right of the SDMB home page. That way, you avoid the problem of accidentally posting under the names of the people you love with.

Spider Woman and I post off the same computer and it hasn’t caused any problems.

It also helps that neither one of us is perceived as a rabble rouser, jerk or just plain stupid, well, at least I know she isn’t.

Just remember to clear the cookies and log out when changing users. This will prevent others in the house posting as you.

If you’re using 4.x Netscape, it supports having multiple user profiles, which is more convenient for situations like this - each user may have their own cookies, bookmarks, email address, etc, and you can retain them. Profiles are created by a separate user profile manager. A brief search turns up some step-by-step instructions which seem pretty good:

http://www.wurd.com/eng/setup/browsers/netscape478.htm

Netscape’s (local) profiles are kept in a “Users” directory with a subdirectory for each user. One feature I’ve always liked about Netscape is that the bookmarks are simply a viewable html file, “bookmark.htm” in the profile directory. This allows you to open book marks and view them as a page of links, or easily copy them to your own bookmark file, so you can easily still use each other’s bookmarks, while keeping your mail (if you use the Netscape mail client) and cookies separate.

BTW, there are too many situations where distinct people share an IP for them to blindly block a second user on the same IP. As well as people sharing computers, we have two people who have dialup accounts on the same ISP who will get the same IP at different times. The same situation applies to people with dynamic-ip broadband accounts (may change hands less often). We also have people who go through some types of proxy servers, which may be required in some corporate environments. And we have people using public access points like internet cafes and public libraries.

I didn’t giggle, I just thought, oh a hippie in a tripartite relationship - it must be serious if they’re sharing a computer.

Showing my age, I guess, hehe
Redboss