Sock Rules between Message Boards

Forgive me if this seems like a stupid question, but I’m really unsure about what being a sock entails.

Let me explain. I recently registered on the Giraffe Boards and used another name, Five Points Under. I really didn’t think too deeply about it, and I certainly wasn’t up to anything nefarious.

Can I use Two Many Cats2 on the Straight Dope Boards and Five Point Under on the Giraffe Boards? Or is that a big no-no? If it is a violation of the rules, I’d like to stick with my original user name Two Many Cats2. That has more history.

Please advise.

Thanks.

Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that nobody on the SDMB gives a bleeding fuck what you do on the Giraffe boards.

The folk at GB may or may not disagree.

I thought GB encouraged socks on their board.

There is zero affiliation between the two boards, except the bonds of playful snark and bitter resentment.

Nah, you got it right. Unless you talk of starting a war between the boards, the folks at the SDMB don’t care what you do at GB.

As a Moderator here and a member of Giraffe Board, I can tell you the SDMB doesn’t care.

What you’re doing is fine.

On the GB, if you use the same name as here, they verify it to avoid general BS and abuse.



As long as your there, check out the Megapoll forum, my favorite part.

I am an Admin on the GB. The two boards are entirely separate entities with a lot of membership overlap. A lot of people have the same name on both but you are under no obligation to keep the same name over there as you have here.

At the GB, we generally do not allow people to take a name there that is the same as a name used by someone else here, in particular if it is a prolific poster.

Not exactly. It’s more that it’s allowed.

Makes sense.

Thanks everyone. Guess I’ll keep both names at their respective boards.

Too many socks would relate to your username😺

Actually I did have a cat who loved dragging around socks while yowling. Not sure if he was grandstanding or what.

Well, unless you’ve stopped doing them, there are also the Halloween parties, where people make a fun sock account, and then later people guess who they are.

It’s a cool bonus to allowing socking that I had never thought of.

It’s been several years since we’ve done one of those.

There was a version of this on the old snopes Board when it first started, also on Halloween. But those boards were a lot more friendly than The Dope or Giraffe. No pitting or anything like that was allowed. As a matter of fact, users could change their own names any time they wanted too. That was mostly used on holidays, when you would make a holiday themed name that played off of your usual name. Or a birthday themed name. It was often quite fun.

I don’t recall ever getting my name verified, although I’m the same there as here. Is this a new-ish thing? If not consider, this my delayed verification notice :slight_smile:

I joined GB the first weekend and was verified as far as I can recall.

So not new at least. But I’ve never been a part of running GB.

Maybe I just forgot I did it. It was a while ago.

If someone tries to show up as Mr_Dibble, they have to prove that with a PM from @MrDibble here.

Socks can be useful. We chased Clothahump away with the use of Clothahump socks. Good times.

I was never verified over there, but I didn’t post much there (still don’t), so maybe I slipped under the radar.