Tell me why socks are bad

About This Message Board
1

Mind you, I am not defending the practice. Obviously, if someone creates a sock so that they can have a faux debate on line, posting a “dialog” with two different usernames, that is dishonest.

But I obviously need to have my ignorance fought, because the concept of having two different user names for one person doesn’t send me foam-mouthed over the edge, and I’m pretty sure it is supposed to.

For any mods who are monitoring: I WILL NEVER, EVER CREATE A SOCK, I promise. Even though I don’t know why it is a bad thing, I know it is, so I won’t do it.

Now, here is why I don’t see why creating a sock is intrinsically bad:

As “CairoCarol,” with my posting history, I am quite easily identified - I’ve talked about where I have lived, the work I do, and the fact I have one child, a boy who is now 10. Moreover, I am “CairoCarol” in other forums, such as flickr.

I don’t think any of you who are reading the boards care about this. But I do know people who might, and it is far from inconceivable that they might stumble across the SDMB and start reading what I have to say.

What if I started having a serious problem with my husband, and I wanted to ask the Dope for advice? There is no way I could do so, because I’d be too worried that my relatives might stumble on my posts.

You might say “too bad, then - you never should have chosen ‘CairoCarol’ as your name and you never should have posted any identifying information.” But c’mon - CairoCarol had been my moniker for a long time before I joined the SDMB, and honestly I didn’t think twice about using it. And I couldn’t participate very fully in the SDMB without mentioning Egypt and Indonesia, details of my job and family, etc.

Going back to my hypothetical - if I wanted advice from the SDMB about a sudden problem with my husband (BY THE WAY, I HAVE THE WORLD’S BEST HUSBAND AND NO PROBLEMS AT ALL WITH HIM), the logical step to take would be to create a new account and ask for advice.

But I never could, 'cuz that would be a sock. And socks are BAD.

2

I feel the same way. Perhaps socks could be tolerated if they acknowledged that they were socks up front, and if they were used only sparingly. I know there have been a few times I’ve wanted to post something but thought better of it because of a relative lack of anonymity (being **VarlosZ **everywhere, and having some real life people know my screen name and/or about this message board).

Also, I’ve seen other message boards with some hilarious gimmick accounts, and I think the membership here could have a lot of fun with them.

3

How can you fight ignorance if you create it? And if you have two identities, you have created ignorance for the rest of the board. (Posters do that even when they take on false identities and don’t post as themselves, of course.)

When you create a sock, you are able to give yourself false support in arguments, troll yourself and create false sympathy and attack your perceived enemies without getting your original reputation dirtied. That doesn’t sound like much of a “Straight” Dope.

In my opinion, those who resort to it don’t feel very powerful under their own identities, are emotionally unintelligent, or are simply devious.

I understand that your circumstances don’t fit these decriptions, but they are a result of the choice that you made to use the same name over several message boards.

I hope that everything is okay with you!

4

OP, I wonder if your lack of guile precludes your hypothetical.

5

Right, that’s what’s wrong with it . . . but what if you didn’t do any of that, and identified the account as a sock-puppet being used to post something that otherwise wouldn’t see the light of day? Is it still wrong just because?

6

How do you propose to do that, exactly ? a little tag under the new nickname saying “this is CairoCarol’s privacy sock” ? :slight_smile:

Besides, even an anonymous… that is, anonymouser account making clear that “this is an existing user’s ethical privacy sock” can be traced back to you if you, y’know, use it to give personnal details about your life, such as the problem you have with your husband. Then you have to create your sock’s sock. IT NEVER ENDS ! :eek:

7

That seems a bit slippery slope. If you create an account and say “I’m having this horrible problem with my marriage, this sock will only post in this thread and then disappear,” how does that damage the integrity of the board? I can see that we don’t want hundreds of extra user names to appear every week as a server issue or whatever, but as an integrity issue I’m having trouble seeing it.

If that person then decides to post elsewhere as the sock, they run the same risk as anyone else posting as a sock-- subsequent banning.

ETA Oh, and Zoe, it’s not just using the same name on several boards-- it’s also worrying that you’ve posted enough as one person on this board to be identified. I guess you could also say you shouldn’t share anything you’re uncomfortable with everyone you know finding out, but if everyone followed that rule this board would be a much less interesting place.

8

Took me a minute to figure out what a “sock” was. I thought we were talking about the garment for a while, and I was thinking “What do these people have against footwear?”

I get it now, though.

I think we’re bumping up against a very important issue for any society (and a message board is a society), namely : Rules versus exceptions.

Individuals can always make a plausible and humane case why they, personally, should be allowed to break any given rule. The broader the rule, the easier it is.

But maintaining order is often about impersonally, and thus impartially, enforcing the rules, regardless of individual case. To me, a “no socks” rule is absolutely necessary. You cannot have social interaction without continuity of identity. You can pick whatever identity you want, but then, you’re stuck with it. Human beings are simply not cut out for an environment where the two people next to you could be the same person.

And when you ask for a personal exemption, you’re basically asking the arbiter/rule enforcer to make a judgement call based on you, personally. This means that the arbiter has to move from impartiality to personal considerations, which is a much stickier wicket.

So sure, maybe sometimes people have totally good reasons for wanting a sock. But either nobody knows that’s your sock, in which case continuity of identity is violated and that’s not something any community can accept, or everybody knows, in which case the whole “I want to post something but I am worried the people at work will find out” issue is not solved in the slightest bit.

Socks are out.

9

Yes. It undermines the idea of having a community here, and it’s dishonest. If there’s something you are not comfortable having traced to you, the solution isn’t pretending to be someone else - the solution is not sharing it on the internet, where anybody can see it. You don’t have an absolute right to share everything on the board at the expense of misleading people, and if you do choose to share something personal, you don’t have an absolute right to protection from the consequences.

People want to feel comfortable saying whatever they like here. And I think they do for the most part (as evidenced by how many threads we have about families, dating and poop). Socks undermine that: how comfortable are you speaking to people who lie about their identities? Or if you can’t be sure who’s being open about who they are and who isn’t?

Before somebody asks, no, having a screen name is not lying about your identity. With a screen name you’re maintaining some anonymity but the name does correspond to you. If you have extra names whenever you want to reveal something personal, that’s no longer the case.

My experience is that people don’t create socks to maintain privacy anyway. They do it to screw around with people, which means it’s a bad idea to give them a free shot.

10

Too bad we don’t have a sock thread example to show people exactly why the board doesn’t allow this. I know there were some bad abuses with socks.

11

Oh, and quick thought : if you really, absolutely, totally need to get something off your chest that you can’t possibly risk being traced back to you, you can always :

a) join a totally different community under your “sock name” and post your info there, or
b) spew your guts out on an anonymous confession site like this one

12

Like most things in life, it depends. A gun is not a bad thing, it’s only bad if you make it so. For instance if a guy pulls a knife on you a gun would be a good thing.

It’s when people start abusing socks that make it troublesome.

I was in a chat room once and NO ONE was chatting. I was like “Is anyone here?” or “Is this room full of bots.”

So I created a sock puppet and I said:

Hi I’m a kid in school doing a report can someone help
(no answer)
It’s on whales
(no answer)
All I need to know if whales are fish?
(no answer)

So at this point I answered with the sock

“Good grief of course whales are fish, they live in water, they eat in water, they breathe water, they’re fish. Just like sharks, tuna or penguins.”

No sooner did I hit enter, than at least 30 people typed in

PENGUINS AREN’T FISH

LOL

So it can have its use

:slight_smile:

13

LOL. :slight_smile: what fun. :slight_smile:

But still, fun or not, socks are overall a bad idea.

14

Totally off subject, but every time I read the name CairoCarol, somehow it gets morphed to Clairol by the time it gets to my brain. Now that I’ve actually looked up the site, that girl’s face will inevitably be linked to your name too.

15

I think the rule would be that the sock account can never post in any thread where the “real” account has already posted or vice versa. Similarly the sock account cannot comment on any pitting of the “real” account or vice versa.

One second thought, the mods are busy enough without having to police my “exemptions”.
But it was a nice try.

16

This came up in ATMB a while back, and I suggested the concept of having one designated sock account for the board, which anyone could use. In other words, the mods would post a sticky explaining that anyone could log on as Username “Scapegoat” via password “guest.” Any posts under that name would thus be recognizable as coming from an acknowledged sock, so no one would be fooled into thinking otherwise.

17

I think the solution would be PMs. If you are having a serious problem and you want feedback you can PM those people on the board you feel would be the most helpful in your situation and ask them individually what advice they would give without posting it where the masses can view it. I have several dopers that I know pretty well from my years posting here that I wouldn’t hesitate to ask for advice but I also know a few dopers IRL who I may not want to have information about the most personal parts of my life so I would probably just PM that handful of people to see what they had to say about my situation.

18

That’s another good alternative.

I know people here are thinking about how sock accounts might be applied in some kind of urgent situation, but one reason we don’t want to encourage that is that in real life, that’s not what people use socks for.

Here’s an example of what socks really get used for. (That and dodging the subscription fee, before the board went free again.) If you follow the links in my post, all three of the banned users are the same person.

19

Me too, and I was about to chime in with why I hate socks and never wear them if I can help it.

20

What if we had a general account named “Anonymous” or something similar that was made publicly available? That is, anyone who wanted to could login and use said account if they wanted to in order to post a question they deemed too private to post under their normal account?

I can’t think of any immediate problems with this idea, except it’s possible it could be over-used, but who knows? I think it’s worth a shot–if it does wind up being used too often (or for purposes other than intended), the account could simply be banned. Worth a shot, right?