Its been done. On another related site. Doesn’t work too well.
Could you elaborate on that, please? What site, and what didn’t work?
I was thinking less about the practicality of the ethical sock, and more about the logic behind allowing them. Cairo basically says “I can’t post what I want, because people I know might read it and be offended”. If the anonymous sock says “this is an established poster, pretend it’s someone else”, the same person who knows Cairo can connect the dots :
- CairoCarol is an established poster
- This situation is awfully close to the one I know CairoCarol is having
- This sock’s writing style is awfully close to Cairo’s writing style
- Wait a minute…
Considering the obvious drawbacks of letting socking happen, and the debatable bonus of making an exception in such and such circumstance, I don’t see that the rule needs to be changed.
As a long time blogger myself, with a blog known to family and friends, I’ve pondered at length on the issue and the inherent “I’m not free to say whatever I want anymore” and came to the conclusion that : fuck it. It’s what I think and who I am, and I’m goddamn well going to say it, there’s absolutely no reason to keep it quiet. If they take issue with what I think, then let them - better than “peace” under false pretenses.
@RedBarchetta : 4chan famously allows anyone to post as Anonymous, in fact posters who opt to adopt a personnal identity are derided. 4chan is also a place where your neurons melt in agony.
It is, and thanks for the kind thought.
I see that while I slept, most of the points I would have made in response to the anti-sock arguments have been taken care of by other posters. But it bears repeating that examples of bad socks are not an argument against the very idea of a sock - anymore than the fact that drunks sometimes get behind the wheel of a car argues against banning all drivers.
Oh dear, if we encouraged that, WhyNot, dangermom, and others would have to quit their jobs to answer all the PMs they’d be getting with people’s deeply personal child-rearing problems. I just don’t think it would be fair to put people on the spot like that - besides, by posting where everyone can see a thread, you may receive much more varied responses from unexpected points of view - not to mention illuminating debate which could never occur through PMs.
I’m not arguing that I or anyone else is a special case for whom the rules should be broken. I’m questioning the validity of the rule, period. If there were a rule that said: “The only reason you may post as a sock is in order to pose a question you would not feel comfortable posing otherwise; you must identify yourself as a sock; and you must not post in the thread you begin as a sock with your usual name,” there would be no need to discuss special cases - the rule could be enforced impartially.
“Continuity of identity” is not compromised if I, as CairoCarol, continue to post as myself on these boards, simply because I revealed a different part of myself under another name for a specific purpose - and I am a “continuous” person under that other name. You make it sound like one day a 42-year-old gay guy from Ohio is going to post under the name “UserName,” and six hours later a 19-year-old college girl is going to post as “UserName” as well.
I won’t ever create a sock, because I know it is against the rules I am expected to follow as part of this community. But based on what I’ve read here, I remain unconvinced that they are inherently evil.
Oh, and kind of an afterthought question: how the heck would my husband ever join the Straight Dope, given the anti-sock rule? We share a computer, an ISP and an e-mail address, so unless moderators have magical powers I’m unaware of, there is no way he wouldn’t appear to be my sock. So if he tried to join up, we’d both be banned? 
Sorry, missed this before…
No argument there, but that’s not the question I’m interested in. What I want, which may not have been clear from my OP, is for someone to give me insight into why creating a sock is intrinsically immoral.
Well, twice at least (there has been other minor instances) I would have had some use for a sock because I had what I think were valuable informations, but I wasn’t willing to share them publicly. In one instance, it would have been useful only for a particular poster, and this wouldn’t be an issue anymore thanks to private messages (the poster didn’t have an email in his profile).
In the other case, it would have certainly been of interest for more people, since I kept reading in the thread posts after posts written by dopers who obviously didn’t know what they were talking about but seemed to feel strongly about their (objectively) uninformed opinion. So, being able to post anonymously would have helped.
Note that in both cases, it wouldn’t necessarily have been a problem for many posters, but I’m more reluctant than some to discuss every aspect of my life. And I’m probably not the only one here.
And yes, if for some reason I wanted to ask for advice about a SO-related issue, like Carol, I probably couldn’t because said SO would in all likelihood know both this board and my nickname.
To sum up, not allowing socks certainly has its drawbacks. On the overall, it hasn’t been a significant issue for me yet, though.
Ah, well, that’s a different kettle of fish. Creating a sock is not inherently immoral.
However, allowing the creating of socks is very bad policy.
Does that help clear things up?
Alas, no.
It’s not, but I don’t think anyone ever made that argument to disallow socks in the first place either. It’s just that the detrimental aspects of allowing socks far outweigh their positives.
However, in your hypothetical original situation (that is “people know me as CairoCarol, I’ve used it ever since I joined the net, I’m concerned it may be tracked back to me” and so on), nothing precludes you from contacting a mod to ban the CairoCarol account and let you rejoin the board under a new identity is there ? Or do the board authorities frown on that too ? (I really don’t know the answer to that question, it’s not rhetorical)
Fair enough. But I do get the sense that the consensus at the SDMB is “socks are morally wrong,” which is why I asked.
I’ve always assumed that if I went to the mods and said “look, I made a mistake revealing so much of myself on these boards - can we dispose of CairoCarol and I’ll reappear as Schnucklupps?” they would grant my request - at least assuming I didn’t abuse the privilege and try to re-invent myself repeatedly.
But for the most part, I’m happy to be CairoCarol and, while I would not make the egotistical mistake of assuming I am particularly well known, it seems a good thing to me that people might look at my comments and say to themselves “well, she should know … she’s lived with non-Americans for years” or even “well, her advice is meaningless; she doesn’t know squat about how Americans live.”
Did you see how the link thread turned out? Say we did have that universal sock account. How would you know when anybody was making things up?
Well, that is a different question. Creating and using socks are forbidden here, punishable by being banned. The socks which have been used here have been used more for mischief than the situation described in the OP. Criticism of socks does not require an asterisk, with a tiny note at that bottom that the they are not allows bad in every conceivable circumstance, which is what it would take to rise to the level of being morally wrong.
The reason socks are seen as morally wrong here is the way they violate people’s trust. On the internet, the risk that people are pretending to be something they’re not is greater than in real life. It’s easier to make things up, harder to prove even a crazy story is fake, and few repercussions. So people worry about being strung along by liars. You can do all that without socks, and it’s happened here just like it has on every other board. But socks remind people of that trust issue and the potential they’ll get taken advantage of, and people respond to it emotionally.
But how does a sock violate someone’s trust if a person comes along and says “Hi, I’m being a sock today because I trust you guys a lot and want your opinion about something, but I don’t dare post under my usual name because I’d hate to hurt the feelings of some of the people involved so I’m doing this anonymously.”
“Socks remind people of the trust issue” is like saying “Obama reminds people of race issues.” It’s true, but saying “A reminds me of B” doesn’t automatically make A bad.
And as you yourself point out, socks aren’t needed to be dishonest. In fact, it seems to me that someone who tells a true story as a sock, while being upfront about being a sock, is more honest than someone who changes a lot of details about a situation. In the latter case, you invariably get people offering advice that doesn’t fit, only to have the OP say “well, I didn’t tell you this significant detail earlier, or I disguised this…”
Finally, I’m indeed curious how you would tell my husband apart from a sock - would you ban us both if he tried to sign up?
It doesn’t, until people start using the sock account to troll and make up problems. Since there wouldn’t be any consequences and probably no way to identify who was posting, there’s really no way it wouldn’t happen. It’s not that I don’t trust the people on this board, but it’d invite the problem. The vast majority of people aren’t thieves, but I don’t leave big wads of cash laying around on the sidewalk either. (Or I wouldn’t if I had them.)
You don’t know it’s a true story. You would never know if it’s a true story.
We don’t talk about how we identify sock accounts, but no, we wouldn’t. There are several married couples on the board so it’s not like we have an issue with them.
Okay, so if I interpret this correctly: it is not that socks are bad, it’s that MISUSING socks are bad, and out of concern that this will happen, it is simply easier not to allow socks - am I right?
Likewise, we don’t allow 10 year olds to drive - not because driving is inherently bad, but because the practical consequences of having a policy of allowing 10 year olds to drive is bad.
See, that’s fine with me - this message board can have any rules it wants, and I can choose to either live with them or go away. But if you had a policy that “Slovenians can’t post here” and when asked “Why? Is it immoral to be Slovenian?” answered “yes,” I’d be curious about that. If you then explained “but we have so much trouble with Slovenian ISPs and email addresses being stolen via Slovenian accounts” I’d say “okay, fine - Slovenian posters are logistically too much trouble.” But I still wouldn’t accept the premise that merely to be a Slovenian is to be immoral.
I’m not a sock - and do you know that anything I say is true? When I recently posted a thread complaining about my son’s school, did you check to see if a school answering that description exists in Jakarta and if they have a student with a mother whose data matches the profile I’ve given on the Dope? Either you didn’t, or I need to get WAY more paranoid than I am. Sock or not, it’s pretty much all taken on trust … I trust that this is the case, anyway.
Why would an “honest sock” (a person who said “I usually post here under a long-standing user-name, but today I’m posting anonymously”) be automatically considered immoral? I still don’t see it.
BTW, I’m sorry to be engaging you, Marley23 (whose posts I often agree with), in such a disagreement. I know it’s trivial and you have better things to do than defend a policy that’s probably been defended a zillion times before. If you think this argument is going nowhere and want to withdraw or close the thread, no hard feelings on my part.
I’m not sure moral/immoral is the issue – “more trouble than they’re worth to try to control” seems to be the bottom line.
How often does it come up that a member in good standing – like you, say, or me – actually wants to use a sock? I’ve been a member for, what, six and a half years, and for me, the answer is “has never even crossed my mind.” Either I’m willing to post as twickster (and obviously, at well over 20K posts, I’m totally willing to do that), or I’m not. There are plenty of things that have happened or are happening in my life that I have muddled through without the collective wisdom of the Boards because I wasn’t willing to post as twickster on them. There are other sources of information and advice out there, believe it or not.
What you’re describing as misuse is actually their intended purpose. It’s an inherently dishonest practice; you’ve just conceived of one use that would be more ethical.
We’re not talking about a behavior here, though, not a group of people. We don’t allow flaming either, outside the Pit. It’s not because it’s immoral, it’s an issue about the quality of the site.
No, and we’re not going to do background research on your life. People have fooled mods, admins, and board membership before. It’s a shitty thing to do.
So: the last thing we would want to do is encourage that behavior. See how that relates to socks?
There are several couples who both post here, often from the same computer (sometimes they accidentally post under the other’s name, the partner having forgotten to log out) so I guess that’s not a problem here. I think you’d just have to notify the admins about it when the spouse begins to post, or something like that.
Here’s a previous thread on the issue: