Do they find their mates waiting for them in Sock Heaven?
Here’s what I mean: let’s say a poster named Argyle signs up and posts a while with no conspicuous problems - no warnings, inflammatory statements, etc.
A while later, the real-life person behind Argyle creates the sock account Angora, and starts posting under both account names.
The moderators figure out that Argyle and Angora are the same poster. Now, do they only ban Angora, or do they ban them both?
Seems to me that both usernames would be in line for a ban - yet I don’t generally notice bans coming in pairs. It’s probably just because it’s not that obvious on the open board, but I’m curious. If Argyle isn’t banned, what’s the rationale for that?
If we believe that the two accounts were deliberately created with ill intent (i.e., in order to be deceptive), then we ban both usernames. Sometimes we get people who have embarrassed themselves on the board trying to discard their previous identity, even when they don’t have warnings.
Sometimes people have registered twice by mistake, or because they weren’t aware of the rules. (For example, sometimes we get people who signed up ten years ago and want to rejoin, but have forgotten their previous password or even username.) In such cases we may allow them to merge the previous username with the current one.
In other words, the decision is on a case by case basis, depending on the poster’s history and apparent motive for the multiple registration.
Never mind my present experiment, this happened to me in real life. Early on, in my innocence of the Internet, I signed up here using my real name as User Name. Soon after – NOT because of any untoward incidents – I decided that probably wasn’t a good idea after all and signed up as Siam Sam, leaving my old account behind. I have no idea how Admin figured out I’d done this, but months later I received an e-mail from them saying I had two accounts and was now shut down on both. (I’d not touched the original account since signing up with the new one.) I explained the situation to them, and they merged my earlier account into Siam Sam.
Thanks - I had been idly wondering why the mods had allowed a new user to sign up using a very similar name to yours (as in the past they have usually suggested a name change to avoid confusion). I hadn’t seen enough of your posts to establish you were in fact the same person.
Thanks to the respondents, and if actual poster Argyle sees this, my apologies. I wasn’t thinking of real poster when I wrote the OP, I was imagining “so, what kind of genuine socks exist?” and of course thought of argyle socks (followed by different types of wool - such as angora - socks).
I did not intend to implicate Argyle the poster, of course.
we often do not announce sock bannings, so to see a pair, you would have to notice two posters simply appearing as “banned” on the same day. If the sock tended to post each sock in a different forum, (or if we caught one while the other was not currently active), you would be unlikely to see two simultaneous bannings.
