Just curious. He got under my skin a bit, but he definitely I didn’t see him doing anything close to deserving banishment.
If there was no obvious reason, he was likely a sock.
How are such things usually determined? How do adminstrators know if someone is a sock? Also, for clarity, I usually think a “sock” is an ad-hoc persona created for one thread or post. Is it used whenever a banned poster tries to come back under a new name?
Yeah, that’s a sock too.
Sucks that he or she would waste such a cool name.
I don’t get it.
Try getting this. ,!,
Whoosh!
grace under pressure
I have to admit, that wouldn’t have occured to me.
Of course, now that he’s been banned, wouldn’t a better name be d_under_p?
Would it be a bad idea to list who’s banned and why? This would certainly curiosities, also act as a warning for those tempted to sock or jerk-be.
More likely, someone would register a guest account just to boast about how many times his various former pseudonyms appear on the list.
I’m still curious how the administrators know someone is a sock.
One way is that the software logs the IP of the users, so if two usernames come from the same IP that’s a clue. Not proof of course, because several users live together.
They’re reticent to say exactly how they find them, because it might help people cheat the system. They may have other approaches besides IP logging, probably involving examining chicken entrails and performing séances.
They do this in ATMB. If it was a sock or a spammer they do not bother though.
If it was a long time poster who got caught using a sock I believe they would.
Huh. All this time I thought g_under_p was some reference to statistics that I wasn’t getting.
Check the stickies in ATMB. Its explained there. They don’t explain every detail, but enough. If the told every thing they do to identify a sock, then sock puppeteers could circumvent those identifiers.
Bannings are explained in the ATMB forum. They only explain bannings of those who’ve been around a while.
They don’t explain every sock puppet, for various reasons, not the least of which is it encourages more socks.
When a sock is identified, usually, their threads are disappeared.
Actually, I’d like to see the opposite. In cases like this, when it’s (almost certainly) a sock who has not committed any overt acts under the new name, much curiosity results when the new name is suddenly marked BANNED. Cue the thread, like this one, to inquire why, therefore giving the bozo the desired attention.
Solution: Don’t mark the account BANNED. That isn’t a function of the board software anyway; it’s a manual update to the user’s profile to change the label, while the actual settings to effect the banning are made behind the scenes. Just leave it as Member or guest or whatever it is. As far as anyone knows, the individual just stopped posting, and disappeared. Most people won’t notice anyway.
I do see the utility in marking accounts BANNED when there is some actual transgression, which has the effect of educating the membership about what behaviors will trigger punishment. But these otherwise invisible socks? I suggest that they be unceremoniously dumped without any public advisement.
Thoughts?
You know, Cervaise, that’s a pretty good idea. Some ex-member signs up as “Ima Temp” posts a couple of times, gets caught and the account is closed, but no visible change has occurred to clue the rest of us in. As far as we know, the poster in question just quietly left.
Of course, the downside is this really only works if the sock has only posted a few times with relatively unremarkable posts. If the sock account dived right in to create a big flame war, was very active, then suddently stopped posting … Well, it’d be a judgement call anyway.