Gregory Maxwell wrote:
I don't think we should apply the same reasoning
to participating in
community discussions as we do with respect to editing a controversial
article.
I think the use of a sock to 'partition' your Wikipedia identity in
policy discussions so that you can take contentious positions, or
behave in an abrasive manner, without any negative consequences to
the reputation of your primary account is an inappropriate use of a
sock.
I agree.
The canonical example of a reasonable use of an alternative account is
editing to counter activist bias in an area where even editing the
articles is perhaps something you are concerned about from an external
reputation point of view.
I remember a case of someone contacting me and saying that some
pedophilia-related articles seemed to have a strong pro-pedophile bias.
I checked, and it looked true to me. He said that he edits Wikipedia
openly under his own name, and his colleagues at work know this and
sometimes look at his contributions. Even editing articles about
pedophilia made him feel uncomfortable, with respect to his professional
reputation. He wanted to know if it was ok to use an alternative account.
Yes, of course.
This is very different from sockpuppeting to advocate for contentious
positions in policy debates.
Social pressure is a primary driving factor in
creating cooperation
and civility. The ability to selective short circuit the social
factors by occasionally dropping your pseudonym and commenting
anonymously is an enemy to cooperation and civility.
That's right.
Plus, it makes the rest of us tenured folks who have
the courage to
stick our names next to difficult positions, accepting the social
consequences, look more unusually controversial than we are.
A little bit of this behavior here and there won't hurt us and we
couldn't prevent it in any case, but I think privatemusings has gone
too far and that outright endorsing this behavior in this case or for
others would be terribly unwise.
I have not reviewed his contributions yet, and so I am commenting only
on the general principles, not on this particular case.
--Jimbo