actually, I think the policy ought to be that if one is running a sock, and either account is significantly disruptive, all accounts connected with it should be permanently banned in all cases.. Running a disruptive account is a gross violation of basic expectations. Nobody can possibly do it for good reasons. An editor (viewed as a human, not a login name) who acts in a way so contrary to the basic expectations of the community should not be editing--and least not until full public disclosure and a consensus to allow another start.
I see no reason why established accounts should get any special consideration.--the longer an abusive account is run, the worse it is.
The only question requiring discretion is whether or not an account is actually abusive. Unless it clearly is, then there is reason for private action to tell the user to abandon one account or the other, and to be advised to edit less disruptively. But running two accounts, one of which is disruptive, is no better than running one disruptive account, with the added charge of being deceloptice about it. As the degree of disruption will not be known before the checkuser, such checks must continue to be private. But certainly the person must always be told. Otherwise it is a secret inquisition based perhaps on anonymous evidence.
On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 3:09 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax abd@lomaxdesign.com wrote:
That's correct. Actually, there *is* a presumption against *anyone* being checked, unless there are grounds to suspect abuse. Being a long-term contributor is a possible reason to discount such suspicion, but, under some circumstances is irrelevant. There may be, and indeed I have some reason to suspect that there are, long-term contributors who have operated long-term sock accounts, carefully, using standard detection evasion methods.
There are four possibilities, first two: main account is not disruptive, sock account -- I'll define this as the newer one -- is. The reverse happens: main account was disruptive, sock account isn't. In both these cases there is some question as to whether or not we should bother with sock detection. The argument for detection and action is that if we merely deal with an block the disruptive account, there is a risk, then, that the other account will take up disruptive activity -- or will create a new sock, having learned that a disruptive sock can be created -- or a nondisruptive sock maintained -- without risk to the editors access. And the argument against detection is a common one: "Why are you bothering with this SSP report, the account isn't disruptive!" Frankly, I don't see a clear reason to prefer one of these arguments over the other, hence the circumspection that is described below.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG