Matthew Brown wrote:
On 11/1/07, Alec Conroy alecmconroy@gmail.com wrote:
The problem with the indef block of PM was that I think he went out of his way to follow the rules as they currently are. He was always very polite, and he was very very helpful in mediating the discussion. From the information I have in front of me as of this second, he's an icon of compliance with our SOCKS rules as they currently exist, and his block had much more to do with WP:BADSITES than WP:SOCKS.
I think it's one thing to have an alternate account to contribute to controversial discussions - although I'm not keen on it in general - and quite another to have one to take controversial ACTIONS. This is close if not over the line of having 'good hand' / 'bad hand' accounts, and I feel is at least beyond the spirit of our policy on sockpuppetry - whether it's beyond the current wording of the policy I'm not sure.
Frankly, our policy on socking and multiple accounts is way looser than it should be, and I think the wording of the current on-wiki policy pages is significantly looser than what is actually acceptable in practice to the community.
-Matt
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Quite realistically, I'd rather see the use of any secondary account which does not clearly indicate that it is operated by the same person as (insert primary account) here forbidden. There are legitimate reasons for people to have two accounts. Bot accounts are the most obvious example. I've also seen (clearly marked) sock accounts used to maintain a separate watchlist, as doppelgangers to prevent impersonation from someone creating an account with a very similar name, and (including me on this one) a secondary non-admin account to avoid editing on a public terminal with an admin account.
On the other hand, if you want to get into something controversial, either own up to it or stay out of it.