On Nov 1, 2007 7:20 AM, Alec Conroy alecmconroy@gmail.com wrote:
As many know, PrivateMusings is a sock account
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This use of socks is totally appropriate-- our socks policy explicitly describes socks of this sort as legitimate: "If you want to edit a "hot" or controversial subject you may use a sock puppet so long as
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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.
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.
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.