[WikiEN-l] JzG's banning Private Musings regarding BADSITES debate

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Nov 1, 2007 7:20 AM, Alec Conroy <alecmconroy at gmail.com> wrote:
> As many know, PrivateMusings is a sock account
[snip]
> 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
[snip]

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.