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

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:

> 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.

I would be inclined to agree but for the fact that the user has been by and
large civil, indeed far more civil than many of the open individuals involved
in the BADSITES discussions. Arguments should in general be evaluated based on
their strength, not who is making them. In fact, I'd go as far as to 
argue that
I'd rather have a sock of this sort dedicated to policy and such than one
involved in articles since this sort doesn't raise COI concerns in the same
way.  If one has a problem with such socks, we should establish a community
consensus that they are problematic, not block them out of hand.