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

[Matthew Brown]

On 11/1/07, Alec Conroy <alecmconroy at 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