At the risk of generalizing, I hate all sockpuppets. I don't care if they're created as a joke, on a bet, accidentally, by your cat, while drunk, all of the above, whatever. I hate them.

One post? Fine, that's a joke.

More than that, and I reeeeeeeeeeeally start to resent being asked to have a conversation with someone who won't tell me their real name. It's rude and childish and I honestly can't understand why people try to defend them as "fun." They're fun for the creator at the expense of everyone else.

When boring topic rolls around, I can scroll past. When a sockpuppet pops up in the middle of a conversation I'm already having, am I supposed to politely bow out? Why? Just because I don't know who they are means I should quietly accept what I percieve to be incredibly rude behavior from them?

Sorry, but no.

Sean, do you have an alternate solution? How would you handle the recurring discontent?

No, I don't have an alternate solution, but part of my fear is that we have too much solution. I know this will sound flip, but I think solutions are a little overrated.

I don't know how to handle the current discontent, because it's not my discontent. The reason that voting in a proposal seems like a poor solution to me is that it tries to make an across the board solution for discontent that is not felt across the board.

But I would also like to note that my comments are not trying to squash the discussion, either. I accept that maybe this will only be a discussion, and not turn into anything more.

I don't know, maybe I don't have any useful input, but I am a crank, and frequently feel that input is overrated.

Maybe sock puppets should be required to have the tag: Hello! This is ____! I have created this persona for humorous purposes!

I would be absolutely fine with that, incidentally. I'm not as bothered by the conversations (which are silly but can be scrolled past) as I am by the masking.

a) offends my database sensibilities

Weirdly enough I get this. I like scrolling my mouse over newbie's id numbers to see how many subscribers we have. And then I have to mentally subtract 10 numbers that were used by SPs. I have this irrational wish that we could get those user id numbers back. I don't know why.

We seem to do okay with dealing with posters who get out of hand. If a sockpuppet DID get into stalker territory, or did start posting out of hand, then I'd imagine we'd deal with it the same way we deal with ANY poster who did that. Why do we need to eliminate them on the off chance they could get way out of hand? It seems to me that we already have a do deal with those extreme cases.

makes b.org feel like somewhere else. And not in a nice somewhere else place.

I see this argument alot, and it's lost its impact for me.

So elements of b.org resemble other places. So what? There were probably good things about those legendarily evil Other Places. In the desperate attempt not to be like those Other Places, things get jumped on awfully quickly. I don't buy the slippery slope theory. I've got cleats on.

You didn't think March's fixation on Kristin was kind of creepy? Clearly, in this case Kristin seemed to beokay with the joke.

I didn't. For two reasons. One is that March seemed jokey in the face of repeated comments by Kristin about the suckiness of March. And, two, because of Kristin's reaction to March. She thought is was funny and not weirded out by it.

The thing that scares me is that someday, there will be a March who *won't* be an innocent injoke. And I really don't want to have a precedent that says we're okay with sockpuppetry.

In that case, I think the rules of ettiquette for any poster would apply. If anyone starts getting nasty, we have steps in place to deal with them and ban if necessary.

In that case, I think the rules of ettiquette for any poster would apply. If anyone starts getting nasty, we have steps in place to deal with them and ban if necessary.

All the wrod on the wrold. Let's enforce the rules we have before coming up with new ones.

I like Trudy's solution, if it would make everyone more comfortable.

To be fair, for a minute or two when March showed up and I didn't realize who it was, I was totally creeped out because of the stalkery feeling. However, it became apparant pretty quickly to me that it was a joke, and I figured out soon after (the tweedy tag was a direct reference to the fact that Trudy used to mock me when I first joined the board for being "all entitled and tweedy" because I was from CT--it was my tagline for a long while) that the tagline was Trudy's way of letting me know who it was.

I totally agree that sockpuppeting as a way to troll is a totally different beast. I just would hope that either a clarifying tagline (with the posters real pseud) or a direct inquiry (if I hadn't figured it out, I would have asked March directly or taken it to B'cracy) would allow us to keep fun little moments like the FLO or Clovis or March etc.

We seem to do okay with dealing with posters who get out of hand.

Absolutely. This is one of our mechanisms for discussing what's out of hand. That's what Bureaucracy is for.

I think a lot of my unease would be calmed if sockpuppetteers noted who they really were in the .sig line. This may not be humorous enough for everybody.