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Users with multiple Codidact accounts
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Are there any rules about a user having multiple Codidact accounts (sometimes known as sockpuppet accounts)?
What should a user do if they suspect another user has multiple accounts?
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Just some thoughts, not anything like an official answer or even a coherent policy proposal:
- I find the idea of using different names in different communities completely innocuous. Privacy is cool.
- Using multiple accounts to vote on each other's questions, answers, site proposals, etc. is fraud, plain and simple. It's no-prize fraud, given how little scores matter in Codidact so far, but it certainly doesn't make me think the perpetrator is a valuable member of a community.
- I don't think I have any issue with someone using multiple accounts even in the same community if they don't do fraud and all of the accounts are well-regarded (trying not to put weight on the notion that positive rep score is the one true metric of how good a person you are, but basically if you have positive rep score).
- I don't think I have an issue with someone who tries our site, digs themself into negative rep, leaves, comes back some time later with more maturity and wants to create a new account to leave their mistakes behind. Second chances are also cool, and I believe in encouraging people to grow and develop themselves.
- I do have an issue with someone who uses an alternate account concurrently in the same community if one account is the Jekyll and the other is the Hyde[1], allowing them to engage in poor behavior and still operate with a good reputation when they want.
- I definitely have an issue with someone who uses multiple accounts, all of which are Hydes. I actually think we should ban someone like that, but our mods are really nice and never ban people.
- I would hypothetically be driven to near-fury if someone had a long history of operating multiple Hyde accounts in order to evade the suspensions and bans they consistently receive Somewhere Else, did the same thing on Random social media sites, and tried to pull those stunts here too—despite the fact that we're too nice to actually ban or penalize people for not playing by the rules—either because they're too much of a mythomaniac to stop or because they're hedging against the day we decide to stop being pushovers. Hypothetically.
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In reference to the story "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (the Wikipedia article contains spoilers). ↩︎
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