His green name should assure you that he is actually an admin. (Of course, if Jacek is secretly the admin, we are doomed.*)
(* Or at least there will be some mild wailing and gnashing of teeth.)
It’s good that it worked out that way. From what I understand, a Jacektomy is not a very pleasant procedure (although I continue to believe that we would collectively benefit from doing it).
Robert Rothman
I’m 99.9999999999999% certain that “DavidK” is Jacek. But I will not hold it against him. If Jacek chooses to convey an amusing anecdote through his “DavidK” inflatable doll, so much the funnier for the rest of us. But I refuse to blamestorm and search for my own inner Jacek, and through my refusal I foil Jacek’s intentions.
(The funny thing is that I live in the same city as Jacek. I know who this person is in real life. I am currently in the same building as he! I could reveal many things about this strange person, but I will not, because by attacking the Jacek who happens to be the actual Jacek, I would merely feed my own inner, metaphorical Jacek.)
Oh, I don’t know. “Rickardson” hasn’t trolled at all, to the best of my knowledge.
Don’t tell me. Let me guess. You not only live in the same city and same building as Jacek, but… the same body as well?
Well, chiming in to support yourself with a sock puppet might count as trolling by some definitions, but this instance is a pretty mild example (as is this). Anyway, it seems that Jacek mostly uses the Rickardson account for legitimate I6 discussion.
—The Exorcist, W Friedkin
And as Socratic dialogue by others, no doubt 
So if I understand the reasoning correctly, it implies that if I (purely hypothetically) were to go out and commit a crime using a false identity, and then were to come home and resume my real persona, the “real” me should be immune from any consequences for actions undertaken by my Mr. Hyde manifestation. After all, the Dr. Jeckyll side of me has always been scrupulously honest.
An interesting theory, indeed.
Robert Rothman
Nope! The question is whether “Pudlo”'s posting as “Rickardson” is in itself banworthy, specifically for “Rickardson’s” account; the things done with the “Pudlo” account are immaterial to that particular question. If one felt that “Pudlo” should be banned for what he did with his own account, presumably one would feel that all his accounts should be banned.
That is is pretty fair description of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, yes. 
I get the feeling when I read comments like this people who support liberal use of banning just want revenge: they want the troll to feel it. But of course that is far from the real purpose of a ban, which should be wholly preventative. What negative outcome would be prevented by banning an account that has done no trolling? To use the moderation system to punish or to exact revenge or to achieve some notion of ‘justice’ is to wholly abuse it and it virtually guarantees that the system will end up corrupted with emboldened moderators taking out anyone who sneezes wrong, just to show 'em. It’s the wrong goal; applying the wrong standard; an appeal to moral emotions has no place in moderation discussions, which should focus entirely on consequences to the community, and not at all on the consequences to the trolls or on whether they have gotten what’s coming to them. That misplaced focus is exactly what leads communities to feed a troll and turn minor skirmishes into forum-swallowing wars. Seen it happen many times; in each case the desire to morally punish was as responsible as the trolling for the negative consequences on the community (including desertions by good users).
Basically you have to ask yourself, do you want to strike back, or do you want to minimise the damage? People who opt for the latter behave very differently (and more effectively) toward trolls than those who let themselves be swayed by the former.
Paul.
Oh please, we’re not actually discussing whether it’s morally right to ban a troll, are we? Jacek’s a pain in the arse trouble causer who contributes nothing but insults and arguments and flame wars to this forum. He’s about as welcome as cancer. Ban him and move on. To hell with whether it’s morally right or not.
Well, as long as “Rickardson” isn’t being a troll, I’d rather have him than Pudlo. If a troll decides to create a different account and behave differently on that account, I’d say that it deserves at least a non-ban.
Of course, the really civil way to do it would be to actually change behaviour, and hopefully make a public apology, but heck, since hardly any troll is going to do that, I’m quite happy with the schizos/sock puppets, as long as they’re not trolls themselves.
EDIT - Rothman - I hope we can keep the distinction between real-life crimes/double identites and a guy writing inflamatory things in a public forum where pretty much everyone already knows he’s a bad apple quite clear. You described someone trying to flee a serious offence. In this case I see only someone who knows that his name is so looked down on, it’s unlikely he’ll get help if he needs it (or, maybe more probably, isn’t about to ask the very people he’s been pissing off for help), and therefore establishes a second identity to do those smaller, more constructive things.
In a sense, Mr. Hyde has created a Dr. Jekyll, not the other way around. And I’d rather have the Jekyll.
Fat chance of that now, though. I can’t imagine he’ll keep using the account now.
For the record, I don’t support the liberal use of banning. I feel strongly that such a drastic step should be limited to the unusual case of an individual whose apparent intention is solely to disrupt and to act like a jerk, with no redeeming social value.
Robert Rothman
That’s too broad a brush. I, for example, support liberal secret banning. I don’t want the troll to feel anything, really.
Likewise. It isn’t about punishment, it’s about housecleaning. No more personal than calling an exterminator to remove a pest … if it can be done in a painless and humane fashion, all the better.
I don’t spend much time on discussion boards (other than this one), so all this secret-ban and slow-ban stuff is new to me, but it certainly sounds interesting. It does seem like a dedicated troll would be nearly immune, though: if he logs in on multiple sock-puppet accounts, it should be easy to notice that the post he intended to offer sock-puppet support to is invisible to his sock-puppet persona
Personally, I’d just like the ability to make a given account invisible to me, and let others make up their own minds … the current “foe” system doesn’t make anything invisible, just vaguely masked (I also find the connotations of “foe” a bit distasteful … this person isn’t my enemy, just a pest with no interest in really contributing to the topic at hand). If that system were perfected, I think bans of any kind would be less important, since everyone could make a choice according to their own tolerance for the intruder.
We could change “foe” to “pest”.
We could also change “moderator” to “exterminator”.
Sexeh
Though, presumably, “exterminator” is just one of the hats the Mod wears (others might include “referee” or “gentle reminder” or just “janitor” in the case of the nightly spam-cleanup) … while the pests tend to occupy that role full-time.
- I staunchly believe in free speech, but the question here is whose free speech. I maintain that a web site is primarily a mouthpiece of its owner. If someone hacks my web site and puts stuff on it I don’t like, that is hindering free speech, not excercising it. Now there is a spectrum: I may use my site to publish texts I read somewhere and somehow like; I may invite mails, and publish parts of them that touch me, or all except those that annoy me; I may invite certain people to post directly, and excercise weeding afterwards; I may allow people to register that I don’t even know and do the same - but all that doesn’t change the base principle that that site is an expression of my free speech.
If I don’t want the responsibility, I can become a common carrier, which I suppose this site isn’t.
So weeding the posts here is an excercise of free speech, not the suppression of it. - Silently banning people with multiple accounts requires some sophistication, especially as the proposed banned is reading in here.
- My personal preference would be a subforum of the Management one, called something like “Ban posts” (does that have the double meaning the equivalent Dutch has?), where banned posts and threads go. Whatever goes there has its links made invalid, but remains otherwise untouched. Individual banned posts are replaced by a short text linking to the new location. It ought to be easy to set an account to never seeing anything in there.
If an account must be banned, it will be banned from posting anywhere else than in “Ban posts”. Any discussion about the ban being right can be held there as well.