Thread:BunsenH/@comment-31354914-20170224231739/@comment-24577221-20170225033759

I don't have a problem with porn as such, in its place, though it's not of much interest to me. Forcing other people to look at it is bad; people learning bad attitudes from it is bad. Obviously, a family-friendly wiki is NOT its proper place.

I have used socks a few times, elsewhere. Sometimes as a joke, such as creating an account for a fictional character and answering in character, usually making my real identity fairly clear. A couple of times for interacting with a crazy/malicious person. I got a lot more careful about interacting with the crazies after I started having to deal with that sociopathic stalker. :-(  But in some forums there isn't a moderator to quash the troublemakers, so at the risk of feeding the trolls, sometimes it's necessary to respond to them in order to dispute their assertions.

When it comes down to it, socks can be used for positive or negative purposes -- to make a good contribution, or to cause trouble, or to try to get away with breaking rules. Usually, sock-puppeteering is used negatively. Pragmatically, if someone creates a sock account and doesn't do anything that attracts any attention... I probably won't notice. On the other hand, the people who are the most dedicated to using socks seem to be compelled to draw attention to themselves, in ways that make the puppetry blatant. They have very distinctive writing styles, or subjects that they're obsessed with, or other patterns that stand out strongly after just a few incidents.

If you wander through some of Mfaccas's sock accounts, or Mismagius Star's, you can probably spot what I'm talking about. I'd rather not discuss details; no point in possibly giving them hints about how to avoid being noticed in the future.