New Rule: No sock puppet accusations outside of the Sock Puppet Accusations section

Hi Folks,

Lately we have been seeing too many false accusations of sock puppetry (multiple accounts) levied against other members.

The problem with such accusations is that they are extremely easy to make in the middle of a discussion thread to unfairly discredit another member (as a form of an Ad Hominem attack), most of those accusations end up proving false, the mere accusation leads to unfair discrediting of other members and the derailment of threads (as threads then go off-topic and begin discussing the sock puppetry instead of the thread topic), and even when we correct the false accusations, our corrections get lost in the middle of an unrelated thread which doesn't exactly transparently clear the accused's name.

Since having sock puppets/multiple accounts is against our rules, we definitely want members to always report accounts they believe are run by the same person.

However, to resolve all the aforementioned issues, we have created a new "Sock Puppet Accusations" section and a new rule prohibiting the accusations of sock puppetry outside of that section.

So from now on, if you believe another member has multiple accounts on this site, then to avoid being sanctioned, please create a new thread in the Sock Puppet Accusations section and state your case, and the Admin Team will investigate it and report their findings and take action where warranted.

In addition to resolving all the aforementioned issues, this will make the whole process a lot more transparent, organized, and easy to find.

Thank you.