Forums » Suggestions

Specialty "Anoymous Forum Alts" are still not welcome on Suggestions.

Mar 13, 2022 incarnate link
This came up recently in a thread, and it appears that some people believe I removed the user because of the content of the responses or something.. that is not true.

(And, as I wrote at the time, that user is welcome to come back and continue making Suggestions under their real "main" account).

Obviously, people disagree with me all the time (and for many years) and I don't block their accounts from posting.

We've had a policy against new accounts made for forum-specific purposes, for some time.

Some years back, Sieger created a bit of a problem when he started making forum alts to "agree with himself", right after he had been hypocritically "shaming" others for similar activity. I bluntly called him out and exposed him for doing that, and he apparently quit out of embarrassment (he was never banned or muted).

Then Pandoram started doing something similar, some time later, and also circumvented bans (using new accounts) after he had been explicitly removed from Suggestions due to a long string of egregiously self-involved "suggestions" that were poorly received by the whole community.

Basically, specialty "Forum Alts" have led to a lot of bad activity, which took up a lot of administrative time and energy, and made the entire environment more confused; often (historically) leading to pointless toxic angst and other nonsense.

We've "grandfathered" in some vintage accounts that people have made over the years (to match their well-known character names), but I'm not okay with people making "new" accounts purely to post "anonymously" on Suggestions.

Undeniable was one such brand-new forum-only account, created in the last month, and operated exclusively from a TOR node to evade linking to their main account. I only checked the account because it was obvious the player was very experienced, but the account-name was unfamiliar to me.

I did not care that they were "disagreeing" with me on the particular topic, I would have done the same for either side in a similar context.. I just don't want these forum alts around.

New Users should exclusively use Main Accounts on Suggestions, and this will eventually become a site-enforced requirement. It's only because I intend to write it into the site's functionality that it isn't listed in the "Rules", but people should understand it anyway.

If this proves insufficient, we may eventually have to lock Suggestions down entirely, and make it an "application" process, like the PCC, so it would basically become "permitted players only" and all new accounts would be locked out until they applied.

I would really rather not do this, because it's more time-consuming web development to do, only being done because of problematic player behaviour, that further delays actual content and gameplay improvement.
Mar 13, 2022 demnicat link
+1
Mar 13, 2022 aaronund link
+1
I've "agreed" with myself before. It was stupid when I did it and it is stupid when other people do it.
Mar 14, 2022 Sid123 link
+1
Mar 16, 2022 jh3245695 link
+1
Mar 18, 2022 HunPredator link
This would solve so many problems with alts on suggestions
+1
Mar 18, 2022 IronLord link
+1 to making it a application process like PCC
Mar 18, 2022 biretak link
+1 AND may unrats eat their entrails... send the unrats upon all their alts Inc! I'd really make a great guide ;)
Mar 18, 2022 haxmeister link
obvious +1.. cause people can be lame..

How about making it possible to post in the role play forum under the character name with a drop down of your characters from your currently logged in account? Now that could be fun!