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How do we stand on multiple suits?

  
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
01:50 / 13.09.03
By which I mean both suits shared in common between more than one person and also people representing themselves simultaneously as more than one person within Barbelith.

At last count, these were not generally considered to be terribly U, on account of the trollsome possibilities, so I was a little disconcerted when told that recruits were being sought for a shared suit.

So, what's the process? It is, of course, very difficult to make such suspicions stick when we are by nature predisposed to expect the best. Possibly it is not important, although our current status of reasonable alertness suggests we are in cautious mode at present. Should we let the kiddies have fun where they can, or should each suit be accounted for and accountable as far as possible?
 
 
Timewave Zero
15:30 / 13.09.03
The amusing part is I have been told before that the Haus suit is a multiple entity whose users change when the variant name appears.

Look, I will burn my old suit but I do not wish to be exposed by you via your latest crusade. I am a geek, sorry I registered for another suit but I could not resist.Bad manners and all that.
 
 
Tom Coates
10:27 / 14.09.03
Rules on this are basically pretty simple. Multiple user names is NOT encouraged, it left the board too prone too abuse and left the moderators and myself with vast amounts of work to fix the problems caused by a few troublemaking users.

If people have multiple user names then they should not use them. If the temptation is too much for them, then they should PM me and I'll change the password so that they can't use them. People who register multiple user names (unless they've directly cleared it with me first) will be warned and if they continue to do so, all their user names will be blocked from using the board.

In an ideal world this would not be the case, and hopefully once I've thought of a good way of fixing the problem it will not be the case again. Unfortunately at the moment it is and I would ask all users to abide by this policy.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
20:33 / 14.09.03
From elsewhere:

Now regarding the issue of multiple fiction suits - what you're evidently not aware of is the history, which is long and bloody and difficult. Originally we encouraged multiple fiction suits on the basis that people should be able to explore those parts of their personality that they wouldn't otherwise be comfortable doing so under their established identities. The idea was that people could investigate issues that were perceived to be 'against the party line' without anxiety. It was designed to be something to be used responsibly.

Now unfortutely, the board game under prolonged attack (and indeed still comes under pretty regular attack) by an individual who exploited the freedoms we were offering. He didn't treat multiple user names or identities as something to be undertaken seriously - to explore actual conflicts and confusions, but instead used them to insult people, to skew arguments, to support himself, to foul up the board and to destroy any possible hope of reasonable discussion.

The board nearly died under the weight of massive conflict, which I was left to deal with. People left by the dozen, and didn't return and we had MONTHS of arguments about what rules or procedures we could or couldn't introduce while maintaining the essence of what this place was for... To get rid of the problem we had to close all new memberships to the board, and then slowly and carefully block each and every user name of the person concerned. And then we found that some other irresponsible members were giving over their old multiple user names for him too - while others were finding their user names had been broken into. There was widespread confusion, fighting and collapse.

It was AT THAT TIME that the rule about multiple user names was brought into action - because of the problems we had had, it was made clear that ANYONE found running more than one user name concurrently would run the risk of being booted off the board completely - because we could not be sure that they were not just making themselves completely impossible to get rid of. The anonymity of a spare user name was a growing problem, and in the end we had to do something about it. And we did.


Ok - so, my positive sugestion going forward for this case.

Timewave Zero does not wish to divulge the identity of hir previous suit. Hopefully, this means in public rather than at all, since as ze has already broken Barbelith practice by regiatering a new suit for personal use, ze is not in the strongest of positions to demand special treatment. So, how about if he PMs Tom with the identity and number of his "previous" fictionsuit? That way, Tom can change the password on that suit and retire it from use, leading to one less spare suit floating around, and Timewave Zero can reinvent hirself with noone the wiser but Tom. Alternatively, if the suit name and number were made public, it would be comparatively easy to make sure that it was not being used simultaneously.

If TZ is unwilling to share with Tom the identity of his previous suit, it seems fair to change the password on the "Timewave Zero" suit and render it inaccessible. That way, ze will have their own suit to go back to, and can if ze wishes change the name of that suit to "Timewave Zero rises again", or similar. Either way, peace is restored.

To move onto theory for a sec - it strikes me that there are three key identifiers for a suit - suit name, username and number, and user. Suit names can change all the time, but each suit can only have one name at any given moment. Suit numbers do not change over the lifetime of the suit, and are the closest thing to a constant identifier - they stay the same regardless of the suit name or the third identifier, the suit user. A suit will keep the same number and should keep the same user - if a suit changes user without Tom being alerted and giving his blessing, it will probably be shut down. It does not need to keep the same name. However, a thread in which people notify people of name changes or of how to recognise their suits (for example, my suits always feature the word "Haus", and Flowers' have so far always featured the word "Lady"), as proposed by Timewave Zero, seems sensible.
 
 
Timewave Zero
21:00 / 14.09.03
Are you honestly puting forth that I am the only one with multiple suits on Barbelith? I know some peopl who have entire wardrobes at their disposal. Or, are you simply trying to make an example out of me? Is it an absolute necessity that I be the first to out myself? Perhaps I don't want the associations of my previous suit related to this one?

As stated previous, PMing Tom with my ID is acceptable if it is absolutley necessary then I will do so, away from boardview in the private message chambers of our ravshing leader. Till then, this is me. I am one person. Get to know me, then slag me. If I must expose myself in order to keep the coveted ID,then, I will,

One Love.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:14 / 14.09.03
Well, then, it seems that PMing Tom is the way forward, if it is so important to you that you do not reveal the identity of your previous suit. In a perfect world, again, this would not be a problem. Unfortunately, it is not a perfect world, and you are violating, as I mention elsewhere, the principle that people should not seek to gain extra suits and, if they have more than one suit, they should be open and honest about what those multiple suits are if asked and be ready to undertake either to have ther passwords changed or simply not to use them again. If you refuse to say what your old suit was, then we have no means of ensuring that you are not using it still or have given it with impunity to somebody else in contravention of the current freeze on new memberships. If you are only ready to tell Tom and nobody else, then it is hardly fair to ask him to add monitoring your spare suit to his list of tasks, so it makes sense to remove your access to the old suit, which shoudl not in any way damage your enjoyment of Barbelith.

Those, it seems, are the two choices if you want desperately to keep suit 2012 (did anybody else actually covet that one? I think if you'd just PMed Tom and asked he would probably have been happy to swap you..) - come clean or have your previous suit pulpedby Tom. But I think I have said all I need to - I have suggested an answer to the problem that allows you to keep suit 2012 and not reveal generally your previous identity, which is already something most Barbeloids would not exactly cavil at. Let's see what Tom thinks of it.

Please understand, though - this is being nice. I am trying to find a way to give you what you want despite your having broken a trust that has been ennumerated fairly freqeuntly and quite clearly in the Policy - that if you have one suit, you should not try to get two, and if you have two, you should exercise transparency and only use one.
 
 
Tom Coates
22:10 / 14.09.03
Again I'm going to ask people to back away from this discussion. Nothing of particular value is being contributed to and we all know where everyone stands. Policy remains, multiple user names are not to be encouraged. If you have them, then please don't post using them. If you do and haven't given me a very good reason why you should be able, then spare suits will be deleted and your core suit may be at risk if you repeat-offend. Maybe we should have another ritual suit-burning amnesty or somehting...
 
 
Spatula Clarke
13:01 / 15.09.03
Is it just me, or is the use of multiple suits as a means of getting around the posting limit very much *not* acceptable? It allows those who have access to more than one suit to effectively shout down those who don't.
 
 
grant
14:16 / 15.09.03
Yes, that's where the whole policy came from. There are posting limits for a reason. Using many suits to get around the limits unbalances and disrupts the ongoing multivalent conversation that this message board is.
 
 
Tom Coates
13:52 / 19.09.03
The limit was put in place as a spam-blocking device, and the limit has been raised to the extent that it shouldn't be of concern to any legitimate user. If you find yourself needing to post in excess of the posting limit at the moment, then you're basically abusing the board.
 
  
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