
Dilbert creator outed for using sock puppets on Metafilter and Reddit - Flemlord
http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creator_outed_for_using_sock_puppets_on/
======
TomOfTTB
What exactly is wrong with a famous person having sock puppets?

The opposition to this sort of thing defies logic to me. To quote a comment on
Metafilter...

 _Scott, if you wanted to sign up for Metafilter to defend your writing, that
would have been fine. If you wanted to sign up for Metafilter and be incognito
as just another user, that'd be fine too. Doing both simultaneously isn't;
pretending to be a third party and high-fiving yourself by proxy is a pretty
sketchy move and a serious violation of general community expectations about
identity management around here._

So he's acknowledging the value of being able to present opinions as "just
another person" and acknowledging the value of the author being able to post
as himself but then he says those two are wrong in combination? Doesn't really
make sense.

As for being dishonest I don't see a sock puppet as any more or less dishonest
as any other screen name.

And who exactly is hurt? At best a sock puppet makes it look like the author
has one supporter more than he actually has. So what? No one's going to be
swayed by one supporter. Moreover I think someone like Scott Adams should have
the right to defend themselves without people automatically dismissing it as
self preservation.

In the end a sock puppet is just a way for a famous author to present his
ideas without bringing his fame into the conversation and I don't see what's
wrong with that.

~~~
coderdude
It would be similar to Matt Cutts registering some username and defending
Google's efforts at defeating webspam (or telling us that Matt Cutts is a
pretty cool guy). Surely any opposition to this doesn't defy logic, so what is
the difference? He didn't merely create a fake account and post under it.
Scott Adams created a fake persona and used it to help persuade people when it
comes to things related to Scott Adams.

~~~
TomOfTTB
I'm saying I think the fact that he defended himself is exactly what makes it
moral. See here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2452634>

~~~
coderdude
That doesn't make it moral.

>>"Because many people would automatically dismiss a defense of Scott Adams
ideas coming from Scott Adams" (from the link)

He needn't deceive people in order to defend his own case. That doesn't make
any sense. If people want to take what he says with a grain of salt because he
has an agenda that is their decision to make -- and rightfully so.

Being deceptive so that people won't think you're being deceptive is
illogical.

~~~
TomOfTTB
But see your logic is exactly the problem.

Ideas are opinion. Agenda doesn't matter when you are expressing an opinion.
Because the opinion is biased by its nature.

It matters when you are claiming to express a fact because then your agenda
might lead you to pick and choose what facts you give. Facts require
impartiality and that's why having an agenda is relevant there.

But Adams wasn't giving facts he was giving an opinion so his agenda is
irrelevant and the fact that you would dismiss his opinion because of some
perceived agenda demonstrates exactly why he'd need a sock puppet for his
ideas to get a fair hearing.

~~~
coderdude
I didn't say that I would dismiss his opinion. I'm just trying to get across
why I think what he did was misleading and that he didn't even need to do it
in the first place. To give you an example that you can relate to better:

If there was a post on HN about Tom's Tech Blog and commenters were saying
that "your site sucks" do you think it would be appropriate/moral for you to
create a new account and tell everyone that they are wrong? Why not just post
under TomOfTTB? It's not as if some random from the net is in any better
position to defend yourself than you are.

------
slapshot
tl;dr: An innocent MetaFilter user posted about Scott Adams's writing. A flame
war broke out about whether Adams was right, is self-promotional, is a nice
person, etc. One of the users defending Adams was "plannedchaos." After a
series of increasingly bizzare statements ("How many people think I'm actually
Scott Adams writing about myself in third person?" and "Is it Adams' enormous
success at self-promotion that makes you jealous and angry?" among them), an
administrator of Metafilter (cortex) emailed "plannedchaos" and asked him to
own up to it. Scott Adams did so.

Metafilter traditionally has been good at rooting out sock puppets when they
become relevant; no surprise here. (PayPal verification is useful for that)

The original metafilter thread: [http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-
a-Real-Education...](http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-
Education-by-Scott-Adams)

Direct link to Scott Adams owning up to being Scott Adams:
[http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-
Education...](http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education-by-
Scott-Adams#3639512)

~~~
jerrya
Regardless of whether Adams should have posted as plannedchaos or not, it
feels a bit icky and privacy violating to me that an administrator of
Metafilter knew and acted on it.

As examples, if you work at the Social Security Administration, you are not
supposed to look up Scott Adams and find out his information. And if you work
at American Express, you still are not supposed to look up Scott Adams and
tell people what he buys.

How did cortex know plannedchaos was Scott Adams, and what tools did cortex
use? (and okay, when did he know it.)

For all the weirdness in that thread, that's the part that bugs me.

~~~
teraflop
Cortex didn't out him, he outed himself and cortex confirmed it. My assumption
is that cortex asked for permission first. I'm not in on what happened behind
the scenes in this particular case, but I've been hanging around MeFi for a
while, and the mods are generally very scrupulous about privacy.

~~~
jerrya
I will defer to you, however that's one but not the only interpretation of:

"How many people think I'm actually Scott Adams writing about myself in third
person? posted by plannedchaos at 9:21 AM on April 15

plannedchaos, please check your email. posted by cortex at 10:19 AM on April
15 [4 favorites]

"

At this point, I still don't think cortex has much business looking at
plannedchaos' records (subject to arbitrary mefi rules that everyone the
community might understand differently.)

If I said,

"How many people here think I'm Paul Graham writing about Scott Adams" would
that vague statement give any moderator here permission to look at my profile?

And I'm not even sure I approve of cortex confirming it unless and until Adams
asks.

Moderator's job: make sure spam/hate/abuse/trolling doesn't go to far.
Occasionally delete comment. Occasionally delete thread. Occasionally apply
banhammer.

I don't see in the moderator's job permission to snoop on personal records of
any ser that says anything mildly provocative.

~~~
joshmillard
Hi, this is cortex.

How it played out, very short version: I got up in the morning and checked the
new signups, part of my morning routine. We have to check for spammers and
shills on a daily basis to keep mefi free from linkfarming and bullshit self-
links and so on, and that tool is step one. The paypal info that comes with
the $5 signup fee is hugely helpful for profiling likely spammers.

I noticed what looked like a signup from Adams himself; person I've heard of
signing up happens now and then, it's an "oh neat" moment and that's about it,
since if you're sticking to the community guidelines and participating in good
faith, who you are and what you do and how anonymous you choose to be is
entirely your business.

Unfortunately, what I saw when I checked out his comments since signup was
weird aggressive pretending-to-be-a-third-party arguing about himself, which
is really not an okay thing to pull on mefi. I talked to the rest of the
staff, we sent Scott an email saying "you need to either let folks know who
you are or stop having this proxy argument about yourself as if you're someone
else".

Time passes, no response from Scott. Then he posts that "who thinks I'm Scott
Adams?" comment. Gave him some more time, still no reply, left the "check your
email" comment. Time passes, and then, still no response to us, he drops the
disclosure in the thread.

If he'd chosen to walk away, that'd have been fine too, and we'd have had
nothing to say publicly about what he did regardless of how obnoxious and
sketchy it was. We took considerable pains NOT to out him and make it his call
how to proceed.

~~~
jerrya
Hi, I greatly appreciate your explanation, which I do think explains the "how
you knew who plannned chaos was" in a very reasonable manner.

I'm not a member of mefi, and if you folks frown heavily on Adams' sort of
impersonation, that's your community rules, and fine.

But it wouldn't be my community rules to have a moderator out him.

I guess I would like to think that his behavior, while perhaps not exemplary,
would get a pass from the outing, because I suspect that such behavior goes on
all the time, and you aren't policing, consciously or not, the behavior of
people with less famous names.

I would prefer a community where "famous people" who might be mentioned are
welcome as participants and I can only see that happening under pseudonyms.
Because hey, they should be able to internet too. And a small aspect of that
is that as on any online forum, there will be time they act like jerks, or so
you and I might classify. And such behavior really shouldn't rise to national
mockery.

His statements and the dialog from everyone were actually somewhat
interesting.

But as far as that thread went, and your behavior while moderating it, the
thread went downhill into a Scott Adams bashfest by the second and sixth's
comments.

As a moderator, you allowed ad hominem celebrity bashing in as part of your
community rules, but you disliked it when said celebrity comes in to defend
himself and suddenly he is outed because he violated your rules.

Well, ... I think your rules that essentially do not permit this guy to defend
himself unless he writes under his own name are lousy rules because no one
else had to write under their name.

You didn't examine who the pseudonyms of the other commenters were. For all we
know, it's his ex-wife, or some feminist blogger still angry with him, or
someone else with an agenda.

I don't know what common mefi behavior is -- I think in your position I would
have either ignored it, or as a moderator, asked everyone to get back on track
and knock off the pile-on.

------
nhangen
1\. Am I the only one that was expecting a video with real sock puppets? I'm
feeling behind the times.

2\. I thought it was great. He was articulate and mostly transparent, and more
importantly - I got the sense that he was able to repel the onslaught without
becoming an asshole.

I'm not necessarily an Adams fan, but in this case, I see no evil.

------
tzs
Let's say someone posts something that says "Scott Adams opinion on X is
stupid", and that person is misunderstanding what Scott Adams said.

I see no fundamental difference between me posting something saying "No, what
Adams meant was Y" and Scott Adams posting under a fake name saying "No, what
Adams meant was Y", other than that if he posted under his real name it might
shorten the discussion as there would be less grounds for people to say the
poster is misunderstanding Adams' position.

As far as I can see, he didn't use his pseudonyms to do things like post
positive reviews of his work (which would be wrong because it would imply that
the review is from a third party). All he seemed to be doing, at least in the
Reddit threads he participated in, was to explain Adams' positions and debate
Adams' critics.

This doesn't seem like sock puppetry to me.

------
mdpm
This wasn't an issue of morality, or even of rule-breaking; rather one of
community standards (for mefi). Not too much integrity was on display here by
Adams. They simply asked him to either operate as himself, or cease the
pretense of being someone else.

I think the most illuminating comment of of the thread was the rephrasing made
here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creato...](http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creator_outed_for_using_sock_puppets_on/c1pms4p)

He wasn't using anonymity for the sake of interacting or learning, while
negating the effect of his 'fame' on discourse. He seemingly joined to leap
into the fray in his defense, quite aggressively. I guess the admins at mefi
weren't quite wanting this sort of thing:
<http://www.reddit.com/user/plannedchaos> to happen.

------
statictype
I looked at his comment history on reddit.

I don't see him doing anything shady. He's defending his arguments while
referring to himself in the third person.

He's not using it to promote his books or other products.

------
giberson
I would argue you can have a more honest discussion in the shoes of a
bystander than in the shoes of the author.

~~~
jerrya
Isn't that a common theme in many works of fiction?

------
warmfuzzykitten
More like, metafilter outed as tedious cesspool of uninformed opinion and
snark.

------
moomin
Is it just me, or was Scott Adams channelling Dogbert?

