A note from the moderation team: this post was shared on September 5, but a user used a number of anonymous/throwaway accounts to downvote it,[1] so we are reposting it.
Down-voting using multiple accounts is a serious breach of Forum norms (you can see the guide). We are banning the user for 6 months.
We will not be sharing the identity of this user, because our old Guide to Norms was not clear on which situations would lead to de-anonymization of any part of voting behavior. We take privacy and protecting anonymity seriously, and didn’t want to act in a way that would endanger users’ ability to trust us on this (by, for instance, interpreting our guide in a way that is less generous than would be possible, or applying new guidelines retroactively). We have updated the Guide to make it clear that, given serious breaches of Forum norms (e.g. if something leads to a ban), we may leave a public comment about the reason for the ban, even if that threatens the user’s anonymity. (We will try to maximally protect privacy and pseudonymity, as long as it does not seriously interfere with our ability to enforce important norms on the Forum.) Please let us know if you have any questions about this.
A note from the moderation team: this post was shared on September 5, but a user used a number of anonymous/throwaway accounts to downvote it,[1] so we are reposting it.
Down-voting using multiple accounts is a serious breach of Forum norms (you can see the guide). We are banning the user for 6 months.
We will not be sharing the identity of this user, because our old Guide to Norms was not clear on which situations would lead to de-anonymization of any part of voting behavior. We take privacy and protecting anonymity seriously, and didn’t want to act in a way that would endanger users’ ability to trust us on this (by, for instance, interpreting our guide in a way that is less generous than would be possible, or applying new guidelines retroactively). We have updated the Guide to make it clear that, given serious breaches of Forum norms (e.g. if something leads to a ban), we may leave a public comment about the reason for the ban, even if that threatens the user’s anonymity. (We will try to maximally protect privacy and pseudonymity, as long as it does not seriously interfere with our ability to enforce important norms on the Forum.) Please let us know if you have any questions about this.
which led to the post’s quick disappearance from the Frontpage
Thank you so much for your hard work guarding the forum against malicious behavior.