What exactly is wrong with a famous person having sock puppets?<p>The opposition to this sort of thing defies logic to me. To quote a comment on Metafilter...<p><i>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.</i><p>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.<p>As for being dishonest I don't see a sock puppet as any more or less dishonest as any other screen name.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>Metafilter traditionally has been good at rooting out sock puppets when they become relevant; no surprise here. (PayPal verification is useful for that)<p>The original metafilter thread: <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education-by-Scott-Adams" rel="nofollow">http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education...</a><p>Direct link to Scott Adams owning up to being Scott Adams: <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education-by-Scott-Adams#3639512" rel="nofollow">http://www.metafilter.com/102472/How-to-Get-a-Real-Education...</a>
1. Am I the only one that was expecting a video with real sock puppets? I'm feeling behind the times.<p>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.<p>I'm not necessarily an Adams fan, but in this case, I see no evil.
Let's say someone posts something that says "Scott Adams opinion on X is stupid", and that person is misunderstanding what Scott Adams said.<p>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.<p>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.<p>This doesn't seem like sock puppetry to me.
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.<p>I think the most illuminating comment of of the thread was the rephrasing made here: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creator_outed_for_using_sock_puppets_on/c1pms4p" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creato...</a><p>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: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/plannedchaos" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/user/plannedchaos</a> to happen.
I looked at his comment history on reddit.<p>I don't see him doing anything shady. He's defending his arguments while referring to himself in the third person.<p>He's not using it to promote his books or other products.