Plausible, not conclusive. It's an old enough user account to be more conservative on the odd chance that there is an alternative explanation. (Unbanned Incorrect in that thread so that others can judge, it's not that toxic on its own. As a result, there are currently no (recent) comments by Incorrect that are banned.)
I admire your restrain. I'm also really glad to see Alicorn taking the hands on approach to Will's disruptions. As a curious observer, and for whatever it is worth I'm approximately neutral with respect to the "Ban Incorrect" decision. I naturally agree that banning on suspicion is a potentially abhorrent heuristic. Justice systems are so much better when "beyond reasonable doubt" is applied. However in this case the mistake isn't banning someone who is innocent. It is banning someone who is acting like a willfully obnoxious fool who delights in baiting people for responses by saying stupid things in a way that looks like it could be Will Newsome. If the last part happens to be false then hey, at least Alicorn still got rid of comments by someone who was deliberately being an asshat.
Even when it results in false positives (people behaving like Will at his worst are banned as Will sockpuppets) or false negatives (Will acts like someone who isn't being a dick on one of his sockpuppets so isn't banned) the policy still results in Mission. Fucking. Acomplished.
Purely out of interest Alicorn, do you just ban individual comments by the supsected sockpuppets when they also happen to be silly comments? Or do you just ban all of them? The former option seems like more work but more power to you if you are willing to put in the effort. The latter option would be ok, but then it seems like you just need a 'ban account' feature instead!
Purely out of interest Alicorn, do you just ban individual comments by the supsected sockpuppets when they also happen to be silly comments? Or do you just ban all of them?
The former. We don't have a "ban account" feature, and I read-or-at-least-skim all comments on the entire site anyway.
In light of recent (and potential) events, I wanted to start a discussion here about a certain method of handling conflicts on this site's discussion threads, and hopefully form a consensus on when to use the measure described in the title. Even if the discussion has no impact on site policy ("executive veto"), I hope administrators will at least clarify when such a measure will be used, and for what reason.
I also don't want to taint or "anchor" the discussion by offering hypothetical situations or arguments for one position or another. Rather, I simply want to ask: Under what conditions should a specific poster, "Alice" be prohibited from replying directly to the arguments in a post/comment made by another poster, "Bob"? (Note: this is referring specifically to replies to ideas and arguments Bob has advanced, not general comments about Bob the person, which should probably go under much closer scrutiny because of the risk of incivility.)
Please offer your ideas and thoughts here on when this measure should be used.