How should moderators handle problematic sockpuppets once they've been identified?

Violating site rules through another account to prevent sanctions from being applied to your main account.

Circumventing suspensions, quality bans, or the rate limits on posting questions / answers / comments / etc.

Using bounties to circumvent the rep cap.

Supporting your own arguments ( '+1: shog is right, don't know why the rest of you don't realize this').

Casting multiple votes on others' posts or comments.

Answering your own questions with the other account(s).

Examples of this include ( but are not limited to):

A good rule of thumb for identifying abusive socks is: if the second account allows you to do something on the site that your normal account would be prevented from doing, it is abuse. There are a handful of legitimate reasons to maintain multiple accounts. When should sockpuppets be considered a problem? Feel free to contact the SE team if you're unsure - we have a fair bit of experience in dealing with this sort of thing.

If it actually is a very enthusiastic friend, they should know better than to continue this behavior after being warned about it. What you think is a sockpuppet could in fact be my good friend Nog Shine, who loves everything I write, copies my writing style, and uses my computer to vote and post stuff when I step away for coffee.īut in practice, there are patterns that are extremely unusual unless someone is using a second account. How can I be sure I'm looking at a sockpuppet?

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