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In the Reddit thread, another MeFi administrator sums it pretty nicely: MetaFilter has rules about that sort of thing because it wants to encourage a certain kind of community. Other sites may have different rules.

"On Metafilter, specifically, deliberately impersonating a disinterested third party to get in arguments about yourself or something you've got a personal stake in is a problem, yes. It's anathema to any kind of sense of community and continuity of identity. Other places can have their own rules or lack thereof. The heterogeneity of the Internet is part of what makes it interesting, and certainly no one is or should be compelled to be a member of Metafilter or Reddit or any other site the rules or community guidelines of which they don't like."

Direct link: http://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/gqzgx/dilbert_creato...

There's a difference between rules/law and morality. I don't dispute what he did was against the Metafilter rules but that doesn't in itself make it wrong from a moral standpoint. At least no more wrong than people who post off topic stuff on HN or any number of other minor infractions.

You could argue that it's morally wrong because most other Mefi-ists assume that the rules are being followed, so breaking the rules is deceptive. But Metafilter discussions bore the hell out of me, so I don't really know what the hell they think.

As far as mefi's guildlines go and my job responsibilities go, morality doesn't really come into it. I don't consider it my mandate to ensure or enforce moral correctness or any such thing.

That what he did was against the site's rules and a violation of the Metafilter community's shared expectations of behavior on the site is why it was a problem on Metafilter, and why we contacted him to tell him to cut it out.

There's nothing wrong with a famous person having psudeo-anonymous accounts that aren't tied to their real identity, but to then defend themselves as if they were not connected... Well, that's just not cool.

Cortex, who posted what you quoted, was drawing that line. Be anonymous and on Metafilter, but avoid commenting on yourself as somebody else. Or he can be himself (which lots of "famous" people have done both on Reddit and Metafilter, and HN for that matter.)

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.

I'm actually kind of confused why you think it isn't a problem to use dishonestly, since speaking as if you're not person X is dishonest, isn't "harmful" in a community or to a discussion. And, honestly, I can't think of many reasons I'd want the famous person to lie to defend themselves. If it's defensible and they're famous, lots of intelligent and well-spoken people will be there to their defense.

See John Lott/Mary Rosh and other cases where people have been found out. (Or authors using fake names to give 5-star reviews on Amazon; or game devs posting reviews with fake names on metacritic.)

First on the whether it's wrong I wrote a whole big thing here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2452634

But on your point about letting other people jump in and defend him I don't agree with you. When Scott Adams posts something I assume he's thought through what he said. So while a bunch of people might agree with him they won't have thought the issue through as well as he has. So it's entirely plausible that he could defend his ideas better than other people could.

As far as things like Amazon reviews or Game reviews that's a completely different thing because the person doing that is trying to get money out of other people. So if they are wrong and the game/book/whatever doesn't deserve a five star review they'll have caused harm to the purchaser. Adams is just defending ideas which doesn't do such harm.

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.

Scott Adams is both a brand and a public figure, and it seems as though he got confused about which of those two things he went onto MeFi to defend. In retrospect, being identifiable and defending himself from the start held the potential to increase the reputation of both his brand and his personal identity. But not only did he botch the defense of his identity, he harmed his brand, then compounded the damage by his comments after revealing his identity.

From the nature of his comments, though, it doesn't seem likely he could have managed the finesse of a defense of both himself and his brand had he came out identifiable from the start. The best choice in his personal case may have been to ignore the criticism and if he really felt the need to respond to the barbs, respond from the bully pulpit of his media empire. You know, something like Catbert pointing at his bank statement and saying "Scoreboard!"

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

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.

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.

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.

What do you think of authors going pseudonymously onto Amazon and posting 5-star reviews of their work? Of companies doing that for their products? Of political astroturfing?

Sock puppetting by a famous author is toward the least slimy end of a pretty slimy continuum.

It is called astroturfing and it is a bad thing to do.

Well no it's actually not. Astroturfing would be if he had 100 sock puppets.

Yea, that would have been seriously bad. In this case it would not be anywhere near as bad, but it is still bad.

But that goes back to my original question of "Why is it bad?"

The point I'm trying to make is we shouldn't automatically assume something is bad just because our first instinct says so. In this case our first instinct reacts to misleading people because that's usually a bad thing. Usually it's used to hurt people.

But in the case of Scott Adams his sock puppet isn't hurting anyone. So it's neutral at best. So then the question is between neutral and acceptable.

For this to be acceptable it has to do some good. There are cases when lying does an overall good so the questions is whether this is one of those cases.

If you hold truth as a value than this does a societal good. Because many people would automatically dismiss a defense of Scott Adams ideas coming from Scott Adams. Those same people would listen to an anonymous person. So Scott Adams' sock puppet allows his ideas to get a fair hearing in the debate.

Which is why I don't see the evil in a famous person having a sock puppet

(I feel the need to say I AM NOT a Scott Adams sock puppet...just for the record)

I am.

hmmm, ammonia is good, so is bleach, put 'em together and noooooo