I'm going to take some time to say some goodbyes to some of the other members here, but I should be done with that by the end of the day. Please disable/delete my account ASAP after that time.

*beg

Nice!

^ So, as twisty and turny as this whole thing has been, I didn't see any of that coming at all.

"I just read my own comments repeatedly and fall in love with myself all over again."

As anyone who's visited our latest Siftquisition knows, this is how I roll, too.

Oh, and I like our comments the way they are, but it really wouldn't bother me too much if they got switched, either. This particular one doesn't get me worked up either way.

"The burden of proof should be that by the community to convict, not by the accused to exonerate himself."

Yeah, except that there's a fundamental disagreement about what the burden of proof here ought to be, which was one of the points of my post. I think you are setting it way too high in asking for incontrovertible evidence; evidence the kind of which is rarely found in real life, or in our past instances of banination here on the Sift. If you want to start using that as the metric, then so be it. You should know, though, that you risk indicting yourself as a hypocrite when you do it. After all, we certainly haven't been so timid in the past, and if we want to keep this place from going to hell in a handbasket, I suspect we won't be in the future either. Do you see why? Because as you well know, banning is an indispensable tool in a forum like this, and as it grows you will undoubtedly have to fall back in important instances on less than 100% certainty in the future if anyone is going to get banned at all. In other words, you, in your capacity as an administrator, are setting yourself up for some serious inconsistencies in how you structure--and allow others to operate--the banning procedures around here. You are making yourself into someone who believes one thing about when people ought to be banned, but has followed another thing in the past, and will revert to that same (now rejected) thing in the future if the Sift is going to remain anything like what it is today. Methinks this is not so desirable.

And it is not overly demanding to expect people to be able to give an account of themselves when circumstances seem (more than a little) fishy, nor is it somehow unfair to think that when they can't--when there doesn't seem to be a plausible alternative explanation that they or anyone else can offer in their defense--that this might be strong evidence of their guilt. I'm prepared to argue at length for this, and to generate some thought experiments that will help demonstrate the case. However, since I already said my last comment would be my final (public) input on this, I'll limit that to private messages to you--and then only if you're interested in hearing them.

"I suppose I'm just naturally inclined to be less accusatory whenever it involves a member who has been here and worked long enough to earn themselves a star."

This misses the point. Precisely what's at stake here is whether or not MrFisk earned his star through legitimate means at all. Our star point system is fantastic, and should be both defended and relied upon to inform our decisions about Siftquisitions. But if the question is whether the person has done what all the rest of us had to do to earn our stars, or instead cheated, then that changes things. You can't have a functioning ranking/privelege system based on star points if we can't be sure that the attainment of those points wasn't tainted. It just won't do anyone any good to rely on stars at all if we allow the foundation of the system to be eroded through sock-puppetry. The stars simply won't mean anything at that point.

Alright, I know I'm annoying the shit out of everyone, so I'm gonna stop now.

Well, I've said my piece already, but I'll say it one more time (and for the last time):

It is overwhelmingly likely that MrFisk and the notorious Doctor are the same person. Given that they both have a similar structure to their names (formal prefixes much?), given the voting record shows upvotes on the same videos within mere seconds of each other, given their tendency to defend their videos in very similar ways (pointed out by Farhad above), and especially given the vile things DrAlcibiades was posting, I don't see how we can't ban this guy.

Remember, virtually everyone was in favor of banning the Doc. If (as the evidence shows) they are very likely the same person, then how can you support banning one and not the other? It's not as though since the MrFisk persona is nicer and pretends to be more oblivious that he isn't the same guy on the other end. That's what we need to be concerned about. In my view, we run an intolerably high risk of keeping around DrAlcibiades by keeping around MrFisk.

"Oh," you might respond, "we can't be totally certain they are the same person." Granted. We cannot be totally certain. But we don't really need to be, either. I suspect of all the people who've ever been banned here, it's only a miniscule minority who we could actually be 100% certain were guilty of what we had accused them of. That is as it should be. Many of the decisions we make everyday--both on the Sift and off--are informed by what we think is the "best explanation" for the data before us rather than some extremely rare sense of certainty. My take is that now is not the time for us to adopt a "proof beyond all doubt" mentality, thereby rejecting entirely (and with great hypocrisy!) inference to the best explanation as our modus operandi for these kinds of situations.

However, you might respond, "Tofumar, it's not that we disagree with you about the way to think about these things. It's just that we don't think, as you do, that they are likely to be the same people." Fine. Then it's up to MrFisk--or you, if you'd like to take up the considerable task--to provide a plausible scenario which explains away these "coincidences." I think we can all agree that saying "I guess I just have a groupie" and "Review my Tits embed and lighten up" don't cut it.

Other more softhearted Sifters might raise one final objection. They might say "We see what you're saying, but we may scare off newbies." I say we should be scaring off newbies like the Doc (and MrFisk). Let's take your point a bit more seriously, however, and think about the risks involved with each decision. If I'm wrong and we ban this guy, we run the risk of punishing him for something he didn't do. Worst case scenario is probably that he gets restored later by the admins (maybe with probie status?), or rejoins under another name. In this latter scenario, he would lose all 11 of his star points, but if, as he is fond of reminding us, his posts are "dope" and he wants to contribute "worthily," it should take no time at all for him to make those up. On the other hand, if we don't ban him, we take a serious chance of inviting the good Doctor into our community. For those of you who need to be reminded why this is a bad idea, go and watch this over at another site. It's one of the most grotesque things I've ever seen in my life.

After you do that, if you still think that banning MrFisk will risk doing more harm to the community than not, I'll be happy to shut my big yapper, and will do my best to get along with him from this point on.

I like Jesse, but upon reflection I think he needs to get rid of the skullet.

*gay

^ Wow. Just wow.

Congrats!

^ This is exactly right.

I'm strongly in favor of banning this guy. I knew about sock-puppetry and how it would undermine a place like this from day 1.

If he's not a retard, then he knew what was going on, and those vote times are a bit too close to be coincidence. Let's not go out of our way to be credulous here, folks.

thanks.

In reply to this comment by Zonbie:
Congrats on the Gold Standard btw

Yeah. A groupie. Right.

I'm for a ban, pending an investigation into the IP logs & vote timing. No bronze star should protect you if you cheat (i.e. use sock-puppetry) to get it.

[Edit: This comment was written in response to MrFisk's above comment, in which he claimed he "must just have a groupie," or some tripe. He has since edited his comment to remove that phrase.]