Okay hopefully I can put an end to this thread. I've been out of the country since Saturday so I've only just read through it this afternoon.
Let me try and define the policy of the site on the issues raised.
The reasons for not permitting multiple accounts
As covered in the new site guidelines:
1.1 Members are permitted to have only one account each. If you forget your login details or wish to change your user name then email T2W for help, please do not simply re-register. Anyone found using multiple accounts will be warned and have all additional accounts deleted. Further violations of this rule will result in the member being banned.
This is perhaps a simplification of the issue, but really shouldn't need to be analysed on a word by word basis. What we're saying is that quite clearly we don't want multiple nicks because we want to avoid the possibility of members deceiving other members by pretending to be two or more people. It's a simple as that and makes perfect common-sense.
Sure, we get members who register multiple times, either because they've forgotten their old login details, or because of some technicality of the registration process that made them think they didn't register successfully when in fact they did. This sort of thing does happen, and clearly although it comes under the definition of multiple accounts: there's nothing wrong per se with it, except of course it's artificially inflating our member count, the user will probably receiving two emails of everything and because it brings into question the intent (even when no wrongdoing is actually taking place) and therefore we would just rather it didn't happen for these reasons. In most cases I as the administrator would either delete the old one, if no posts were made - or merge the two accounts together, whatever makes sense.
It's when members are registering multiple time AND posting on the forums or on private messaging, possibly at the same, with an intent to deceive that we clearly have a responsibility to take action to protect you as members.
Identifying multiple nicks
The pros and cons of using IP addresses alone has already been discussed, and I'm acutely aware of this. There are certain other methods available to us, performing a whois on their registered email address, but there are others which I won't go into otherwise it will be so much easier to circumvent them. But no method is completely infallible, unless I actually went round people's houses and watched them log in, I'm not ever going to be 100% sure. But clearly if the various methods available all point to the same thing, that someone is using multiple nicks to deceive, then we have to weigh up the possibility of being wrong, with the possibility of allowing a known deceiver on the site we have to err on the side of caution and protect out members.
Discussing individuals and personal information
Regardless of whether or not TheBramble invited the moderators to post publicly information regarding multiple nicks, or whether the whois information is in the public domain or not, posting personal identification information about members I can categorically say is not the policy of this website and the information about TheBramble should never have been posted by a representative of the website. Ultimately I have to take responsibility for this as the moderators are simply guided by the procedures that I put down (or lack of them!) - and therefore clearly there is a failure on my part to ensure the appropriate action required is taken - so please accept my apologies TB for revealing personal information about you on the site.
Also may I add, the policy of the site is not for site administrators to discuss privileged information about individual members either on the forums or through private messaging. In future I would urge members who have concerns about the intentions of particular members to contact either myself or the site moderators directly. The forums aren't the place to discuss this publicly. Quite clearly this leads to confusion and wrongful accusations - I'd also ask DaveJB to accept my apologies for the wrongful association with Zenda, who I can categorically state are not the same person.
Action taken on members found to be using deceitfully multiple nicks
This is stated in the guidelines 1.1 as.. "anyone found using multiple accounts will be warned and have all additional accounts deleted. Further violations of this rule will result in the member being banned." This should be qualified by 11.4 which states "In exceptional circumstances, and at the discretion of the site moderators, members may be immediately and permanently banned." It all depends on the seriousness of the actions taken, and the only workable solution is to leave this to the discretion of the site staff, bearing in mind the particulars of the situation. As always may common-sense prevail.
To conclude..
Evidently whenever a suspicion arises of wrongdoing this needs to be acted on immediately as a priority, and so that we can confidently say that we are unaware of anyone using the site in this fraudulent manner. I would concede that in the past we've failed to act promptly enough (either through lack of technical support on my part, or simply lack of time, or resources, or not giving it sufficient priority) and therefore I find myself in the situation of defending the actions of the site, clarifying the policy and apologising for mistakes made. I fully appreciate this is not in the interests of the site or community, and hopefully having learned from our mistakes we won't make the same ones again. Finally, let me assure you that I'll take a fresh look at the status of mulitple accounts and that by the end of this week, ALL member accounts that appear to be multiples WILL be acted upon.
