I would like to know what other people think about aliases and anonymity on go forums and servers. First of all I think people should be able to remain anonymous if they wish (contrast with Facebook's Real Name policy). I also think that one human should be allowed to make multiple accounts and these separate identities should largely remain independent. So for example I just made this account in addition to my usual one here, and though it may be fun to guess who I am, admins of this forum should not use their privileges to find out who I am, even if they only do it for their own personal gratification and do not reveal it publicly. Of course you might guess who I am from my writing style which I have not tried to disguise. There could be many different reason for making multiple accounts: rank inertia, slow/fast accounts, teaching account, chat account, argumentative/troublemaker/troll accounts and so on. If there is no bad behaviour or complaints I think all accounts should be treated separately. But when problems arise is where it gets interesting. Let's say a human has a slow and a blitz account, and is ranked quite a bit weaker at blitz. But then they play a regular game with the blitz account and severely beat their opponent, who then complains he is a sandbagger. Is this a valid complaint? Should admins investigating it find out his other accounts, and should they reveal this information? Or what if a person has an account for chatting on KGS and gets in some heated arguments about politics etc and is banned. Should their other accounts, which they use for playing rather than heated discussions and have never behaved badly also be banned? Does whether all accounts held by one human should be punished depend on the severity of the offence, for example I'd say chatting about politics shouldn't ban all accounts, but flooding of swearing or threats of violence and murder against other users should, but perhaps this is just reflecting my view that the former offence is not such a bad offence and is often handled in a heavy-handed way. Or how about admins using the threat to reveal aliases against the human's wishes, is this an acceptable way to enforce the behaviour they want, or an abuse of power similar to blackmail?

And what about people with dual personalities who don't even know about one another?

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

That would be interesting, but I doubt it happens much.

I don't know all details of KGS banning... but I do know that at least one method (if not the only method), is banning by IP address, not by user account(s).

So it would appear that all your accounts are banned, when in fact its only your IP address that your accounts are using.

For example, a few years ago at the Portland Go Congress, an admin I know banned one obnoxious user, and ended up banning all the Congress attendees, including the broadcast USGO accounts.

Don't take things so personal. The world is not out to get you. Especially when we don't even know who you are

On the internet I can attempt to act more feminine towards my friends

On KGS they can just ban the account, or they can be more severe and ban the IP too if they want to prevent that human from reconnecting with other accounts (unless they are clever enough to use a VPN), though as you say it can ban many other innocent humans too.

Aliases are one of the fun things about the internet, but they are also one of the things that makes the internet suck sometimes (see GamerGate). They are fun, because they allow a person to assume different personas, which is all fine and good until one of these personas starts being harmful or hurtful. In this case, it seems reasonable to want to hold the person pulling the strings accountable. This means that in the case of misconduct, the user and not their alias should be punished. I think this holds for all of the OP's examples. The person with the blitz rating playing a slow game on that account is a sandbagger. An alias should not give a person a free ticket to act like a jerk, so if in a heated argument one acts like one, I think it is legitimate to punish the user by treating all of their accounts as one. Whether unmasking is an appropriate punishment or not is another question, but my gut feeling is that that would be a breach of trust, and should not be taken lightly.

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Patience, grasshopper.

My aliases serve one purpose: to have this (at times quite intensive) internet activity not to pop up in searches. In younger days I found no harm in posting with my own name and until this date I remain haunted by political views or other nonsense I believed 15 years ago. Everybody here knows my real name, it's in my profile, it's easy to find and when meeting my other nickname on KGS, you'll know soon too.

Aliases which serve to play mind games (not Go) with other members of the internet community, are not honest or even nice in my opinion, but above all they're totally uninteresting.

daal, interesting that you hold the anonymity above continued use of the services. Regarding the blitz sandbagger example, on KGS the admins seem to condone if not encourage humans making different accounts for different strengths/modes of play, but on OGS before the Nova merge the terms of service explicitly prohibited one human making multiple accounts which I found rather odd. As small boards were rated there making a separate 9x9 and 19x19 account would seem reasonable as it's common to be stronger at one or the other, or a slow account and a very slow account. So sandbagging (if that's what we call playing with a large difference in strength to the account's indicated rank) would be obligatory then for a user who was weak at 19x19 and then started playing 9x9 boards at which they were much stronger. OGS does now have different ratings for different speeds of play which is a nice idea. If someone plays blitz and slow games on KGS and is better at one than the other, do you think they are morally compelled to create separate accounts to avoid the sin of sandbagging? Although I could see your desire for it, a condition like "your strength of play on a single ranked KGS account must have a standard deviation no greater than 2 stones" seems unfair and unenforceable.

No, it's not a valid complaint. This isn't an issue of having two accounts. Even if you have only a blitz account, and sometimes play slow games, the same thing can happen.

The problem isn't that you're a sandbagger, but rather that there's a single rank to represent two types of games. People have discussed having separate ranks for blitz and slow games in the past. Though, honestly, I don't think there will be a difference of more than a couple stones.



It's not sandbagging, so no.



Personally, I'm rather against banning in general. So from that perspective, they shouldn't ban the accounts.

But if you're going to have a "punishment" system in place to ban people when they do things that are "wrong", banning just one of many accounts isn't much of a punishment. Even if you "act nicely" on one account and troll on the other, the admin has no way of enforcing this.

So I would say, I'm against banning. But if you're going to do it, I don't see how banning the user instead of the person makes much sense - it'd be equivalent to changing the person's username instead of banning them.



Probably abuse of power. But what can you do about it?

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be immersed

One solution for trolling is to silently mute them. They have view access, they can send messages, but no one will ever see those messages, because they're muted. Could be set for a given number of days, with permanent mute only after X number of previous times.

Doesn't prevent multiple accounts, or them using multiple accounts to figure out when they're being muted or not (and hence, just get a new account), but it'd be an effective way of dealing with certain people.

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Go Books

I recommend the book Virtually You. The author goes into many topics, including the positive and negative aspects of anonymity. People develop these distorted "e-personalities" which are more regressed than their day-to-day ones. A lack of anonymity does not necessarily make people behave better:



The persona I'm using to post this is not anonymous. The reason is that I created was to discuss a real-life event in a way that's personal. I couldn't see a way to do that anonymously. Also, it's easier to evangelize go if I'm "out of the go closet," so to speak. I try to be careful what I say, but so far I'd say I'm not much more careful than when using an alias. Fortunately, I never got into the extreme, hurtful behaviors that Dr. Aboujaoude discusses in his book.

With modern capabilities of data analysis, there is almost no anonymity anyway so it becomes more of an honor system to respect people's virtual identities. I try to do that. Even though I may know someone's real name, I would avoid using it in a forum where they are using an alias because I assume they have their own reasons to regulate the persona of their alias and it's none of my business.

However, I do not believe than an alias should allow a person to engage in hate speech or other reprehensible behavior with impunity. You can't hold an avatar accountable, but the person is.

A couple of stones can be a lot of difference If someone has made the effort to create separate accounts in order to get around the deficiency of a server that does not differentiate between fast and slow games, and can in fact play a stone or more better at the one speed than the other, then I think it can indeed be viewed sandbagging if they use the weaker account to play at a time setting where they are stronger. They could have used the other account to get an even game, but instead they chose to show their opponent only their weaker rank. Isn't that person pretending to be weaker than they are?

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Patience, grasshopper.

As it is said, on the internet nobody knows you're a dog

When I play on KGS, I use one account: Brian. I almost exclusively play using the same time limits: 30~40 minutes main time + 5x30 byo-yomi. Hypothetically, let's say that I'm 2 stones stronger at blitz.

If I play a blitz game tomorrow using 'Brian', it is equivalent to the situation with two accounts that you are describing. You don't need separate accounts to play a game under different-than-usual time settings and perform at a different ability.

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be immersed

No. When KGS admins ban a user, the server blocks both the user name and the IP address. The admins have no choice. However, in cases where it was discovered that this resulted in other, innocent users being banned, the ban may be released.

This has not only affected humans. There was an incident where an admin kicked a bot that malfunctioning. It was one of a group of bots using the same IP address. They all got kicked, causing interruption of several games.

I regard it as an abuse of power.

At KGS, it is against policy for admins to reveal alternate accounts, even of abusive users. It is part of the policy of respecting privacy of KGS users. Except KGS admins do share that information with other admins when discussing abusive users or admin candidates.

In some cases, admins might publicly and quickly act against a repeat offender logging in as a guest, and explain their decision was based on the user's history with other accounts. But, the admin will not reveal what those other accounts are. I have also privately warned victims of abuse that a certain banned user has been known to return with different guest accounts to harass the victim again.

Just a minute. Why is it not a valid complaint.

Since you freshly returned from the US Open, let's use it as an analogy.
AGA, like KGS and IGS, also has only one rating that does not differentiate between time settings.

For slow settings -- say US Open, (90 mins. + 5 x 30 secs), or (90 mins. + 5 x 1 min.), etc. -- suppose you real level is AGA 1 dan. You know this.
For faster settings -- say (30 mins. + 5 x 30 secs) like at Cotsen's -- further suppose your real level is AGA 3 kyu. That's 2-3 stones difference. You also know this.

( In case you're wondering if that's an exaggerated example, it is not. I easily drop 2 to 3 or even more stones from slow to blitz. )

So you go to enough Cotsen-ish weekend AGA tourneys, with the faster settings, and get a solid AGA 3 kyu rating.

Then, you show up at a US Open, with a much longer time setting, and you know your real level at this setting is now AGA 1 dan.

But you choose to enter the US Open with your solid AGA 3kyu rating. Guess what ? You clean up your opponents rated at AGA 3 kyu.
You win a trophy and some baby prize $ for your division.

Yes, you can argue, as you have, that this is not your problem -- it is merely AGA's fault/inadequacy for not differentiating between time settings.

Really ?

Thanks for the responses. It appears that whilst opinion is divided on the degree of sandbagging of playing at different strengths with different situations/accounts, people agree the privacy of aliases should be respected, even if punishments apply to all accounts (on which mixed views).

UnclMartin, regarding KGS bans always including IP, has that changed? I thought I got banned from KGS many years ago and managed to reconnect with a different username, but maybe my memory is faulty or my connection's dynamic IP had changed. Glad to hear KGS has a policy of not revealing aliases, I think other servers should follow suit.

daal, as another example of varying strengths, let's say someone plays casually on KGS at 5k (at some normal time setting). They play another 5k and make some big mistake and die and are fifty points down. They then resolve to concentrate and play their best, play at a 2k level, complicate the position and manage to get a 55 point swing to win by 5 points. Did they behave wrongly? How about if that same person is playing a game in their usual casual mode, but the opponent in the first joseki tries some cheeky trick play. Affronted, the user then engages concentration mode and plays like a 2k and crushes the hamete and proceeds to steamroller the opponent to win by 55 points. Did they do something wrong?

EdLee, I think the more likely scenario when that AGA rated 3k turns up and says "Hey, I'm really 1d" is for the tournament organisers to roll their eyes, sigh "another person who can't accept their lack of strength" and enter them as 3k even if the person wants to enter as 1d, unless of course he can offer some solid evidence of his 1d status.

Suppose I live in Colorado, and capitalize at the Colorado Springs Go Congress because my opponents were not adjusted to the altitude.

Suppose I don't tolerate heat well, and find myself living in a Congress dorm without AC in the middle of an unexpected heat wave.

Suppose I have a depth perception problem, and the large Ing stones at the Go Congress make it hard for me to see the board, whereas in my local tournaments we use flat yunzi stones which I have great comfort using.

Suppose I have had to keep working for my employer remotely while at prior Go Congresses, but now find myself at a Congress when I can devote all my attention to Go and not have any worries of work on my mind.

Suppose some of your KGS games are played while you are alone and free to concentrate, and some are played when your family is in the room distracting you.

Suppose some of your KGS games are in the morning when you are fresh, and some are at the end of the evening when you are tired.

The point is, time setting is one of many variables that can affect play, and it seems much easier to just have one rating than to say "well, it depends - did I have sausage or bacon for breakfast?"