(in reply to SoI Kills and the long thread that followed)

A semi-public message board is like a city bus. You can make and enforce some elementary rules like "no smoking", "no skates" etc (incidentally, when I was a kid the signs said NO SPITTING and smoking was permitted), but you can never control everything at 100%. Some passenger might annoy another with his remarks, some other with his newspaper, yet another by staring. People who choose to take the bus have to learn to live with these things. Those who won't, well, they should buy a car and stop taking the bus.

Basically, the purpose of the rules is to establish an acceptable environment for everybody; nothing else. More specifically, the purpose of the rules is NOT to establish a perfect environment, nor to be circularly self-serving.

In the case of this message board, "an acceptable environment" is created by - among others - two diametrically opposite and mutually contradicting rules: the right to anonymity and the prohibition against multiple identities. Without anonymity, many current posters who contribute valuable information and opinions would have abstained from posting. That would severely reduce the value of the board as a whole. On the other hand, on a big message board like this, some order is needed and poster reputation is a valuable instrument for weeding out noise from worthwhile postings. Hence, people should stick to one identity.

Obviously, you cannot enforce the "one identity" rule without breaking anonymity. Then again, the only valid reason to enforce it in the first place would be to avoid confusion and noise. In the case of a troll who gets banned, returns after some time under a new identity and no longer trolls, but behaves decently on the board and does stick to his one new identity, enforcing the rule and banning that new persona would be applying the rule in a circular self-serving way, thereby making the rule itself meaningless and not worthy to respect.

Thus, I believe that the discussion on whether "Vera City" is "Zelig" or not has gone in the wrong direction. If Vera City is misbehaving in some way, he should be banned already therefore, irrespective of whether he is the same individual as Zelig or not. Or else, if Vera City is not misbehaving and you suspect that he is Zelig, you should rejoice that Zelig improved his manners and welcome him back to the flock.

With that said, I'm hopping onto this thread because I was asked to see if there are any technical means of deciding this identity issue once and for all. The short answer is: no. Looking at the database back-end of the board, I found that Vera City and Zelig post from the same ISP using the same technology. Five other people besides those two use that same ISP and that same technology too.

Thus, nothing can be proved and nothing can be disproved. Besides, even if Vera City and Zelig had been posting from the exact same IP address, that would still be proof of nothing. After all, they could be different members of the same household or patrons of the same public library or students on the same campus or whatever, still not being the same individual and not violating the "one identity" rule.

All in all, my suggestion would be to drop the identity issue before it becomes off-topic noise itself, and to go back to discussing whatever cult was the original topic of this thread.

Z