Preface

There has been an itch that has been incongruous with my desires of the forum to which I have vocalized to a few individuals prior to the completion of this text. As once said, brevity is the soul of wit thus I shall concisely examine the renegade philosophy that has clashed against my previous actions. This is, of course, regarding the use of alternate accounts in campaigns, whether they are both within the same campaign or not. The status quo has been to prevent the registration of alternate accounts, however, I have reason to believe that this is merely a surface-level bandage rather than something that can be continued in a long-term setting.

Rationale

Why would I—an anti-spam advocate—suddenly twist zhopself inside-out and begin protesting against the current measures against spam? The intent behind the anti-alt rule is simple: to prevent spam induced by a user's division of labor through a higher frequency of posting.

If one follows the logic without question, then one would come to a similar conclusion only without considering any other factors. We are under this asinine presumption, wherein one expects a user to solely post without regard for their quality when they are using multiple accounts. We do, in fact, have an example of a user who participates in multiple campaigns with publicly-announced alternate accounts: hilariousandco, hilariousetc.

A sweeping generalization can be okay to begin with constructing an idea, though it means that you have the foundation built upon some unsteady scaffolds. Much like an Italian Jenga tower, it will start leaning until it cannot handle the weight of the task upon its unsteady roots.

If we simplify the equation of post quality into the following:

P := post quality
A := number of accounts enrolled

One will usually assume that P and A are inversely proportional. I will, in fact, agree with this metric. However, to use this as the reason for restricting entry is merely a form of fallacious argumentation. The underlying reason that someone is creating poor quality posts is simply that: they cannot create better-quality posts.

If you consider each account independent of the actual cryptographic identity (i.e. hilarious is a cryptographic identity, whereas they own multiple accounts) then you are able to isolate the post quality to each account. We should not be conflating the possibility of spam with the evidence of spam.

There is but a simple solution: abolish the rule.

If, in the event, an individual does enroll with multiple accounts but maintains stellar post quality, it is no different than if a separate cryptographic individual has enrolled with a single account. One may argue against this in lieu of active spam protection, but if spam is a problem then you should eliminate users because they are spamming, not because they might spam.

Moreover, this rule falls in the same way that most legislation does: adaptability. It is quite evident that there are clandestine alts, much like there are public alts. And, yes: they do get caught... but remember, if they were already spamming, then why were they still in the campaign?

TL;DR

Preventing alternate accounts from enrolling in campaigns is stupid. It does not prevent people who secretly use alts and it does not prevent spam. Preventing someone from joining because they have poor post quality is better than preventing someone from joining because they might have poor post quality because of the multiple accounts.