Quote from: franky1 on July 05, 2022, 09:47:30 PM

taking lauda and satoshi as examples

they both would not need to reveal real life into to the whole forum community to prove or disprove anything..

they were both considered "staff"(officially/unofficially) by this forum in the past, and so i am sure it only takes 1-3 people (theymos mostly) that know enough about them behind the public posts to tell if they are the real deal or not. and a simple badge can be added to their avatar/ranking to show that theymos has verified them. then it becomes settled that its them.. should they want to re-announce their return..

Quote from: Sandra_hakeem on July 05, 2022, 11:07:21 PM

I don't think Satoshi has any problem with returning to the forum in his real account;his account was banned by Theymos,it could certainly be undone! I think Theymos has practically been reaching out to him maybe visiting or via direct mail.
Finally, Lauda promise never to return; the cat utterly repugn that should anyone claim to be it, no one should trust him.

Quote from: Lauda on October 19, 2020, 05:29:24 AM

I hereby I want to emphasize that it will never again be possible to contact "Lauda", just as it is impossible to contact the dead. I do not want any chance of an impersonation scam in a name that many people trust.

My point was that if they wanted to return under new identities, they could not.

The personal security risks to Satoshi would be far too high for him ever to act as “Satoshi Nakamoto” again, except perhaps on his deathbed. For that reason, among others, I think that the probability of Satoshi returning as “Satoshi” is negligible. If he were to use the forum again, it would need to be through an alt—but that incurs the risk of his new name being outed as Satoshi.

For this reason, I think that the probability of Satoshi ever again using this forum in any way is negligible. (Assuming he is still alive—a proviso which also applies to the unobservable Schrödinger’s cat.)

Lauda intentionally burnt her bridges; Sandra, you are quite correct about that. Lauda can never be Lauda again. And I do NOT think that she would ever want to return to this forum under a new identity, and restart from scratch; it is just not a Lauda thing to do. But there is an unwise, ill-considered meme in some quarters that she will be back under another name. My point was that she could not do that, either—not even if she wanted to. At least one of the persons spreading that meme is the type who enjoys hunting for the alt accounts or “main accounts” of people who have not done anything wrong. Judging by their behaviour in other cases, he and many others would not respect Lauda’s privacy if they believed they had found a new Lauda alt.

For that reason, in addition to my knowledge of her character, I am sure that Lauda will never return to this forum under any name.

Quote from: Sandra_hakeem on July 05, 2022, 11:07:21 PM

Nullius, I understand you're only curious and altruistic,yeah, but do you have a way with which you could control this unimportant trolling,fraud,shit posting and spamming so that everyone (though the forum remains de-centralised) can be known for one account? Hey, everything being pseudonymous does rather alot of good.
I think we already have alot of shitty-head created as pseudonyms, unaccounted for, mostly to Taunt,troll over as bounty cheats and maybe misuses the trust system.how well are you in support of this feigning and its misconduct?

Good question. Abuse prevention is a perennial question in privacy and anonymity circles. It is even a security issue, insofar as the intentional creation of abuse in privacy-oriented environment is a social attack on that environment.

For cleaning up a large part of the abuse on this forum, death_wish had an interesting idea:

Quote from: death_wish on May 31, 2022, 03:58:53 PM

The problem [of merit abuse] would be solved by deleting the bounties subforums, and banning paid signatures. That will not happen here, so [...]

Although for whatever reason, someone with a 4-digit uid sent 50 merits to that post, it is a generally unpopular idea. I think that if that were ever done, a large proportion of all abuse would evaporate overnight.

As for the remaining abuse: Contrary to what you say, this forum is not decentralized. The forum is a fully centralized system. Its administration has plenary authority over everyone here, and they delegate much of that authority to staff. I think that some changes in forum policies would do much to stamp out abuse; but such changes are unlikely, so I will not raise an off-topic tangent about what I have in mind.

Quote from: franky1 on July 05, 2022, 09:47:30 PM

the only times i see the judgements of people saying that some newbie is an alt. is whereby the newbie is repeating some shameful act/speach/script repeated on a previous account, too coincidentally.
this fake alt previous account accusation is normally reserved for the negative people and scammers..

You must be using a different forum. Tongue

I know that, for instance, some people in Politics & Society personally loathe you, franky1. If they ever suspected that a new account was yours, do you suppose they would miss the opportunity to call putatively-you a “fake newbie”?

In my own case, I have sometimes seen new accounts which were not mine being accused of being me. Of course, I did not deny it! They were not pretending to be me, they were not claiming to be me—through no fault of their own, they simply got falsely accused of being me. I thank them for improving my anonymity set.

Quote from: darkv0rt3x on July 05, 2022, 09:57:56 PM

Allow me to disagree in a couple of your definitions:

You did not read carefully. I suggest rereading. You do not thereby disagree with me at all.