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I am a sockpuppet account of Josh, AKA The Unhandled Exception. I am going to help him test the XMPP chat integration system he's building.

Am I allowed to exist? I promise to behave, and never leave Meta or Meta's chat. If so, may I please have enough rep to chat?

EDIT BY JOSH: I have drawn a freehand circle for him: alt text

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marked as duplicate by gnat, Patrick Hofman, Shadow Wizard support Nov 18 '15 at 14:22

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

13  
I forbid it. Sock puppets are the most horrible things imaginable. – JSONBog Sep 24 '10 at 21:17
4  
Also I see absolutely no freehand circles. – JSONBog Sep 24 '10 at 21:17
4  
I can only give you half, just cause you're clean – juanformoso Sep 24 '10 at 21:18
1  
@Toronto: He can't draw freehand circles. He has no hands... – The Unhandled Exception Sep 24 '10 at 21:18
3  
@Josh: I'm just a head in a jar and I still manage to draw circles. He has no excuse. – JSONBog Sep 24 '10 at 21:19
    
Toronto: Heads are better than feet :-) I have drawn a FHC on his behalf. – The Unhandled Exception Sep 24 '10 at 21:21
2  
FYI, Your FHC looks more like a POC TBH. – JSONBog Sep 24 '10 at 21:23
2  
I would upvote, since you are good enough not to skip half the issue and upvote yourself. But I'm too busy enjoying the sad existence at being just shy of 20 reputation. – Grace Note Sep 24 '10 at 21:23
    
I am crying @Grace! – Josh's Socks Sep 24 '10 at 21:24
    
3 seconds... this new alert system is quite fast. Neat. – Grace Note Sep 24 '10 at 21:24
    
@Grace: I feel that, by not upvoting my sockpuppet, I am demonstrating that I have honorable intentions here! – The Unhandled Exception Sep 24 '10 at 21:25
16  
This is to confirm that @Toronto is my sock puppet. I apologize for never washing said sock. I also apologize for some other things that I did to my sock. – user27414 Sep 24 '10 at 21:29
3  
@Jon! Why did you have to say that, now I have a lot of explaining to do to my sockpuppet. Talk about an uncomfortable conversation! – The Unhandled Exception Sep 24 '10 at 21:31
    
+1 for the freehand circle. – Ether Sep 24 '10 at 21:59
11  
Whach out or you're sock puppet will accumulate more rep than you've got. – Georg Schölly Oct 14 '10 at 20:03
up vote 50 down vote accepted

I haven't been banned for it yet. And only a small handful of my accounts have been unceremoniously deleted. So I say, go for it!

To clarify: I do stupid, dodgy stuff with my sockpuppets, including (but not limited to) posting bogus answers, impersonating other users, impersonating other sockpuppets, and answering JavaScript questions. If you do these things, you may well find your accounts removed. If you abuse the voting system (voting up posts from one account using another account, voting twice on the same post using multiple accounts, awarding bounties from one account to another, etc.) you may well find your accounts merged and/or deleted, and yourself suspended. If you avoid such behavior, and are careful to avoid any obvious overlap between your accounts, you'll be fine.

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7  
"small handful of my accounts have been unceremoniously deleted. So I say, go for it!" Wait, why would you have more than one? – TheLQ Sep 24 '10 at 22:15
3  
@TheLQ: various reasons. Some I use just to have a low-rep account for testing behavior that only exists for low-rep users, or to remind myself what answering questions is like for the same. One was created to re-ask questions that I didn't feel comfortable editing. And some were created for jokes on Meta. – Shog9 Sep 24 '10 at 22:35
36  
Wow. I had no idea you had so many sock puppets. I dare say you're a... socks machine. – user27414 Sep 25 '10 at 1:08
    
Ouch. @Jon. Just... ouch. – Shog9 Sep 25 '10 at 1:25
2  
Thanks @Shog9! I promise I won't abuse the voting system. – Josh's Socks Sep 25 '10 at 13:08
9  
"I do stupid, dodgy stuff with my sockpuppets, including ... answering JavaScript questions. If you do these things, you may well find your accounts removed." --- wait, what? – Jan Dvorak Aug 16 '13 at 12:52
    
Should probably be read with an implicit "most or all of the above"... – Shog9 Aug 16 '13 at 15:32
    
So you're actually allowed to have multiple accounts provided that they don't involve any cross interactions with each other? – puretppc Jan 27 '14 at 5:10
    
There's no explicit support for it, but provided you don't do anything harmful there's no hard rule against it either, @puretppc. – Shog9 Jan 27 '14 at 5:17
    
@Shog9 This is because I have classmates at my school who are interested in Stack for help. I've warned them that if they attempted to touch any of my posts, they would get banned and vice versa. I'm hoping that they could ask their own Q's – puretppc Jan 27 '14 at 5:23
1  
You shouldn't have to worry - just remind them that this isn't a social network: vote for posts that are useful, not people who you know. @puretppc – Shog9 Jan 27 '14 at 5:28

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