Scarleteen

If so, PLEASE STOP. Please.

We make very clear in our site policies and guidelines, and the user agreement everyone agrees to when registering as they click that little "I agree" button, that is absolutely not okay here. It makes our jobs much harder, and it also makes us less able to serve you well.

Per the latter, why? Well, in part because folks doing this most often are people either wanting to play games, or relentlessly refusing to accept our limits, so they get banned, and then just make another handle and it's rinse, wash and repeat with that banning/new handle cycle. But we're of the firm belief that someone doing any of those things? Something is probably pretty wrong if it doesn't feel like it matters to respect anyone's limits or honor your agreements, if you just can't even see another person enough to even acknowledge their limits, if it feels fun to play games that misuse a charitable organization's time (especially since it means folks in need of help and being real can have to wait longer for it), or if you are having so much trouble exercising common courtesy you just can't swing something this basic.

And you know, we are willing and able to talk about these things and help you figure out what's up that's got you in this kind of space. We really are, and we'd rather discuss them and try and work something out than have to waste our time and energy hunting this stuff down than just helping people, which is the job we are not only supposed to be doing, but WANT to be doing.

So, if this is something you are doing, please stop. And rather than doing this, please, by all means, let's at least try and talk it all through instead. Thank you.

Bumping this to remind anyone who needs reminding.

For the record, for users who do this with multiple accounts and keep playing us this way, know that the second we know -- and we log IPS and other info here, so it's not usually that hard to figure it out -- if you have done this, been asked not to, and keep doing it, our next step will be to contact the abuse folks at your ISPs and let them know, which can result in a suspension or removal of your access to whatever you use to access the internet, period.

Don't mean to be all grr-scarypants about this, but we are just trying to do our jobs here, and users engaging in fraud of any kind keeps us from being able to do them well and serve our users who are following the guidelines and treating us with basic respect, which just is not cool. This wastes our resources, time and energy in a big way.

There are so many places to troll on the internet where people aren't working the way we do, with people in sensitive or tough situations like we do: where it just has little to no impact on the people trying to run a service. If you want to play games or troll, please go somewhere else.

And bumping this yet again, because we again have a handful of users who have been creating multiple identities, clearly to simply manipulate their way around reasonable and fair limits we've asked for and held when our service was being used counter to the registration agreement, or someone has been interacting with us in ways we've asked them to please stop.

I really don't think any of us know what else we can say to ask for the kind of basic respect -- for our service and what we need to run it well and do our best for everyone who uses it, but also just for us, as human beings -- involved in users NOT engaging in intentional fraud here.

So, the best I can do is to yet again ask those of you doing this to afford us a fraction of the respect we afford all of you and please just stop doing this. If you can't muster respect for our staff and volunteers as people, perhaps you can at least have it for your fellow community members here and recognize that when you do this, it gets in the way of providing help, information and support for people who need it and have not yet gotten it at the level you have from us. And if you can't even do that, perhaps you can at least pull up some self-respect and recognize that behaving in this way probably isn't reflective of the kind of person you want to be.