Alternate accounts

On a common ground, editors are expected to edit only with one account. But sometimes there may be reasons to have multiple accounts, these multiple accounts are called alternate accounts or sometimes shortened as alts.

Synopsis
On a common ground, editors are expected to edit primarily from a single account, which is only used by one person. In some circumstances, having alternate accounts is considered acceptable. Some alternate accounts may appear in a way that you wouldn't know it's an alternate account, that is, they may have names that do not make it obvious that they are alternate accounts, and may have names that do not make it obvious to which main account they are connected to, but they must noticeably link to the main account on their user pages.

When running for a position/bit that requires a community discussion (for example,,  ,  ) with a main account, all alternate accounts must be declared. Except the confirmed, bot, flooder, rollbacker and ipblock-exempt groups, editors should only have advanced permissions and user rights on their main account. If an editor is found having advanced permissions, including but not limited to translation administrator, administrator, bureaucrat, checkuser, or oversighter, on more than one account that they control, they may face the immediate removal of those rights from all the accounts they control.

The sole exception is that an administrator may operate an "adminbot" with the sysop flag on an alternate account after approval from the community according to the bot policy.

Using alternate accounts legitimately

 * Flooders: For organizational reasons, users who perform high-volume manual or semi-automatic edits and frequently use the flooder flag may want to create a second account for those tasks.
 * Bots: Bots, or automated edit scripts, is often ran from a different account than the one used to operate them.
 * Doppelgänger accounts: To prevent impersonation, a doppelgänger account is a second account created with a username that is identical to the main account. Editing should not be done with such accounts.

Using alternate accounts illegitimately
This is where sockpuppetry comes in. Sockpuppetry (often abbreviated in discussion as "socking") is the use of multiple Miraheze user accounts for nefarious purposes. Attempts to deceive or mislead other editors, disrupt discussions, distort consensus, avoid sanctions, or otherwise violate community standards and policies are all examples of nefarious purposes. It's also worth noting that simply logging out or doing any of the above things with an IP address rather than an account will be considered illegitimate.
 * Good-hand/bad-hand accounts: Using good-hand/bad-hand accounts in order to deliberately confuse or deceive other editors who might think you might have some good potential.
 * Avoiding scrutiny: Using multiple accounts to avoid scrutiny or to cause confusion is unacceptable. An example of a good-hand is using one account for constructive use, as opposed to the bad-hand that's used for disruptive editing or vandalism.
 * Strawman socks: Creating a separate account to vote or argue one side of an argument in a disruptive or deliberately offensive or otherwise irrational way, to sway, or otherwise vote in an illusive or otherwise evasive manner will result in your votes being struck and counted as invalid.
 * Edting while logged out

How to handle illegitimate alts
An investigation with a Steward/CheckUser can be requested at the Stewards' noticeboard in cases where behavioral evidence is not completely clear. Administrators can also use publicly available results from Stewards/CheckUsers on other wikis, such as sockpuppet investigations and behavioral evidence, to see if multiple accounts are being operated by the same person.