When one uses the date of creation of an account to discredit it, yes; also note that underover has one comment (this one), while the account being accused (stevenp) has three, only one of which relates to this topic. Not especially relevant under normal conditions - opinions and information are more important, and all that - but, once again, underover is using this to accuse someone else of being a sock puppet, while his[1] argument also suggests that he is a sock puppet - admittedly, if his name had a c in it, that would go without saying, but it would be nice to get a disclaimer stating that he's a shell account used by another user to maintain anonymity, if that is in fact the case.
[1] I have no evidence that underover is male; I'm merely using the masculine pronouns by default.
Not really. underover was suggesting these new accounts should be discredited because their newness and pro-Andrew bias suggests they were perhaps created by Andrew. That criticism cannot apply to him, because why would Andrew create an account to criticize himself?
I see what you mean but I guess I see an important difference between creating a sockpuppet in these two circumstances.
On the one hand creating an account to protect your anonymity when you make a potentially inflammatory accusation about the behavior of a prominent member of the community.
And on the other, creating an account to make it appear that you have more support on the forum than you actually have.
I find the latter to be a serious problem whereas the former seems reasonable and ethical.
[1] I have no evidence that underover is male; I'm merely using the masculine pronouns by default.