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Here are some things that are not (inherently) against policy:
- Being familiar with how Wikipedia works before creating your current account
- Having had past accounts you don't disclose
- Having current alternate accounts you don't disclose
- Sometimes editing logged-in and sometimes editing logged-out
- Changing accounts every time you feel like a new username
- Editing the same pages as someone else
- Having the same POV as someone else
- Using the same figures of speech as someone else
- Editing the same pages as someone else with the same POV as them and using the same figures of speech as them
- Having the same probably-neurodivergence-related very precise interests as someone else
- Being on a dynamic IP address
- Restoring content added by a sock
- Making an edit at the request of a banned user
- Having been canvassed to a discussion
- Being a single-purpose account
- Having a conflict of interest
- Being a generally shitty person
For pretty much all of these, I have had to remind someone at SPI that they are not against policy. (And yes, some have major caveats on them, like WP:LOUTSOCK and WP:SCRUTINY and WP:PROXYING, but I'm speaking to the general case.)
The mistake people make is conflating signs of socking with violations of policy. We see the same mistake made by accused sockpuppets in the opposite direction, saying "Well there's no rule against having X on my userpage", after a filing points out "Accounts A, B, and C all have X on their userpage" as evidence that they're the same person. Everything listed above is a sign of socking. Some of them are basically guaranteed to get a user checked. But it's important to remember that the behaviors in themselves are allowed. So if you file an SPI saying "users X and Y clearly are the same person", but they haven't violated WP:SOCK, don't be surprised if it's promptly declined.
While you don't always need to explicitly state it, anytime you file at SPI you should have in mind what exactly happened that goes against policy.