an open letter to anyone who happens to find themselves someday running a sociology department

Sociology departments will often bring in multiple candidates for a single junior position, and decide that more than one candidate is suitable. Say Candidate A is the department's first choice, and Candidate B the second. A common strategy has been to call Candidate A and make her the offer, and not say anything to Candidate B until Candidate A has made up her mind. One justification is that if the turnaround time for a negative decision by A is relatively brief, B can then be given the offer under the impression that he was really the first choice and the committee just took its time deliberating. I'm not sure this was ever a great strategy from anyone's standpoint, but it really does not make sense in the age of the sociology job market wiki. Junior candidates who take the time to give a talk at your university and get all excited at the possibility of a future there shouldn't have to find out someone else has the offer from a wiki. That's just cold*, and sociology is supposed to pride itself on being nicer than certain neighboring disciplines.

* Given the common (but dispreferred!) pronunciation of my last name as rhyming with "knees" instead of "niece," nicknames given to the blog proprietor in graduate school by The Other Guys included "Frosty" and "2-Kold." These, certainly, were superior to nicknames from junior high or high school, which for obvious reasons of pride and propriety will not be shared here.

Addendum: Given that there are now several people actually in charge of sociology departments who are known members of the sociology blog universe, I suppose I should state explicitly to those prone to seeing subtext in blissfully subtextless posts that this not directed at any known blog author or blog reader. I have, though, heard more than one story of bad-news-delivery-via-wiki this year, which I think is fine at the stage of people finding out they didn't get a (first-round) interview but not at the stage of finding out they didn't get an (first-round) offer.