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Underground > Policy & Help >

Suggestion One - Displaying users' login names...

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18:47 / 20.09.03

I like the idea of some sort of permanent identifier attached to a fic-suit. I'm not sure that using the log-in ID is a good idea, if only for security reasons (and obviously other folk have other objections).

Limiting the frequency/number of name changes is a very good idea, as is displaying the last few fic-suits. Obviously, displaying them all if a user can change names ten times in a day could be problematic.....

Would needing some sort of approval (moderated or otherwise) to change your name lead to a bunch of headaches in programming or administration?

19:19 / 20.09.03

I hadn't considered the security aspect to be honest. That's a good point. It's much harder to hack a suit if you don't know the login.

Three names? Your "true name" which is your login. Your "display name" which is defined once, or changed in extremis by mods. And your "social name", or suffix, which is displayed along with your display name but you can change whenever you feel like.

The latest VBulletin displays "user name" (fixed), "user title" underneath and has a field for "location" which people use for all sorts of purposes (both changed at will).

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:30 / 20.09.03

grant- cheers. I've just figured that right-clicking it and choosing "Properties" will do it, if "id=xxxx" means what it seems to.
Personally, I (as I've already said) like to be able to change my ficsuit name, but keep a core recognisable identity (in my case, it has to be stoat-related). Maybe a fixed username, which is displayed, plus a "from" (or whatever) field, which can be changed at will? OK, when the "from" field was there, it was kind of an irrelevance, because the usernames were also mutable, so there was plenty of room for expression anyway. But that kind of thing and a fixed username?

19:51 / 20.09.03

Really liking fridge's three names idea. "True name" = second level of security, "display name" = like a surname, "social name" = nickname. Leaves us with two levels of security. Means that nobody has to go changing their logins.

Make the "social name" optional for those who want to have something they can change.

Morlock - groupie for hire

10:47 / 21.09.03

Draconian, Sgt. Jub? We're already talking about curtailing people's anonymity and privacy to some degree or other. I thought sticking a black mark on someone's ficsuit, perhaps only for a week, would make active trolls easier to spot without resorting to Big Brother tactics, if you'll excuse the melodrama.

Like I said, I'm not that fussed either way. If someone has a more legitimate need to shed their skin they can always register a second, third, fourth suit. But this also bypasses all the other suggestions in this thread, unless you start showing IP addresses or something.

Mr. Dupre: If there was a fix on names it might make spotting him when he's cowering in someone else's old shell a little easier.

How, exactly, would you be able to distinguish a hijacked suit from a new troll with a new name? Especially if it's an old ex-lurker suit, with little or no previous form to compare current behaviour to.

And Tom, you've not mentioned why *you* think we need to be able to link current suits to old ones. What do you hope to get from it?

14:10 / 21.09.03

How? Easy, really. The board's effectively closed to new members again because of Andrew's antics, so there's no problem there. Obviously, fixing names wouldn't help in all cases, but in those where the suit has posted previously and people have read and taken notice of the post it'd make any sudden shift in posting styles easier to spot. The point about long-registered, previously unused suits is a good one and suggests a couple of other things that the board could maybe do with - another clearout on suits that were registered longer than six months ago but have never been used being one.

Anonymity? Privacy? Forgive me, but surely that's only a problem if you decide to post here under your actual RL name. I can't honestly see why anyone should feel the need to alter their name in the interests of anonimity unless they've managed to make their previous one mud.

ONLY NICE THINGS

18:45 / 21.09.03

Well, some people's logins may involve some element of their real names, or some characteristic linking them to an email address or making them more susceptible to Googling or similar - again, if we didn't have to worry about stalking, we wouldn't have to worry about this. It would be a shame if people could no longer alter their suit names, but an "invariant identifier" could work - either having the user number up on their entry or having a nominated invariant (so, "Haus" for me, say, or "Flowers" for Our Lady, or "Moominstoat"). User number would reqire a lot less paperwork...

18:57 / 21.09.03

MMM - all I meant was, it seems a bit harsh to put a black mark against someone's name when they may've been having a moment of madness and/or been pissed - whatever - and that leading to other people thinking they're serious trolls. Who would decide who needed a black mark?

00:36 / 23.09.03

I think it would be a good idea to keep the login names secret. A lot of people are going to want to change them and there is no way to make sure everyone gets that chance. I'd be more than a little upset if I was away from the board and came back to find my login name displayed for everyone to see. Maybe we could all settle on permanent user names (that would be displayed in bold) with changeable names/titles in regular type after them.

BioK9 would still appear as
BioK9

but Flux could be
Flux=Magneto's secret lover
or
Flux=Whatever

and Haus could be
Haus where I plot the overthrow of the board with my imaginary fiancee and our friends the mice.

Or whatever. The point is, the Flux= and Haus parts would be unchangeable. It sticks people with a recognizable name and allows them to be goofballs at the same time.

06:36 / 23.09.03

I wouldn't want my login name to be visible but I'm perfectly amenable to the idea of having some sort of permanent identifier other than the id number if it will help in dealing with future trolls.

10:06 / 23.09.03

I think that's a superb idea Bio K9.

Morlock - groupie for hire

10:40 / 23.09.03

Yeah, sorry, found out after that post that I wasn't as up-to-date on registration as I thought I was. Sure, with the current blocks it looks like trols are pretty much stuck with existing suits, so linking current with old should give us a better sense of who we're talking to, and who is causing trouble.

I guess what worried me is how likely people are to judge on past behaviour. If we were to find out, half-way into a discussion, that we are talking to someone who has trolled in the past, I very much doubt any of us would still give their points the same merit. Which may be justifiable for the persitent trolls, but would leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth if it were to become commonplace.

I'd hate for this to turn into a place that doesn't believe in rehabilitation. That's the only reason I'm looking for way to preserve not just the everyday anonymity of a ficsuit, but a measure of anonymity from one's past.

Maybe I'm being too generous. I'm not as involved in the board as a lot of people here, so I probably don't fully appreciate how bad the trolling has been, and how mcuh effort has been devoted to solving the problem. Do me a favour though, as well as fighting monsters can we come up with a leash for any would-be monster-hunters? Just in case?

21:30 / 23.09.03

HUrrah for BioK9- That's kinda what I though, but didnt think it would be do-able. Is it? And if it is, would the permenant username always have to be at the start- ie could Flux be "I am Flux" or something?

Having login-name shown wouldnt bother me, although I thought everyone's was basically the same as their fictsuit- so in Ariadne's case and so forth, I wouldnt have a clue who she was, if it's her real name. It'd take a while to sniff out who people actually were, if they had different logins, and then changed their ficsuit.

pointless and uncalled for

15:53 / 28.09.03

Tom - have you managed to reach any resolution on this one?

I think it's an idea worth pursuing, particularly in this age of infighting. I've just trawled through a stack of threads regarding cliques, trolling, infighting and other social transgressions and so few of the make sense if you've missed a week on the board because the names of those involved have changed. Not that this should be the only reason to do so but certainly a contributing factor. It makes reading threads like watching every other episode of Twin Peaks.

I don't think security needs to be an issue, all we really need is a static display name and a log on name. I know it's goofy and fun when various members change their names oh so slightly but that doesn't have to suffer. These days I see such name changes as the barbelith equivalent of a signature and we've had the discussion on that one before.

16:29 / 28.09.03

Right, current state of play is that I've sent a model to Cal for how I think the name-changing thing should work in the short-term. Basically it has to be a bit of a transition I think, so that people get the sense of the change. But the first stage of that transition should be something like this - users can change their name ONCE PER MONTH, there will be an UPPER CHARACTER LIMIT on what your name can be and PREVIOUS NAMES WILL EITHER BE DISPLAYED ON YOUR PROFILE PAGE OR (THE MOST RECENT ONE) UNDERNEATH YOUR CURRENT NAME.

In the medium term, I think I"d like to drop that name-length down a bit more, reduce the speed of the name-change a bit more (maybe to once every three months and then once every six?) and think about (at that stage) introducing user name epithets (which is what BioK9 is talking about above) of the kind I talked about here: User Name Epithets. Now that's all quite a long way in the future of course, and might not come to anything, but at least now you all know what's happening. As ever, if it's a widespread disaster then we'll change it again.

With regards to issues about anonymity - I'm coming around to a new position with regard to this. I'm calling it pseudonymity. Basically my position is that a user should be identifiable as that user whatever suit they're using or user-name they're using, but - unless they choose to reveal information about themselves - there should be no association with the identity of the person behind the scenes. ie. the posts that a real-life person makes are totally safe behind a pseudonym - but they are not in any way anonymous. That seems to me to be a more practical arrangement...

Matthew Fluxington

16:37 / 28.09.03

Aw. That one name-change per month makes me really sad, cos it kind of kills the conceptual part of my name. But I know it's for the best, cos I think I'm more annoyed by other's people's name changes than invested in my own.

I do find it weird that I'm being used as an example of confusing name changes a few times in this thread when I'd argue that my name is one of the most consistent and least confusing on this whole board, aside from folks who have not changed their name even slightly, as with Grant, Videdrome, or Tom Coates. There hasn't been a time since mid-2000 when my name here hasn't started with Flux =. But I'm just being defensive.

17:27 / 28.09.03

Why not just the user number? That way you can figure out who the user was before s/he changed hir name. So you get all the benefits of name changing without all the problems that come with it.

19:52 / 28.09.03

I think fundamentally because it's too much to ask people to memorise a couple of hundred numbers whereas they'll have much less trouble with names.

Matthew Fluxington

20:26 / 28.09.03

I still think we should all just come up with a permanent name, and have that name be visable at all times in our profiles, and have the name visable in the threads be whatever we want, but with a limit on how many characters can be allowed.

It's really sad to know that I'm eventually going to have to abandon my screenname because of this.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

20:34 / 28.09.03

Well, I'm glad that Tom has listened to the party and, with this renewed mandate, can lead us all to a third election victory!

(Starring Flux as Claire Short).

I'm just wondering what Tom's feelings are about this upper character limit... how many chars were you thinking of?

21:05 / 28.09.03

Flux - first things first - in the long-term you absolutely WON'T have to abandon your naming strategy at all! The long-term plan would allow you to have a user name of FLUX which was then displayed in bold, with your suffic "= badgers coming out of my butt" in normal text following. In the medium term, yes it'll probably mean you (at least) not changing as often, but you'll still be able to change it.

And when I say a restricted character limit, I'm probably still talking something like twenty to thirty characters - doesn't seem to be any reason to strip the board of that much of its character right now... The reason I wouldn't leap straight to the new system is that I don't want people to get stuck with names that they hate that they can't easily change, so I reckon people shoul gradually have time to acclimatise...

21:23 / 28.09.03

Flux, when people are mentioning the Flux= names in this thread I think they're talking about the week when a number of other users also changed their names to a Flux= variant.

23:08 / 28.09.03

Heh. There goes my gimick of randomizing the spelling of my screen name every hour.

I suggest that we have screen name which requires moderation or can only be done monthly. In addition people can have a longish suffix they can change at will. The screen name appears in bold so that people can't cheat it using the suffix.

Elseware in time and space

A more fun option might be to allow a suffix as well.

The screen name should really be unique and at least 3 characters.

The maximum name/suffix length could be quite long BUT I suggest that it can't contain more than 16 character length words because otherwise someone can make their username really wide a f- up the layout of the page.

I'd hate to see the long, mutating names feature go. It's part of the charm of the place. When I first logged on I thought I was reading conversations between spaceships in a "culture" novel.

Matthew Fluxington

12:00 / 29.09.03

That's good news, Tom. Since the short term-->medium term plan that you outlined seemed to progressively phase out name changing, I had sort of assumed that your long term plan was to eliminate the option entirely.

Nietzsch E. Coyote

04:42 / 02.10.03

Their should be a warning that you can only change your name once every 28 days. I went to change my name to my old name and back in order to display what my name used to be and now I am my old name

I still want to be my new name.

.

08:56 / 02.10.03

Just off the top of my head, but in terms of the long term solution deployed there does need to be some way of distinguishing suffix from username in order that you don't end up with something like:

Flux = Haus, E Randy, Grant, Nick

And you're still like, who the fuck is this? A small point really.

09:31 / 02.10.03

So Tom, this does mean that epithets will remains protean? 'Cause just as Elseware mentioned, I too have always loved the knack of people's core names staying the same but dressed in new descriptions. It beats the holy hell out of standard usernames in most places. And it's been a nice way to zip up in a new rags by just keeping the D component of my name changing and the Mass as a constant. Will that dynamic remain? As it seems like the core names will come first and the descriptors after....and mine kind of follows the reverse.

*winces and crosses his fingers*

01:41 / 08.11.05

So I just noticed that Mister Six has a GIGANTICO name (" Mister Six, whom all the girls fancy and the boys envy but the schoolteachers let get away with it") and while I'm not wanting something quite that huge, I'm wondering why it is that I can't fit even a third as many characters in my name as he.

Much pouting and such.

01:53 / 08.11.05

I think, correct me if I'm wrong, it's because when Tom implemented the character limit on names a while back (1 year ago?) he made compensation for those of us already with longer names saying that we could retain them if we didn't want to change. I don't seem to remember Mr6 changing fiction suit since. Could be?

20:26 / 22.11.05

I have an idea. Sorry if this has already been mentioned. I haven't finished reading the thread (yeah, I know, that's bad...).

I don't know if this is actually possible, but it sounds possible, so here goes. Anyway, how about making it so that everyone has to choose a part of their username that's fixed permanantly, but they can change the rest of the username at will as long as that part is included. So, for example, Stoatie could make his permanant usernamepart "Stoat" and change the rest to reflect his TROUSERPRESS or whatever else. Whenever he'd go to change his name, it could just check to see if the new name contains "Stoat" somewhere in it. So things like "the mighty Stoatie" and "the Stoat to end all Stoats" would be allowed, but "Sir Toatie" wouldn't.

Obviously there are problems with my suggestion. If someone wanted to choose a small word/fragment for their permanant part, it would probably need to be approved. Like, I don't think anyone would have a problem with "Jub" as a permanant part, but if someone chose "the" or "and" it wouldn't make it any easier to keep track of their usernames. But...it would only need to be approved once for each person, and it would probably only need approval if it were under 4 or 5 characters.

I am yet another person who doesn't want their login name displayed, btw. I suppose it would be ok if I could change it first, but as it is I would really dislike it.

08:21 / 23.11.05

I haven't read your post but I'll reply to it anyway (yeah I know that's bad ...).

Read the fucking thread!

Actually, I have read your post and yes it has already been covered, which you'd know if you'd taken the trouble to READ THE FUCKING THREAD. Are you this rude in the rest of your life? Do you butt into conversations without having listened to what was being said first?

Christ on a bike. Critical mass, you say?

22:57 / 24.11.05

Sorry Loomis. I usually don't do that. I swear.

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