Your Display Names and the Challenge Of 10 Million Members
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Veni, vidi, caecus
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For new members it's hard to get a display name that's your actual name. Almost impossible. However, we have tons of members who really don't care if their name is the same as someone else's name. I was thinking that it could be interesting to open up Display Names so that you can choose whatever name you want, even if it's been taken by someone else, with a small cavet: If you haven't contributed a message or article, question or answer, your display name is plain text and it will be displayed in gray. Each time you contribute, or each time you change your name, your name is checked against the list and if you're account is the only account with that name that has made a contribution then your name is yours and is unlocked to accept HTML, and will (by default) be displayed in a dark font. Thoughts?
One of the reasons I went with my Display Name, was because my real name was already taken[^] a loooong time ago and I didn't want to do something like this[^]. Anyway, I like my Display Name and would not change it, but I imagine there are people who would like to get a chance to use their real names. Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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For new members it's hard to get a display name that's your actual name. Almost impossible. However, we have tons of members who really don't care if their name is the same as someone else's name. I was thinking that it could be interesting to open up Display Names so that you can choose whatever name you want, even if it's been taken by someone else, with a small cavet: If you haven't contributed a message or article, question or answer, your display name is plain text and it will be displayed in gray. Each time you contribute, or each time you change your name, your name is checked against the list and if you're account is the only account with that name that has made a contribution then your name is yours and is unlocked to accept HTML, and will (by default) be displayed in a dark font. Thoughts?
Please, no. thanks, Bill
"What Turing gave us for the first time (and without Turing you just couldn't do any of this) is he gave us a way of thinking about and taking seriously and thinking in a disciplined way about phenomena that have, as I like to say, trillions of moving parts. Until the late 20th century, nobody knew how to take seriously a machine with a trillion moving parts. It's just mind-boggling." Daniel C. Dennett
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The rules we use would be the same as we use now: comparison between a new name and an existing name is done by collapsing whitespaces, removing HTML and replacing "similar" characters (eg characters in other alphabets that look like English characters). So Chris&Maunder would be marked as gray (and probably have an icon next to it showing it's a fakey).
I'm very much pro that fake icon. Could we also get a Display Name history in the profile? Sometimes it's hard to keep track on who's who. Or should I post this in sugs'n'bugs?
Politicians are always realistically manoeuvering for the next election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers. Buckminster Fuller
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For new members it's hard to get a display name that's your actual name. Almost impossible. However, we have tons of members who really don't care if their name is the same as someone else's name. I was thinking that it could be interesting to open up Display Names so that you can choose whatever name you want, even if it's been taken by someone else, with a small cavet: If you haven't contributed a message or article, question or answer, your display name is plain text and it will be displayed in gray. Each time you contribute, or each time you change your name, your name is checked against the list and if you're account is the only account with that name that has made a contribution then your name is yours and is unlocked to accept HTML, and will (by default) be displayed in a dark font. Thoughts?
It should be perefctly acceptable to have multiple identical display names, after all, your name is your name, and there are other methods to identify a user. Image and member id/since date. It is a fact of life that users can be impersonated, e.g. any email system can display any name you want. To this effect, I would suggest you restyle the message template and; 1) Do away with the profile pop up (on Name Hover). 2) struture the left of the message with a small user profile section, comprising: a) smaller 64x64 thumbnailed user profile image (derived from profile image) b) Display name in plain text, with no user styling, html etc. permitted. c) Display member since date d) Display message count e) Display member debator rating f) clicking the User image or the User name would take you to the member profile 3) You could always support R to L by flipping the layout also. Just my thoughts as an initial thinking out loud. :) (Don't like the SO layout with the small box in the bottom of posts, looks scrappy, MSDN forums are closer to what I was thinking, the profile part to the right of a phpbb template is more in line with what I'm thinking, e.g. https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=543515[^])
Dave Find Me On: Web|Facebook|Twitter|LinkedIn|GitHub
Folding Stats: Team CodeProject
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I'd be inclined to restrict all display names to plain text. Are there any good examples of HTML display names? Letting users choose and use display names which are already in use could easily cause confusion. Imagine how many spam posts we'll get from "Chris Maunder"! Even without the radioactive Bob icon on the post, we might still fall for it. You could try adding a counter or member ID after the name, but after a couple of pages of arguments between "Chris Maunder 3276412" and "Chris Maunder 3267412", would anyone be able to keep track?
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
Richard Deeming wrote:
I'd be inclined to restrict all display names to plain text. Are there any good examples of HTML display names?
That gets my five. [edit] Or it would, if an error wasn't preventing it [/edit]
Richard Deeming wrote:
Letting users choose and use display names which are already in use could easily cause confusion. Imagine how many spam posts we'll get from "Chris Maunder"! Even without the radioactive Bob icon on the post, we might still fall for it.
Then simply display duplicate names in a different colour, or in italics. If non-dupe names are plain text, then the dupes'll stand out as dupes.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I'd be inclined to restrict all display names to plain text. Are there any good examples of HTML display names? Letting users choose and use display names which are already in use could easily cause confusion. Imagine how many spam posts we'll get from "Chris Maunder"! Even without the radioactive Bob icon on the post, we might still fall for it. You could try adding a counter or member ID after the name, but after a couple of pages of arguments between "Chris Maunder 3276412" and "Chris Maunder 3267412", would anyone be able to keep track?
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
Richard Deeming wrote:
You could try adding a counter or member ID after the name [...]
I think this would be the much better way to solve the problem of letting users choose the name they want. May be a little reference to the Battle.net of Blizzard; they let users choose the name they want but add automatically a hash <#> followed by a random (at least I guess so) 4 digit number. So all users, even with the same name, have unique Displaynames.
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I get it can cause problems, but I'm looking for some creative solutions. If this is a problem too hard for our collective intelligence, so be it. But I think it's not.
Just reserve a colour for dupe names, or put a dot in front of them. It doesn't have to be obtrusive, just known.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I think I have a fairly solid understanding of what gray is, and how it may, for instance, motivate someone to pick an actual unique name instead of sticking with a used name. However, there are those that really wouldn't care. And that's fine.
Chris Maunder wrote:
for instance, motivate someone to pick an actual unique name
so, its like please abandon your actual name Chris Maunder & go with some random string or i gray you :) We might just need a
randomStringGenerator();
"Coming soon"
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I've been around for over 9 years now and unless you get a ton of up votes your points don't rise very quickly.
Articles can help, I'm getting 15-20 points a day even if I don't do anything because of people reading those and downloading the source zips. But yeah if you care about reputation then being active in reputation hotspots like here, language forums and Q&A is a good idea.
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Articles can help, I'm getting 15-20 points a day even if I don't do anything because of people reading those and downloading the source zips. But yeah if you care about reputation then being active in reputation hotspots like here, language forums and Q&A is a good idea.
All of mine are done as blog post, they don't seem to hold as much weight as the ones posted directly. I use Live writer to write with. I have trouble with the online article writer.I'm not a web guy. Even a my Source code download is only worth 1 point, but if I download someone elses I get 2 points. Oh well I'm not here for the points or the prestige anyway. I just hope what I write will help others.
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I think it makes more sense to 'retire' accounts that haven't been active at all for (say) 3 years. That way you free up display names of people who really aren't here, without getting into a position of allowing clashes of active members, or silly games (for example imagine Griff decided he wanted to troll me, he could set his name to mine and he would get priority as he's made more contributions lately).
I think retiring unused names (and allowing others to 'reserve' them) would be a good idea. When I signed up I wanted 'StarNamer' as I use it on many other sites (e.g. StackOverflow[^], AskUbuntu[^] and other StackExchange sites). Unfortunately, it was already registered so I had to be satisfied with 'StarNamer_'[^]. As far as I can tell, the original 'starnamer'[^] has never posted anything and simply has the initial 100 points for signing up! Really frustrating! It wouldn't be so annoying if (s)he was a reasonably active member!
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I think I have a fairly solid understanding of what gray is, and how it may, for instance, motivate someone to pick an actual unique name instead of sticking with a used name. However, there are those that really wouldn't care. And that's fine.
Chris Maunder wrote:
I think I have a fairly solid understanding of what gray is...
I can see it all now. CodeProject is responsible for 2 of the shades of gray...
Windows 8 is the resurrected version of Microsoft Bob. The only thing missing is the Fisher-Price logo. - Harvey
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For new members it's hard to get a display name that's your actual name. Almost impossible. However, we have tons of members who really don't care if their name is the same as someone else's name. I was thinking that it could be interesting to open up Display Names so that you can choose whatever name you want, even if it's been taken by someone else, with a small cavet: If you haven't contributed a message or article, question or answer, your display name is plain text and it will be displayed in gray. Each time you contribute, or each time you change your name, your name is checked against the list and if you're account is the only account with that name that has made a contribution then your name is yours and is unlocked to accept HTML, and will (by default) be displayed in a dark font. Thoughts?
Bad idea, I think you will be opening Pandora's box with such "feature", I second the motion to recycle unused accounts, say if an account hasn't had activity for 3 years or more; anyway, I think that anyone who hasn't used his account in 3 years, it doesn't even remember his password nor that it have an account on first place.
CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...
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For new members it's hard to get a display name that's your actual name. Almost impossible. However, we have tons of members who really don't care if their name is the same as someone else's name. I was thinking that it could be interesting to open up Display Names so that you can choose whatever name you want, even if it's been taken by someone else, with a small cavet: If you haven't contributed a message or article, question or answer, your display name is plain text and it will be displayed in gray. Each time you contribute, or each time you change your name, your name is checked against the list and if you're account is the only account with that name that has made a contribution then your name is yours and is unlocked to accept HTML, and will (by default) be displayed in a dark font. Thoughts?
How does this solve the issue? It seems like its simply creating a new namespace with the same old problems. If you allow multiple people to post under the same name, but only one gets it rendered dark, wouldn't that be hugely confusing for casual users? Personally, I'd rather have unique user names on every post that're easily trackable back to that specific user.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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Wow! That shows how much attention I've been giving rep points! You almost think that Griff was one of the Founding Sheep Shaggers Members! :omg:
Will Rogers never met me.
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BobJanova wrote:
I think it makes more sense to 'retire' accounts that haven't been active at all for (say) 3 years
If that person has posted an article, regardless of how old it is (OK, maybe a decade is a good cutoff) they should still have the right to "their" name.
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I think retiring unused names (and allowing others to 'reserve' them) would be a good idea. When I signed up I wanted 'StarNamer' as I use it on many other sites (e.g. StackOverflow[^], AskUbuntu[^] and other StackExchange sites). Unfortunately, it was already registered so I had to be satisfied with 'StarNamer_'[^]. As far as I can tell, the original 'starnamer'[^] has never posted anything and simply has the initial 100 points for signing up! Really frustrating! It wouldn't be so annoying if (s)he was a reasonably active member!
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
Sounds like a recipe for impersonation.
Another outburst like that and I'll ban you! just kidding. not the real Chris Maunder
