Suggestion Name change/username availability suggestion.

[fodder]

I have a suggestion, which I think is somewhat fair- it's in use on another giant forum related to game hacking, and it seems to work flawlessly- everyone gets what they want, nobody has any issues.

Basically, when asking for a name change, I was looking around, and saw a bunch of nice names that hadn't been accessed in years, except for the day they were created, maybe more, but generally untouched, basically just parked, forgotten usernames. It appears that the policy regarding this is to now allow to change names to occupied ones, but here's what I think it should be, and why (it's basically word for word, mostly copy-paste, what this other large forum has in place):

Taken usernames can be solicited so long as the following conditions are met:
The account has been unused for at least five years.
The account is not above Advanced Member.
The account is not part of former staff or any special groups.

Additionally, they have it so that you must have at least 1,000 posts to request a name change- and name changes may only be requested after every 1000 posts. They have a premium donator tag thing where if you're a premium member, you can request a name change as much as you want, but as far as I can tell, this site doesn't have a premium member system.

I personally believe that this would be a good addition/change to GBATemp's name change policy- 95% of the time, these old accounts were only registered for the sake of reserving the username- and 5 years of inactivity seems like it's more than enough to determine that the owner of the account isn't coming back (regardless of post count). I just feel that it'd be a good use of these nice old, unused usernames, as opposed to having them sit forever dormant for no good reason.

(Random, but Microsoft does this a lot, with EMAIL of all things- and XBL Gamertags. If they're comfortable doing this with email accounts with less than 5 years of inactivity, that says something.)

Edit:

Considering the scale of that forum compared to this, I think 1000 posts may be a bit much. 850 per username change might be better for this forum when comparing activity and size, but 1000 probably isn't too bad.

Also, forgot to mention this, but if it's a banned username you aren't able to request your name to be changed to it, simply due to the fact that the name is associated with whatever it is that got banned, and it's not worth having users change their name to that and potentially get flak.

 

[DKB]

Additionally, they have it so that you must have at least 1,000 posts to request a name change- and name changes may only be requested after every 1000 posts.

The replying system would get awkward.

 

[fodder]

The replying system would get awkward.

How so? I don't know how Xenforo works, but on that Vbulletin site, it would automatically adjust for the username change, and change all previous mentions to the new username based on their ID, which Xenforo has (you can see it in the URL of profiles)

Assuming that everyone is really just an ID with a name attached for ease of use(and more of course), it wouldn't be an issue.

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Edit-

Yeah, now I see what you're talking about. Just checked an old reply I got and it had my old username, I guess that might be an issue but you're already able to change your name, this is simply allowing you to change it to names that have been registered and inactive for years. + make the requirements a bit stricter so that the whole reply thing wouldn't be so much of an issue, as I was able to ask for a name change at like 40 posts.

 

[Zero72463]

What if its a banned username?

 

[fodder]

What if its a banned username?

Forgot to mention this, but if it's a banned username you aren't able to request your name to be changed to it, like the site I originally got this idea from. Thanks for reminding me.

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The replying system would get awkward.

Ahh now I see exactly what you mean- looked at other threads about name changes, it looks like they don't like to do it for users with a lot of posts because Xenforo doesn't link the username in the "Username said:" thing, they just type it in plain, static text.

 

[evandixon]

It's not exactly what you're looking for, but I think the Username Change Request Thread over at Project Pokemon works nicely.

Hello all. We are glad to announce that username change requests will now be taken.
Username changes are restricted to every six months. They will be filled on a first come, first serve basis. Depending on how many requests we get, we might change how we handle name changes.

Just as a note. If you request a name change and then you try to log on and can't, that probably means we changed the name already, so use the new one.

Also, please check if the requested name is taken or not via the member list.

Enjoy.

I don't think post count should factor in to username changes, since a lot of what I see is users who signed up a while ago having few if any posts wanting their name changed, then they start posting again.

While it would be nice to reuse old usernames, it would probably not work out in practicality, especially if the user in question already posted things. The only exception I could think of is spam bots. If someone at PP wanted their name changed to one that's in use by a spam bot, I wouldn't feel bad about deleting it to recycle the username.

 

[fodder]

It's not exactly what you're looking for, but I think the Username Change Request Thread over at Project Pokemon works nicely.



I don't think post count should factor in to username changes, since a lot of what I see is users who signed up a while ago having few if any posts wanting their name changed, then they start posting again.

While it would be nice to reuse old usernames, it would probably not work out in practicality, especially if the user in question already posted things. The only exception I could think of is spam bots. If someone at PP wanted their name changed to one that's in use by a spam bot, I wouldn't feel bad about deleting it to recycle the username.

Yeah, I think in a technical sense, now that I look at it, with how Xenforo works, the post count thing wouldn't work, also with that in mind you're right about the thing about old users that had posted, not sure how Xenforo would handle that. Maybe having it for just usernames that have 0 posts would be good, since when looking for good old usernames, there were only like 2 that DID have posts.

Didn't think about the technical limitations of Xenforo when posting this- seems like VBulletin handles everything better when it comes to usernames (a lot worse when it comes to really anything else though, lol)

 

[Seriel]

Forgot to mention this, but if it's a banned username you aren't able to request your name to be changed to it, like the site I originally got this idea from. Thanks for reminding me.

Surely people can then reserve usernames by making an account and spamming until they're banned?
Well, it won't exactly "reserve" it, but at least you get the satisfaction of nobody else having it.

And I personally think that name changes need to be a thing in the first place lol.
I've been here for a year now and I want to change the username which i've used online for the past few years, but apparently I can't because i'm actally active here lol
So now i'm called my old username (This one) on temp and temp alone xD
Fun.

 

[fodder]

Surely people can then reserve usernames by making an account and spamming until they're banned?
Well, it won't exactly "reserve" it, but at least you get the satisfaction of nobody else having it.

And I personally think that name changes need to be a thing in the first place lol.
I've been here for a year now and I want to change the username which i've used online for the past few years, but apparently I can't because i'm actally active here lol
So now i'm called my old username (This one) on temp and temp alone xD
Fun.

I guess, if it's a clear case of that, the admins can probably just figure that out and unreserve the name, I doubt anyone would go through that effort, but it'd probably pretty easy to detect and I doubt it'd carry the same type of negative sense as a ban for something legit like scamming or something.