Change account name?

[rob]

Argh! I wrote the above post and got derailed by something before I actually submitted it. When I came back and realized it was still sitting there, I just posted it. And then I see there's a lengthy post from @Parody in between. So I'll respond to that post separately now.

There's an old adage about "one bad apple" that we're all familiar with. On the internet, there seems to be a pretty consistent ratio of "bad apples" to "good citizens". The problem is that those few bad apples really do have a dramatically negative influence on the experience for all the good folks. I want to make it as hard as possible for someone to be a "bad apple", but I also realize that we don't have the resources to hire a staff to police things like all the big boys. So some difficult tradeoffs have to be confronted.

If we make it easy for someone to change their identity, we make life easy for the bad apples, and I just can't stomach that idea. So readily changing account names is not a viable option from my perspective. @Parody, you've identified some exceptional cases where a justification can be made to change an account name. But those cases are extremely uncommon, and some of the cases you cite aren't likely to arise given the nature of how Realm Works operates (e.g. couples sharing an account).

If someone truly feels that they have a compelling reason to change their account name, they can contact us and present their case. The one advantage of being a tiny company is that everything around here is handled on a pretty personal level. We don't have a bunch of drones handling support from another country where labor is dirt cheap. And we aren't so huge that all the rules are dictated by someone "on high" and enacted by powerless staff a dozen levels down the org chart. So if someone does have a compelling case, there's always the option for us to work with them and figure out something. The rule forbidding account changes means that we have solid grounds for denying a request, but we always have the latitude to make exceptions where merited. The real world is incredibly grey, and we have to adapt as the situation dictates. Most importantly, I believe we can do that while NOT making life easier for jerks.

Hopefully, that all seems reasonable to everyone. Now I really need to get back to all the work that's waiting for me.

[Parody]

Originally Posted by rob

Many of the services cited above tie their accounts uniquely to an email address, so the "name" is nothing but a display value.

Not true for this analysis. In my list above, if the first/only answer is Yes and the user-facing string that controls the account is an email address, you can change the email address. The second answer is the identity name, the value displayed to other users.

The issue arises on sites like forums and Realm Works and others (including practically everything not that long ago) where the account control name and the user's identity name are the same.

Originally Posted by rob

Parody, you've identified some exceptional cases where a justification can be made to change an account name. But those cases are extremely uncommon, and some of the cases you cite aren't likely to arise given the nature of how Realm Works operates (e.g. couples sharing an account).

For Realm Works I think co-authors are more likely. (Yes, one of the many examples for the last was a couple who created things together. I've had some not-so-imaginative handles in the past, and seen plenty more. :)

[Farling]

"An account name is for life, not just for Christmas"

[AEIOU]

It's a hard life lesson but usernames are digital tattoos. What you say and do on the internet is linked to you forever.

Shared accounts are like marriages and marriages are like Slurpees -- sweet and satisfying at first but sometimes you end up with a painful brain freeze and there's nothing you can do about it. I'd recommend avoiding shared accounts no matter how cute they might look. Marriages on the other hand are great -- caveat emptor, baby.

For couples working as a team to publish, there may be business names available from LWD that lump several authors under a single umbrella name. If people plan to sell their material, they may wish to do so as a business rather than as an individual.

A compromise might be that Player Edition names can be changed as often as your underwear since they have no impact on the Marketplace. Unless they can leave comments or rate things in which case I would want them to be unchangeable as well to prevent astroturfing or trolling.

[kate]

A change in account name doesn't have to mean a change in identity.

Many websites that let you change your display name, including the paizo forums and steam, also have a user profile where you can look up a user's past posts or game achievements. Changing your name doesn't erase your personal history from the profile. Imgur even has a reputation score attached to your profile.

If the content market had a profile with previous content and reviews or reputation score, that would make it even easier to keep people accountable for their last products, because you wouldn't have to remember what content a particular user produced and whether that content was good or bad. You could also keep track of the user's comments and ratings to prevent astroturfing or trolling. And that profile could remain constant even if the username was changed.

Real-world nicknames change commonly enough without an identity change. I used to go by Katie in high school, but as an adult I prefer Kate. I expect there are people who used to go by "Dick" who now prefer "Richard."

Changing account names with a constant profile might even decrease anonymity. I, like Parody/Michael, am increasingly willing to use my real name online and have changed my steam name to reflect that. If I'm stuck with the account names I set in high school, it's an alias.

In fact the reason I don't like my current Realm Works name is that I tried to set it as "Kate" and received a vague error message during account creation. I assumed that there was already a "Kate" so I tried an alias I'm outgrowing. Turned out I'd mixed up which email address had Kickstarter beta access attached, but when I fixed the email I forgot to change the username back to "Kate." It's not a big deal now but I expect it'll grate on me more and more over the next few years.

As for the player edition accounts, I have decided to simply gift them.

I appreciate your interest in this issue, Rob, and your general commitment to communication. I hope you will consider allowing easier account name changes by incorporating a profile to keep account identity consistent/transparent.

[Farling]

Originally Posted by kate

A change in account name doesn't have to mean a change in identity.

Many websites that let you change your display name, including the paizo forums and steam, also have a user profile where you can look up a user's past posts or game achievements. Changing your name doesn't erase your personal history from the profile. Imgur even has a reputation score attached to your profile.

Unfortunately a change in account name does mean that you have to go searching the account to see what they've produced previously, whereas remembering the fixed account name is a lot easier to produce a lasting impression on whether an author is good or bad.

[Parody]

Originally Posted by Farling

Unfortunately a change in account name does mean that you have to go searching the account to see what they've produced previously, whereas remembering the fixed account name is a lot easier to produce a lasting impression on whether an author is good or bad.

Or you could click on their name in the list of stuff you've bought, assuming what they produce is good enough that you've purchased (perhaps for free) something they've created.

[kate]

I expect YMMV on that point based on your memory for names. I don't remember who wrote novels or directed or produced movies I didn't like unless they're remarkably bad and/or very well-known eg the Star Wars prequels. (EDIT: I also don't remember the creators of things I like unless I like them a lot - I remember titles.) A profile check also doesn't have to take long. If the user's Realm Works content is prominently displayed it would take tops a few minutes to follow a link and scan the list. That's like reading reviews before buying something.

If it's still important to streamline recognition, you could:

1. display a reputation score next to the username, which helps you spot people with a generally bad reputation regardless of your personal experience with them.
2. allow a user to flag products they like or don't like and the accounts associated with them regardless of display name, which means you can remember creators you personally like or dislike even if you have a bad memory, like me.
3. do what Paizo does and store the original account name separately from the current display name ("alias"), with the original account name immediately visible by mouseover text. This would be a little like me saying "My name is Aisling Maceachthighearna, please call me Ash."

You do have to weigh convenience to those who wish to change their common term of address (and those who may need to actively facilitate that) against convenience to those who want to check a person's posting history. I think a compromise could be found where the former is a bit more convenient than "you have to email someone and request a special exception." But I also have no idea how the content market is supposed to be set up and how profiles etc might be implemented - so I'm making suggestions in the hope that one of them is useful.

[DaFranker]

I will weigh in for the name-changing here as well. The technical issues aren't that big or complicated (well, assuming LWD is either 1: Good at migrations if using relational DBs, or 2: Good at unit testing and writing robust document modification code if using something like MongoDB) compared to some other feature requests, so public identity vs usefulness becomes the real issue.

So on that, here's a quick and dirty list of techniques I've seen used (or used myself) related to this. Note that I don't necessarily endorse or recommend them, and some I would actively protest against.

1. Keep and display a list of previous aliases. e.g.: Steam does this. Can still be confusing for the user in many cases if used on its own.
2. Keep track of every single time any user sees any other name; which name, where, when. When a name is changed, flag it for every user that has seen a previous name of this user, and show them a message to bring the name change to their attention next time they see the (new) username. I hope I don't have to explain the performance and data-complexity issues. No one has ever used this with more than 100 users, AFAIK.
3. Notify everyone the next time they see the new username, whether they've seen the old one before or not. This can lead to a storage requirement scaling by O(i*n^2) in the worst case, but the nominal space remains insignificant compared to the oodles of data RealmWorks is already handling.
4. Have separate username and display name. Looooooots of places do this. Easy, simple. Doesn't help the user identify authors at all. Confuses the hell out of everyone when a user changes names frequently.
5. Use a "karma score" to maintain accountability throughout name changes.
6. Ask users to create a different, separate, unique, unchangeable, tied-to-primary-key "Publisher Name" which will be displayed for any content they publish, and which they can use (or must use?) for comments / discussion regarding this content.
7. Make the display name / username changing process slightly more difficult / less convenient. This makes use of the well-known phenomenon of "trivial inconveniences" where humans demonstrably do something a lot less if there's even one trivial inconvenience they have to deal with first before they can do it (sometimes better known as the opt-in/opt-out dilemma).
8. Require a total wipe of the user's profile / public persona / all content. Please no.
9. Require moderator approval. Long processing delays.
10. Public announcement of every name change in some visible place, like a front page.
11. Let users "flag" accounts for themselves, as per Kate's suggestion above. Flags persist for the account, not the username.
12. Let users "flag" accounts or content for moderator attention.
13. Show content bought from this author previously.
14. Let users easily see the "Account Name" somehow, while only showing the Display name by default, again as per Kate's above and what some places like Paizo's website do.
15. What Wikipedia did. Anyone can clean up the garbage and elect themselves to receive a warning whenever changes are made to something. More suited to a wiki format than a marketplace format, obviously, but maybe something can be learned from it.
16. Somewhat similar to requiring moderator approval: Only change usernames through a support request. For bonus points, demand that they actually send an email directly to support (rather than use the support ticket form everything else uses), and that they explain the reasons why they want to change their username.

[Acenoid]

Just use the users an id from the DB which is probably permanent already. If ppl want to remember old content they should remember that ID usename can be freely choosen. Just pick the ID row from the database :P

When browsing the content market you can browser by ID as well as "current" username.