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mafifi
Junior Member
USA
308 Posts |
 Posted - 18 June 2009 : 17:39:52
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| I have an existing Snitz forum that is used by about 10,000 users for about 18 months now. Recently I received a request to allow users to change their user names, which is the [M_NAME] in the database. I understand that the out of the box Snitz forum ensures the uniqueness of the user name. If I allow the users to change their users names and in the mean time keep it unique. Do you foresee any problems for the existing posts, records etc...? |
Regards,
Mo |
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Etymon
Advanced Member
United States
2391 Posts |
Posted - 18 June 2009 : 18:19:23
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| If you have the Photo Album MOD, it stores member names in the ALBUM_USERS table. |
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Shaggy
Support Moderator
Ireland
6780 Posts |
Posted - 19 June 2009 : 04:47:50
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Also, if you allow people to change their usernames willy-nilly, nobody's going to have a clue who anybody is, especially if somebody changes their username to one previously used by another member. Say, for example, I decided to change my username here back to MeTV and then Ety' decided he wanted to be known as Shaggy - confusion abounds.
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MaD2ko0l
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1053 Posts |
Posted - 19 June 2009 : 15:14:45
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what if u made a little mod liek the "real names mod" where u can have a nick name.
therefore ur login name is the same as when u sign up, but your display/nickname can be changed. |
© 1999-2010 MaD2ko0l |
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AnonJr
Moderator
United States
5768 Posts |
Posted - 19 June 2009 : 15:35:28
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quote:
Originally posted by MaD2ko0l
what if u made a little mod liek the "real names mod" where u can have a nick name.
therefore ur login name is the same as when u sign up, but your display/nickname can be changed.
Nice idea, but same problem. Most people won't check the full name unless that was the most prominant part - which kind of defeats the purpose of having a nickname. Its not just about the name you log in with, its about the name attached to a given post and making sure that if you see "AnonJr" you know who is behind that name. |
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Etymon
Advanced Member
United States
2391 Posts |
Posted - 19 June 2009 : 18:13:57
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quote:
Originally posted by Shaggy
and then Ety' decided he wanted to be known as Shaggy
Shaggy Etymon
That has an interesting ring to it.  |
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MaD2ko0l
Senior Member
United Kingdom
1053 Posts |
Posted - 19 June 2009 : 18:14:22
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well what if, while entering a nick/display name your could check to see if the name is already taken.
also you could implement a feature where u need x ammoutn of posts before u can change, that way peopel that may want to cause trouble wont be able to due to not having enough posts.
kinda like the points mod...you need so many points before you can buy somthing.
in this case, you need x ammoutn of posts before the option to change your display name is avaliable. |
© 1999-2010 MaD2ko0l |
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Etymon
Advanced Member
United States
2391 Posts |
Posted - 19 June 2009 : 18:32:14
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To answer your question more fully, mafifi, technically there is not a problem with you changing a member's name, provided that all of your MODs installed work off of the member id rather than the member name. The problem you will run into, which is what we are mostly critiquing is the social problems.
If you wanted to add a fair treatment to what you want to do, you should create another field in the members table and store the previous member name(s) and then offer that as an option for members who would otherwise not know the difference.
The easiest way to not tax the system resources would be to only call that up when showing a member's profile where you display the previous names next to the actual name.
In members.asp you could also show the changes by adding the new column from the members table and then displaying the declaration into the results.
If you want to apply a declaration board-wide as in a linked symbol just after to the member's name whereever it is displayed, then consider the ProfileLink function within inc_func_common.asp.
If you had a small board, you could do a check against the members table within the function for the presence of previous names and then add a signifier at the end of the </a> in the ProfileLink function to signify a previous name change. I've done that successfully on small forums where the impact was not noticed, and the purpose was to show different colors on the links depending on the person's predetermined position within a group. However, for the large boards, this did not work out well because of the impact on the system resources. With a large board when you go to show a significant amount of names at one time, that is where it bogged down the board.
There are probably a few different approaches to doing it through the ProfileLink function or even outside of it, but you'd only know the best way by actually creating the most sensible code and testing it. |
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mafifi
Junior Member
USA
308 Posts |
Posted - 19 June 2009 : 22:55:17
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quote:
There are probably a few different approaches to doing it through the ProfileLink function or even outside of it, but you'd only know the best way by actually creating the most sensible code and testing it.
I think this sums it all, Etymon. There is no way to find out exactly what happens until set a test environment, make the changes and then test. I was planning on just adding a new column to the member table and in that new column I can copy all the existing user names from column M_NAME and then allow the users to edit their current user names in the M_NAME column. This way I can always have a copy of the existing user names. For new users, I can modify the code to populate both columns with the user name.
quote:
Also, if you allow people to change their usernames willy-nilly, nobody's going to have a clue who anybody is, especially if somebody changes their username to one previously used by another member. Say, for example, I decided to change my username here back to MeTV and then Ety' decided he wanted to be known as Shaggy - confusion abounds.
Good argument Shaggy.
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Regards,
Mo |
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