[OWW-SC] usernames

[Jason Kelly]

Yeah, I think one good point is that we're not looking for anonymity
here, so it would be great to have a system where as soon as someone
signed up you would know their full name . (unlike current system
where they need to fill in their userpage).

I'd happily adopt the facebook model -- e.g. log in with email
address, but you can search people by real names and use schools for
disambiguation.  I think most people could remember which email
address they signed in with -- it seems to work fine for facebook, I
think the 10 different email phenomenon may be specific to you austin
:)  Trouble here is that it would need some coding to implement this.

While we could require people to have username FirstLast with the
existing system, I'm a little hesitant because although we may not
have name conflicts now we should expect to have them in the future.
If we are going to implement a new login system, I'd like to go with
something that can scale as the site grows -- and I think FirstLast
only works for the first JasonKelly.  Unless people can think of a
clever way to deal with poor JasonKelly2.

thanks,
jason


On 4/19/07, Austin Che <austin at csail.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>     Redirecting to oww sc list from extensions list.
>
> "Jason Kelly" <jasonk at mit.edu> wrote:
>
> > ugh.  The point is that everybody has already solved this problem for
> > themselves - we're not the first site that has asked them for a
> > login/password.  When I have to log in somewhere that has a lot of
> > people I have a backup username that is usually available -- mine is
> > JKelly555.  If it's some place that is a smaller community then I'll
> > check my primary username, mine is jasonk.  I mean if FirstLast is so
> > easy to remember then why isn't everyone using it already?  I'd rather
> > let people choose whatever username they think will be easiest to
> > remember, rather than assuming FirstLast16 will be easier to remember
> > (keep in mind there will be duplicate names).
>
>     The reason most places aren't using longer usernames is probably
>     due to several factors. There's the historical accident of unix
>     and the mail system. Unix systems are limited to lowercase
>     usernames with up to 8 characters (much too short for full names)
>     and don't allow spaces. Same with mail. Google doesn't let me use
>     "Austin Che" for a user name because putting spaces into my email
>     address would cause me to never receive any mails.
>
>     Secondly, for most websites which require a user name, they aren't
>     using the user name as a unique 1-to-1 mapping with a real
>     person. It is rather a mapping to an account. One user could have
>     multiple accounts and the issue of registering is less for person
>     identification and more because a database needs a unique
>     identifier. For example, one can have multiple google, aim, yahoo,
>     or amazon accounts and they wouldn't care.
>
>     The next reason is that for most sites, people want anonymity. The
>     purpose of a username is to hide the real person.
>
>     Note that for sites like facebook and myspace where an account is
>     equal to a physical person, there isn't a made up user name. You
>     log in with your email address which is a substitute for a
>     personal identifier. In general it seems like sites which want a
>     single person behind an account don't have user names at all.
>
>     Now on OWW, it appears the goal has been to have each account
>     associated with a real person and to not allow anonymity. We could
>     go with the email address as login approach but this requires
>     software changes. Thus, why not use something for user names which
>     actually is more associated with that person like their real name?
>
> > Not clear that RealName+number will be easier to remember.  Do you
> > have some proof of that?
>
>     I'm not suggesting that people use RealName+number. First, we have
>     no evidence that there's a single name conflict on OWW as it is
>     and people can't just use Real Name. People have been creating
>     wiki pages of the form "Real Name" indiscriminately and
>     redirecting to their user pages anyway. This would be equivalent
>     if we just encouraged them to get User:Real Name in the first
>     place and this would not pollute the main namespace with user
>     pages. I'm suggesting we encourage people to use their real name
>     instead of things like streptomyces, plasticsurgeryresearch, or
>     even austin and if conflicts arise, they just pick something else
>     based on their full name. I would guess most people either stay
>     logged in or the user name is saved by the browser so no matter
>     what it is, it's just as easy to remember. But it makes it much
>     easier for me when looking at the recent changes to remember who a
>     particular user name refers to. It also makes it much easier for
>     me to remember what the user name is of *another* user. How am I
>     supposed to remember that Tom's user name is his initials, Drew's
>     user name is his last name, Ilya's user name is his first name,
>     Jason's is his first name + last initial, Reshma's is first
>     initial + last name, etc?
>
>     BTW, here's wikipedia's extensive user name policy:
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username_policy
>     Note the section on username disambiguation.
>
> > So then practically, everyone on the site has a valid, unique email,
> > right?  I'm not sure why a link that emails you your username and
> > password wouldn't solve all these problems....
>
>     Someone needs to write that code. And at least for me (and I would
>     say for most people), I have more email addresses than names. So
>     when I need to enter my email address on a website to recover my
>     username, I would have no chance of getting it right if not for
>     the fact that I store the email address I use for every site on my
>     computer.
>
> --
> Austin Che           <austin at csail.mit.edu>          (617)253-5899
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