[OWW-SC] usernames

[Jenny Nguyen]

At UT, they designate students with an electronic ID that we use to log into
everything (much like the IDs at MIT except ours are a little easier to
remember). I think when they first implemented it, they used
FirstnameLastname, and then in years after that is varied as follows...


1. JennyNguyen
2. JNguyen
3. NguyenJ
4. JN23 <--random numbers
5. JN235

And I have no idea what the UT IDs look like for the class of 2001, but they
seem to get more distinguished, but still contain the initials of the
individual. I know that OWW hasn't reached enough users as UT has students
to get to assigning that many numbers behind the username, but this may be a
possible option for signing up for OWW and receiving an e-mail with your
username and password on it. I wouldn't be against that, and at least the
people first signing up for OWW would get their full name :). Not sure how
they dealt with duplicates.

On 4/19/07, Jason Kelly <jasonk at mit.edu> wrote:
>
> So what is the policy for duplicate names in this scheme?
>
> I also like the idea of seeding the userpage, creates incentive to
> edit your page...
>
> Thanks,
> jason
>
> On 4/19/07, Austin Che <austin at csail.mit.edu> wrote:
> > "Reshma Shetty" <rshetty at MIT.EDU> spake sagely:
> >
> > > I'm confused on two points ...
> > >
> > > 1) Austin are you proposing that we move to encouraging use of
> > > FirstnameLastname as the username for all future accounts or also try
> to
> > > move current account holders?
> >
> >     We can do both. The first is trivial and requires no work. The
> >     second is technically quite easy for single accounts (not sure how
> >     difficult it'd be for many accounts). Note, I'm actually
> >     suggesting Firstname Lastname with the space so people's user page
> >     would be User:Firstname Lastname which could be a direct
> >     substitute for the many Firstname Lastname pages that currently
> >     exist in the main namespace.
> >
> > > In general, I thought that we had been trying all along to have
> people's
> > > username reflect their real name in some way.  I consider the
> usernames that
> > > don't reflect a person's real name to be a failure of our ability to
> check
> > > username requests.  I don't see how moving to a more uniform username
> scheme
> > > like FirstnameLastname addresses this problem?
> >
> >     Sure better checking of usernames is necessary and that's not the
> >     problem I'm suggesting we deal with (in fact, with a uniform
> >     scheme, we could just auto generate the user name). But as far as
> >     I know, there's not a stated username policy on OWW at all. And
> >     there's a difference between using a username that reflects their
> >     real name in some way and their actual real name.
> >
> > > 2) Wouldn't an alternative approach be to seed the person's user page
> with
> > > their name and affiliation automatically upon account
> creation.  (Presumably
> > > this is doable with some coding effort?)  Thus, every user page would
> be
> > > seeded with some information about the person?  Is this an acceptable
> > > policy?
> >
> >     Seeding a user page is a great idea but I think a different issue
> >     than the actual username.
> >
> > --
> > Austin Che           <austin at csail.mit.edu>          (617)253-5899
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> > sc at openwetware.org
> > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/oww-sc
> >
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