[OWW-SC] usernames

[M. Yee]

MIT lets everyone have their little username but assigns each person an
alias, which is always [First initial]-[full last name][index] where
[index] = [index]++ for each duplicate and 0 is omitted.

So, when I first got here, there was some other guy named Michael Yee,
and he was M-yee and I got M-yee1. Then some time ago he graduated and
got rehired by MIT, so now I'm M-yee and he's M-yee1. It's funny, some
combinations are pretty common; I just checked and found S-lee26.

In any case, this way you can let people pick whatever they want for a
username, but still keep track of them in a predictable way...uh, if you
don't mind the redundancy of having two names attached to each person.

Mike


On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, Jenny Nguyen wrote:

> 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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> > >
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