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...
<br><br><br>1. JennyNguyen<br>2. JNguyen<br>3. NguyenJ<br>4. JN23 <--random numbers<br>5. JN235<br><br>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.
<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/19/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Jason Kelly</b> <<a href="mailto:jasonk@mit.edu">jasonk@mit.edu</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
So what is the policy for duplicate names in this scheme?<br><br>I also like the idea of seeding the userpage, creates incentive to<br>edit your page...<br><br>Thanks,<br>jason<br><br>On 4/19/07, Austin Che <<a href="mailto:austin@csail.mit.edu">
austin@csail.mit.edu</a>> wrote:<br>> "Reshma Shetty" <<a href="mailto:rshetty@MIT.EDU">rshetty@MIT.EDU</a>> spake sagely:<br>><br>> > I'm confused on two points ...<br>> ><br>> > 1) Austin are you proposing that we move to encouraging use of
<br>> > FirstnameLastname as the username for all future accounts or also try to<br>> > move current account holders?<br>><br>> We can do both. The first is trivial and requires no work. The<br>> second is technically quite easy for single accounts (not sure how
<br>> difficult it'd be for many accounts). Note, I'm actually<br>> suggesting Firstname Lastname with the space so people's user page<br>> would be User:Firstname Lastname which could be a direct
<br>> substitute for the many Firstname Lastname pages that currently<br>> exist in the main namespace.<br>><br>> > In general, I thought that we had been trying all along to have people's<br>> > username reflect their real name in some way. I consider the usernames that
<br>> > don't reflect a person's real name to be a failure of our ability to check<br>> > username requests. I don't see how moving to a more uniform username scheme<br>> > like FirstnameLastname addresses this problem?
<br>><br>> Sure better checking of usernames is necessary and that's not the<br>> problem I'm suggesting we deal with (in fact, with a uniform<br>> scheme, we could just auto generate the user name). But as far as
<br>> I know, there's not a stated username policy on OWW at all. And<br>> there's a difference between using a username that reflects their<br>> real name in some way and their actual real name.
<br>><br>> > 2) Wouldn't an alternative approach be to seed the person's user page with<br>> > their name and affiliation automatically upon account creation. (Presumably<br>> > this is doable with some coding effort?) Thus, every user page would be
<br>> > seeded with some information about the person? Is this an acceptable<br>> > policy?<br>><br>> Seeding a user page is a great idea but I think a different issue<br>> than the actual username.
<br>><br>> --<br>> Austin Che <<a href="mailto:austin@csail.mit.edu">austin@csail.mit.edu</a>> (617)253-5899<br>> _______________________________________________<br>> OpenWetWare Steering Committee Mailing List
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</blockquote></div><br>