Changing User Name

[AuntPollyGrey]

Why can't anyone change their Username on AB? Its the only Forum I'm on that does not give this facility. To avoid people changing their name every month (which I doubt would ever happen) you could have, for example, one change of name per year based on the email used by the user. What is the reasoning behing this please? ( holds breath....)

[ummmm]

Some threads would become confusing.

[AuntPollyGrey]

Why? Seriously -if you changed your username to Ohhhhhhh and said 'high its me (wave) I've changed my name...How would that be confusing? I'm not suggesting you can change it every other day - maybe just once or twice at the most. I seriously cant see a problem.

[Canary42]

Why would you want to do it ? And if you're happy for it to happen, why are you restricting the frequency ?

[AuntPollyGrey]

I'm suggesting a restriction on the frequency so that people won't argue that 'oh people would be confused if everyone changed their name on a weekly basis'

Why? Because sometimes one may get sick of the name and want to change it rather than have to open a new account.

[THECORBYLOON]

What if folk hadn't seen you putting "high its me (wave) I've changed my name"?

You can close the current account and create another one using another Username, not sure if you'd need to use a different e-mail address.

[brainiac]

You can change your avatar, though

[THECORBYLOON]

Perhaps it's too much work for the Elves to make the change?

[AuntPollyGrey]

You can go onto your profile and change your email address with a click -I can't see how it would be more difficult to replace 'Aunt Polly' with 'Aunt Bessie' for instance.

[jim360]

As a temporary compromise, the Editors have announced that we won't be able to change our user names but will be allowed to choose to have it displayed in a different font.

[AuntPollyGrey]

On doing a search I see that a few years ago there were many people wanting to change their username -an amnesty or something?

https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/AB-Editors-Blog/Question1213633.html

[Mamyalynne]

Yes there was an amnesty, gosh was it so long ago?

I simply went for a capital 'M'.

Pretentious moi?

[THECORBYLOON]

It happens now and again but the fact it us done so rarely shows it takes a lot if work to make it happen.

What percentage of users would want to change their names? If it's a small proportion, would it be worth all the effort?

[tiggerblue10]

So if you changed username, would your profile still show your questions and answers etc., from your previous username and your joining date?

[AuntPollyGrey]

There is no 'effort' it's a simple process for an IT person to code it, and for the end user typing 'the looney corb' in place of the 'corby loon' is hardly time consuming.

[AuntPollyGrey]

Yes that would be the whole point. You could keep all your best answers and everything you had posted would then come under your new username.

[Buenchico]

Some of the username changes that happened under the 'amnesty' eight years ago never seemed to come into effect anyway:
https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/AB-Editors-Blog/Question1216545.html

I wanna change my username to sexgodgenius ;-)

[elliemay1]

I think I'd just drop the 1 in mine as I don't think there is another elliemay

[Bazile]

Yes in that 'amnesty ' people were invited to submit their changes

A few were granted and other requests appeared to have been were ignored without any explanation .

I would like to change my username to fit my avatar .

When I happened upon the site i simply chose something quickly so I could post question .

This requests Gaza been raised before since, on more than one occasion .

However the answer was NO

[Bazile]

'Gaza' ?

has , even

[BAKERS DOZEN]

I've put two requests in to change my name to Bakers Dozen as when I joined I did not realise that capital letters were classed as shouting. One was in the "amnesty" and a previous request was by email. Both requests were ignored, and I don't even want to change my name or my profile, so you'll all just have to put up with me a noisy old girl.