Changing Photo.net name

Hi all -- I am trying to change my name as it appears on Photo.net...

currently as "Jordan Wosnick" but I would like to change it to "Jordan

W." Under "My Workspace" there is a page through which my contact

e-mail, webpage, biography, etc. can be changed -- the user name

appears changeable here, as it appears in a field, but I can't seem to

change it.

 

Am I correct in assuming that this is something a moderator needs to

do? If so, can a moderator please make this change for me? Many thanks!

I tried to get someone to answer the same question, as there's at least one more "James Mitchell"; if someone does respond, would you please post here?

 

thanks,

 

James

We should start charging for this...

Thanks Bob! Much appreciated.

Charge for it? For a simple task we <i>used</i> to have an editable option for? You take away the priviledge of users doing it for themselves and then wish to charge for <i>your</i> choice of doing it for us? Oh yay... Hail God the Lord and Master.... I bow down in humility at your graciousness...

Yup. You guys just couldn't be trusted. People changed their names on a daily basis, sometimes to confuse others, sometimes in a malicious attempt to cause problems by copying someone else's name, sometimes to add "slogans" to their name. Made things pretty unworkable.

 

Abuse a privilege and it will be removed. It was.

 

Bob "will change names for food" Atkins...

The <i>You guys</i> that "abused" the priviledge were in a tiny minority. <p>

This teacher/naughty kid mentality from the mods [read Gods] in the forums could also be 'erased' to improve the smooth running of the site. The term <i>"You guys"</i> illustrates the Lordy attitude well enough.

Hey G., it's just Bob's sense of humour. Don't get him wrong. And as far as I've noticed, the "guys" are pretty inventive around here. That "Bob 'changes names for food' Atkins" is fair enough. I wouldn't do it any other way :-).

They should charge for it!

 

To think every one is changing there name, dont we all have a first and last name? (at least most of us in USA do). The fact that this site is allowing fake or incomplete names is a shame :+(

 

This was what brought me to this site in the late 90's.

Real photographers using real names, now it seems like real graphic designers with fake names.

 

Commercialism is rulling!

"Yup. You guys just couldn't be trusted."

 

So I take it, Bob, that a request to change my photo.net ID to Samantha T. Ouchup would be out of the question......<div></div>

Geraldine, if you run a web site with a large population of users, you will find that features that seem completely reasonable -- and which are used reasonably by 98% of people -- can become unmanagable. On a small web site, dealing with the 1-2% of abuse/cluelessness is a once per month thing that is handled easily enough. Scale that up to a medium-sized web site, or especially a large one, and the abuse of an apparently reasonable feature becomes something that happens several times a day and chews up a lot of time. I probably spend more than one-third of my time either dealing directly with abuse or implementing measures to detect, slow down, and counter abuse. It is very frustrating.

 

I start to understand the cynicism of cops about human nature. It may be that, overall, the behaviour they deal with is two or three standard deviations from the norm, but that isn't great consolation when you are the one dealing with it all day long. One thing I've learned from running photo.net is that on the Internet there is no feature, no matter how reasonable, that will not be abused by someone -- that if you trust people with a feature that can be abused thinking that it will be OK because nobody could possibly gain anything or be demented enough to abuse it, there will be someone who will prove you wrong.

 

Take changing your user name. What could be more reasonable than letting people change their name on the site? But when we had that feature it became a parlor game for some people to change their name daily. You couldn't figure out half the time who someone was. Suddenly you'd have a new user, sometimes with a subscriber icon, named "Turd Blossom" or something, with a long posting history and apparent intimate knowledge of the site, and you had no idea who it was. The next day "Turd Blossom" would have disappeared and the person would pop up as someone else. People changed their names to resemble those of other people in order to aggravate them and the moderators, and of course they achieved their aim. No, it wasn't the majority of people doing this. It was no more than a few percent. But it was a constant aggravation and drain on moderator time. So, we stopped people from changing their names. Now we have to deal with people who want to change their names because they want to be (1) more anonymous, (2) less anonymous, (3) misspelled their name, etc. Why can't people pick a reasonable name and stick with it?

Thanks Brian. I understand your reasoning, especially when explained in logical and practical terms. I also appreciate you actually acknowledging and addressing issues raised in forums and the time you spend sorting out abuse of the system. The name change topic was pretty well covered on a very long thread, at the time you froze the options. I was happy about your feedback in that thread, pleased with the decision you took, and how you implemented it.<p>

My responses in the posts above were admittedly an immature reaction on my part, to Mr Atkins who first suggested charging for editing, followed by the 'you guys' post. Repeated sarcastic and patronising replies in the forums from Mr Atkins are not imo a very good example to set from a moderator and representative of PN.

F,

 

You really get into this stuff. Your English is PERFECT!!!!

 

Let's keep to the task at hand..... does your stuff have what it takes? That is all that matters. I think so. Who is Jordan Wosnick? Respond on Wunderground if U please.

 

T