How do I get geography into my posting name

I'd like my postings to show something like "Tom Luongo - Winchester, MA".

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<a href="http://www.photo.net/info/terms-of-use">Photo.Net Terms of Use</a> says this<p>

<blockquote><em>

Your street address and phone number will remain confidential, but you will be

identified by your real name and city of residence, e.g., "Philip Greenspun,

Cambridge, MA" or "Ellis Vener, Atlanta, GA". Existing users who don't wish to

participate in this system will have an "unverified" symbol next to their name

and will gradually be phased out of the community.

</em></blockquote>

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But this doesn't seem to be happening. Is there something I can do to fix this?

I'd be especially interested in the capability of comparing notes with other

local photographers.

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Thanks.

You can't do it yourself. Only an administrator can change a user's name. This is for various security and policy reasons.

As far as I know the user verification system is still in the "thought experiment" stage.

The technical reason for not doing the change is that the only way to make your name appear with location is to change your last name to "Luongo - Winchester, MA" and that's not your last name so it could screw up last name searches as well as being a generally "bad idea" from a database point of view. Whatever is in the last name field really should be a last name. If we had a location field that displayed next to your name, then it would make sense, but currently we don't.

Would this be a good idea? Certainly. Is it a feature that is being considered in future software updates? Yes. When will it happen? Don't know!

I know one or two people do have a location displayed next to their name, but they really shouldn't. They registered with a last name that contained their location and they shouldn't have done that.

Josh may be able to give you the current official position on name changes, but I think I can sum up the policy as "we don't accept requests to change user names without a very good reason". A good reason would be a legal name change, e.g. marriage or divorce!