Member Names

[stephen_w.]

Doesn't Photo.net's database not allow identical names?

 

Two Eliot Rosens

 

http://www.photo.net/shared/community-member?user_id=1022029

 

http://www.photo.net/shared/community-member?user_id=981612

[fcalvo]

A would say that the way they make profiles unique is the person's email address. That's the only practical way to individualize profiles. The name is just another record in the database, it wouldn't make sence to be testing for uniqueness by it because two different persons can certainly share name and surname.

 

Fede

[zcreem]

No and there are two of me too!

[markci]

Why wouldn't it allow identical names? It would be pretty poor programming if it didn't.

[bobatkins]

No, the data base allows an unlimited number of identical user names.

 

I have previously said that I think this is a bad idea. The counter argument is that if there are two users called "John Doe" then they should be able to use their own name. The counter argument to that is that one (or both) of them could use "John Doe - New York" or "John Doe II" or "John B. Doe".

 

Currently we have about 100 users called either "John Doe" or "Jon Doe"...

 

Personally I'd limit user names to alphabetical characters (plus ' and -) and require that users use some sort of unique pronouncable and non-offensive name but that's just me and I don't make the rules!

 

Actually offensive names are not allowed if they are discovered.

 

The actual rule is that no two users can register from the same email address, but they can use whatever string or random combination of characters they want as their user name.

[fcalvo]

Hey Bob, not to offend a PN Hero but you would have to give up the url in your name then ;)

 

FEde

[bobatkins]

Not really. It distingushes me from "Bob Atkins (www.sjgteyb.com)" or just "Bob Atkins". There is in fact another user name "Robert Atkins" - which isn't me. There are also two other "Bob Atkins", but they both appear to be old accounts of mine (which I should have deleted a while ago).

 

However with my magic programming wand (the one that alters code with no effort and never introduces bugs) I'd maybe make the addition of a website URL to a user name a subscriber only benefit...

[mottershead]

It occasionally causes problems, but actually this is quite rare. If someone creates an account with the same name as another member, and it is apparent that the person is trying to make trouble, we just ban the account. This doesn't happen very often.

[fcalvo]

I guess those are the benefits you are entitled to as a community Hero, and working hard in manteining this great website. And in this case I must respectfully agree with you and gracefully fade out of this discussion.

 

Cheers,

Fede

[stephen_w.]

One of the Eliots mentioned above has abandoned his previous account, for whatever reason (not banned/deleted), has "Hero" status and signed on as "Eliot" only. I suspect it is the one who has contributed. I ask as I was confused which Eliot I was reading and was just curious, since I've had a long "relationship" with the old Eliot as one that can be relied upon as a Leica expert on par with Jay and Doug (SLRs).

[stephen_w.]

Bob, Why would you or anyone want or need to open multiple/another account(s)?

 

I could only think of two reasons:

 

1. To rate your own photos favorably

 

2. To hide a "history" of the abandoned account - to be reborn

 

Just curious, again.

[mottershead]

Usually, it is because they forget their password and no longer have access to the mail account they used to open their photo.net account; so they don't have the ability to recover the password. Some people create a new account when they get a new email address, not realizing that they can just change it in their workspace. Some old-timers like Bob have multiple accounts because back in the old days, people didn't have proper "accounts". They just signed their posts with a name and email address, and every time they used a different name/email combination (including misspellings, case variants, etc), a new user record was created automatically for that combination. A lot of these have since been merged, but there are plenty of duplicates lying around.

[._._z]

I think the difference is that this a case of a single person simultaneously using two

different accounts.

[bobatkins]

That's not something that's normally encouraged or allowed.

 

We can merge accounts, so if you have two and you don't want to lose stuff by deleting one, we can merge them into one account.

 

However sometimes it's difficult to know which accounts to merge since there may be multiple accounts with the same name which actually belong to different users, so we need names plus email addresses or user ID numbers.

 

Since it's done by hand on a case by case basis and takes some administrator effort, it may not happen instantly after you post a request.

[keith turrill]

Having recently looked at browser functions and some basics of internet communications, the issue of identities gets quite complicated. An example would be the multiple user functions of Windows XP Home Edition. Multiple persons may be using the same machine and IP address in different sessions. Hence, IP's are not a test of unique identity.

[bobatkins]

IP addresses have never been unique identifiers. That applies in both senses. Multiple users can have the same IP address via shared resources, but a single user can have multiple IP addresses via dynamic IP allocation.

 

With ISP cooperation it is possible to track user ID via IP and time stamping most of the time in cases where it's worth the effort (e.g. criminal activity)