Confusernames! - YouLookFab Forum

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Confusernames!

Maya

Veteran

I am getting sort of confused about usernames on here. Sometimes one person has two different usernames that show up and I think they are two different people, or two people have the same username and I think they are the same person. Can it be made so that people need to choose an original name?

General

24 replies

Latest reply was from Greg

Louise

Veteran

When I first signed up I had to chose an original name, with the new updates it changed so you could choose another name, It can be a bit confusing but I do like that people don't have to be know by a random username just because the one they want is already taken hopefully everyone will use an avatar so we can tell the difference x

chewyspaghetti

Veteran

I get confused, too. Not only with names- but avatars. Sometimes I see a cat, and think I know who it is but forget to look at the name. So many people have kitty faces as their avatars here that they start to look the same after a while!

Anonymous

I've noticed this too. My user name is mrsanniep, but when I create a post, it comes up as written by "Anne."

Louise

Veteran

Anne if you go to edit personal information whatever name you put in the name box will be the name shown on your posts (I think) x

Maya

Veteran

Oh, Lucie and I apologize Khris. Of course as her mother, I do think she is a unique little snowflake. But maybe I will have an avatar of her hiney instead :p

Rosie

Veteran

Khris, I totally get confused, too, by all the kitties!

I think it is really nice to know people by their first name (unless they choose otherwise) even if there are others out there. This is such a personal forum, it just makes sense to give people that option. Personally, I think it is a lot easier when people have photos of themselves as avatars.

taylor

Veteran

Surely~ My Gracie~ isn't confused with some other kitty here....impossible I say

I see an edit in my avatar future:)

Maya

Veteran

Well for what it's worth my kitty confuses me even in real life.

Rosie

Veteran

Gracie and Lucie are completely adorable and unique! They certainly do not look the same - maybe we all just need to memorize their pics and associate them with you both! I think Cathy has a kitty up, too?

marianna

Veteran

While browsing old threads/blog posts, I noticed that there used to be another Marianna on the forum... although she's not active anymore. I found that peculiar because my name really isn't common!

Lisa

Veteran

I agree that a personal photo helps a lot. I may have to add one soon, but in my defense I only joined this week so there hasn't been time to figure out picture uploading yet!

Maya

Veteran

You can remember Lucie by her little nose goober

Cathy has a kitty too, yes. Yay, kitties!

Sparky

Veteran

Maya, you bring up a good point. When I signed up, I used Sparky for my username, which I thought it was a unique username here. Plus, there are already a lot of lovely ladies with my name - Anne - on this board!

After I became a member, my posts showed up with Sparky. Then I filled out the profile info and put in my real name, and my username changed to Anne in the posts. When I realized what happened, I edited my profile name back to Sparky. So, as Louise said earlier, you can edit your name in your profile to whatever you want for your username.

Debora

Veteran

I love all the kitties on the forum!!!! I think, though, that I might be the only one with a pony. Look closely and you might be able to see the tears in my eyes. I was not as brave as I looked!

Rose

I am testing.. I just switched my confusername to my real name to see what shows up here..

cciele

Veteran

Yes, I do have a kitty avatar Good thing I didn't post one of my gray kitty; then it would get even more confusing! I would use "Cathy" but I know there are several other Cathys (or variant) here so I think I will stay as is, as far as user name goes.

Itari

(website)

I think that my name is unique here on the board, but anyway I prefer the nickname to be displayed

Stacey D

I noticed that, too and it can be confusing. I signed up originally as "stacey", but a couple of days later noticed a post by a stacey that wasn't me! So, I changed mine to Stacey D. Not sure if there's another by that name or not.

Anonymous

I'm adding to the confusion! I've shortened my username, since that's what usually happens anyway.

Steph

Veteran

I couldn't help myself. I have been meaning to add a profile photo for awhile, and was planning on making it my tortie cat. But after reading this thread, I just had to make the photo one of my gray tabby.

When I first joined I chose Steph because Stephanie was taken. I'm really more of a Stephanie, though.

April

Veteran

It definitely used to be true that you needed a unique username. When that changed, I was confused, but Angie said that any confusion would be sorted out by the photo or avatar.

It occurred to me that if you use a picture of something other than yourself and then you change to a different picture of something other than yourself, no one can know if it's you posting or another person with "your" username.

Did you notice that there are now at least six Angies in the membership here?

Maya

Veteran

Yay for the YLF Kitty Clan! Nothing wrong with cute kitties showing up all over the page.

Good point, April. Some people might not be comfortable using their own pictures too.

CK

I've just changed mine from cindy594 to just cindy, but I haven't posted much recently so hopefully I'm not the source of any confusion. When I first registered there was another cindy, so I had to add the numbers, but since you can choose your name now, I've dropped them.

Greg

I think people already get it, but just in case... there are two names.

- login name: you type this when you log in (it is unique)
- display name: this appears alongside your posts (it might not be unique)

There is a long standing argument in user model circles on whether display names should be unique (where early members get nice names and later members end up being Greg435), or whether everyone should go by their chosen name (where people can have the same name with the associated confusion).

For better of for worse, we are doing the latter. But there are a couple of things that are exacerbating the confusion (one bug and one usability problem) that I will fix at some point.

As people have pointed out, the profile picture is the best way to have a unique signature that people recognize. And after all, a picture says a thousand words.