This morning (European time) there was a bit of a stir on the Chatterbox, due to the coming of a new user, im2.. Notice the dot. Many people, including myself, thought it was either castaway or theorbtwo, speaking through their well know robot account, im2. It wasn't.

I personally am not happy about the whole situation. I think choosing a user name that is so similar to the user name of another user, is going to far, and should be forbidden by the site policy. Even more, I think that maybe some automatic system should be installed to prevent creation of usernames that are too close to existing usernames. A difference of only a (some) dot(s), or a swap between an "o" and a "0" is too close, to my taste.

Well, there are always exceptions... like the powerful alter ego's of gods, I really don't mind demerphq having an alternate personality de-merphq, quite the contrary. But I wouldn't be too happy about it, if "de-merphq" was an alternate username for tye, for example.

Sometimes people want to correct typos in their chosen username by creating an account with a corrected name. But shouldn't they rather ask a god to correct the name in their current account?

My 2 cents...

Update Likely it's a joke, but somebody registered the user name bart.. It wasn't me, but it illustrates my point.

In reply to How to prevent impersonation of other users by bart

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