Issue with 2 same usernames but different capitalisation

Platform: Website
Browser: Firefox

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:
https://www.inaturalist.org/people/94
https://www.inaturalist.org/people/11700

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&subview=grid&taxon_id=40151&user_id=red_wolf,a_calidris,sean_c,trevor_l,birds_bugs_botany,&verifiable=any&view=observers

Description of problem:
Problem 1: Conflict with capitalization. User 94’s username is “Phycus”, while user 11700’s username is “phycus”. However, automatically generated URLs for any pages relating to either user use “phycus”, which means that only results for user 94 are shown. For example if I click on phycus’ username from his comment here, it redirects to Phycus’ profile: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/40622866
Similarly, if I am on phycus’ profile and click on his identification tab, it brings me to the identification tab for Phycus.

Problem 2: User sean_c does not show on this list: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&subview=grid&taxon_id=40151&user_id=red_wolf,a_calidris,sean_c,trevor_l,birds_bugs_botany,&verifiable=any&view=observers
I found this problem a while ago, and at the time user trevor_l didn’t show either. He seems to be showing now though…
Both show here, I don’t remember what it was like before: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&subview=grid&user_id=sean_c,trevor_l&verifiable=any&view=observers

1 Like

i could be wrong, but i think this is because you’ve filtered for taxon=40151, and sean_c apparently hasn’t observed any mammals.

facepalm Yep, thank you…

1 Like

i didn’t know that mixed case names were allowed in iNaturalist. Phycus (capitalized) is a very early user. so maybe his id was created before mixed casing was disallowed, but then his id was never fixed to conform with the new rules, allowing this conflict. i assume iNat staff will have to resolve this conflict somehow, or else phycus (lowercase) will need to change his id, since Phycus (capitalized) appears to be inactive.

1 Like

I assumed they were enabled after @tiwane’s post here. However, I just tested it and am not able to get a capital letter in my username so I guess not.

1 Like

They haven’t been enabled, we would have to introduce UI for that. And it wouldn’t allow the same exact set of characters to be used as a username, regardless of case. My guess is that this has to do with user 94’s account being made so long ago. We’ll take a look.

1 Like

This is still happening, should I message user 11700 about it?

1 Like

Hi everybody… I am phycus and Phycus, and yes, in the early days I created an account, but I was not really active, and later I had trouble logging in, which lead to me creating accidentally a second account, which I am using right now (the phycus one). I was wondering if there is a way just to completely delete the “Phycus” account? I am not sure if this is part of the problem, but whenever I try to log in from a different computer, I get prompted that my password is incorrect, and I have to create a new one. Which I do, but then I can’t log in the first computer with the update password. So I have to go through a “forgot password” every time I try to access iNaturalist from a different computer… Thanks for the discussion and thanks for bringing this to my attention…

6 Likes

Welcome to the forum!

You can delete an account by logging in to inaturalist.org and then going to your Account Settings page. There’s a delete account option there.

@upupa-epops we’ve looked into this and there are 10 cases, we’ll fix them soon.

1 Like

have you tried deleting in one of these cases? if the system gets confused between phycus and Phycus in some cases, is it possible that the delete function might get confused?

3 Likes

Good point. I can try it on our test server when it’s back up, or @phycus you might want to just wait until we fix it.

1 Like

Ok, thanks for checking on this… if you would be able to delete that account, that would be great, because I don’t think I have the original password, but somehow both accounts seem to be connected. When I click at the “phycus” account it brings me to my “Phycus” one… a bit confusing, but I am better with bugs then with computers ;-)

3 Likes

I think I’ll wait until a developer can fix the problem, just to be safe.

seems like Phycus (user 94) has been removed. not sure what exactly what the resolution was in that case, but i’m thinking that since both parts of the original post have been addressed, this can bug report can be closed at this point, right?

1 Like

Reopening as the bug has not been solved - similar issue with other user(s)