Description of need:
I have seen people abuse the ability to change their usernames. This is most egregious when curators do so, especially when used to hide their identity or masquerade as another user.
I do think that users in general should be free to change their username, although I may ask for this to also be somewhat limited in a separate request (eg once per month).
It would also be helpful to the general user base if Curators have consistent names, so that it will be easier to remember them in case they need help.
Details:
Prohibit Curators from changing their name without permission from staff.
Include a note/warning in the curator signup documentation that the name they choose will be semi-permanent. Also, if they do change names, make sure there is a public record of the change and perhaps prohibit others from taking past names.
One caveat is that if a Curator needs to change their name for personal safety, there does not need to be a public record (eg in case of stalking), but staff should still know, of course.
Personally I think in order to change your username you should have to email help@inaturalist.org or some other new email. This would mean you could still change your username but there would be a delay, making it harder to abuse the system.
yeah, sure. the real target of this request in my eyes is to prevent abuse, lightly for general users and strictly for curators, in whatever method is practical.
It seems weird that you can change your username at all except in extreme circumstances like stalking. Seems like everyone should have consistent usernames that donāt change.
Agreed, but in addition to the stalking example, I could see someone picking a goofy user name when they were in their teens then wanting to change to something more āprofessionalā (such as their real name) later in life. (Never been all that fond of pseudonyms on the internet, but I get that they sometimes have an important reason behind them.)
I think that there needs to always be some way of changing usernames for everyone, curator or not. If there needs to be some intermediate step, like what @raymie proposes, thatās fine, and @bouteloua 's point about making sure that tags from before the change still work is a good one. But, some potential reasons besides stalking to have username changes:
Someone gets married and wants to update their name everywhere.
Someone gets divorced and wants to update their name everywhere.
A trans person changes their name and needs it to update everywhere (which cis people can do too!).
Like @ jnstuart notes, someone may have picked a goofy name before and wants a serious name now.
For some kind of safety reason, as several users have already commented.
To avoid confusion with a similarly-named iNat user (Iāve definitely mis-tagged some people before and would guess that gets annoying to people to whom that happens often)
A religious conversion or other religious or cultural event. Sometimes names are changed for religious or cultural reasons.
Someone switches languages and wants their name to change as well (I have several friends who use different names in different languages, and if they made their account in one but then switch over to the other, they may want to change their name)
This is just a list I came up with off the top of my head, and, for most of those, having a public record could be problematic or unsafe. Many are personal and having the whole of the internet or even just the whole of the iNat userbase aware of the history could be quite bad for the person involved. Really only #4, #6, and potentially #8 are cases where a public record isnāt likely to present some potential problems, and even then, I could see cases of #4 and #8 where the user would rather there not be a public record.
I realize that @ trh_blue 's point about potential for there to be abuse of the system by some people is a good one and worth thinking about. But if a user is abusing the system, isnāt that just a problem anyway? I feel like a curator abusing iNat generally isnāt a good thing and should probably be dealt with anyway?
(Also, side note, this is my first Forum post, so it wonāt let me tag more than two people. Sorry about that!)
Iām glad this post is creating discussion. So long as we can arrive at some acceptable compromise itās all good to me.
I agree that it users should always be able to change their username. I do think it should be slightly less freeform than before. Iāve seen both sides. Iāve seen curators use the feature inā¦ unfortunate ways. Iāve had several users impersonate me maliciously. And I have had to temporarily change my online names in order to conceal my account from a stalker. Who, by the way, is still out there being a creepy douchebag, but the threat of the cops (and a lawyer) is keeping him away.
I also agree that using username swapping to abuse the system should be a bannable offence, but naturally, it is hard to catch someone when they keep changing their nameā¦ :/
Why is it weird? I added my first username that holds a lot of history for me through more than a decade, but it actually wasnāt the best choice and seeing otherās usernames I also decided to change mine, why should I stick to the old one? Itās not right to take out that possibility from users.
As a variation on #4ā¦correcting a typo or even just ābuyerās remorseā*.
*e.g. Iāve debated trying to drop the 3 from my username.
Itās only there b/c when I first joined I was in a hurry to sign up so I could post my first observation, and the site said just āStarā (yes, itās my actual name) or any of the translations or variations I tried were not available.
Shortly after I joined iNat I also changed my username because the original username I chose āsuggestedā that I was only interested in plants (which is mostly true only because I look at plants the mostā¦ I like all nature) when I was uploading and identifying observations of fauna as well, so my username just didnāt seem appropriate. I was happy that I was able to change it just like lots (most?) of other media sites
my name was actually a mistake, i put my first name in the username field on accident when i registered for iNat, in 2011. I never use āCharlieā as my internet name, but now i think it is funny because iNat got so big and it wouldnāt be possible to get a first name username like that, so i donāt want to change it.
I donāt understand why curators should not be able to change their username but other users can. Some of the comments here suggest that users should be able to change their usernames to avoid stalking or other malicious behaviour but why should curators not be able to do the same thing?
Even Linnaeus, father of biological taxonomy, went through some name changes in his life ā Carl Linnaeus, Carl von Linne, Carolus Linnaeus, Carolus a Linne ā depending on where he published and when, so who am I to criticize revising a username.
My concern for iNat, if itās overused, would be the inability to keep track of who the curator is who might be making changes on the website. The option to change a name should be used sparingly, should not be extremely easy, and perhaps should be tracked somehow behind the scenes by iNat staff.
Lots of very reasonable justifications in this thread for why people might want to change their usernames. If I understand rightly, the main reason that doing this on iNat appears to be an issue is that it breaks some links to the userās previous identity. I think most of these concerns could be overcome if there were (semi-)automated processes in place to update various aspects of the userās iNat presence to use the new name.
As a comparison, Wikipedia has had to address similar issues for longer and with a larger and far more contentious user base. And yet username changes are generally permitted (for all users). I think this is because changing your username happens globally to all aspects of your identity, and so thereās less concern that it could be abused. Take a look at these pages for comparison:
