I won't edit my post so my massive dopiness will remain on record.

Go ahead, crush my illusion that you're always right.

It's all good Cindy. The shows rock mightily and I look forward to seeing you in the threads, not Spoiler threads though because I fear cooties, or addiction, or something.

I think Hil is me for this. It's not about pseudonyms, it's about identity. Posts like the ferrets, the robots and Clovis clearly come from posters whom we can identify, by context and not just by previous notice. Their posts, and the lurkers initial posts, were jokey-rhyme fun. It's when regular posts come under an unknown name that the squirming seems to start. It's that loss of a sense of identity.

We could have a conversation about anonymity on the net and how we don't really know each other and blah, blah. But while that may be true for the majority of us or for the rest of the net, we really don't have anonymity here. We do know each other. We go to each others' parties. We hang out together. We know about our family lives, our pets, our intimate personal struggles, our geographical origins. It's a far cry from the net where it was dangerous to reveal your gender.

Suppose lurkers wasn't Cindy, but some honest-to-goodness lurker, who knew the culture, and thought it would be a funny name to have. We'd laugh at the joke initially, and then if it became a regular poster, we'd give weight to the content and tone of the posts, and eventually develop a relationship with the poster, just like we do with anyone else. It's not the name that's at issue, it's the sense of identity and relationship.

When I changed my name I used my tag to indicate my old name for several weeks.

I think that's the best way to make sure identity confusion for the readers is minimized.

That's the total contribution I have to this discussion.

Speaking of which, in light of this discussion, and one at Jon's last night, what is preferable: asking a stompy to change me user name, or to create a new account? I'd guess the former, but I wanted to check in case I was mistaken. I SHOULD have asked Jon, but I got so caught up in the whole premiere thing that I spaced on it.

Asking a stompie to change your user ID is always the best.

When you create a user, we check for a unique e-mail address. This was supposed to prevent multiple registrations. But who has just the one anymore?

So multiple logins are the new black? Huh.

Sorry, all, just kidding.

Anyway, if a stompy could change my user name to Frankenbuddha, I'd be much obliged. A transitional name, now that I've met some of the local Buffistas F2F.

Do I need to logout/in, or will it just change when it's changed?

Done.

Muchos gracias!

I don't think the pseud usage we're discussing is abusive. I do think that it's something that can easily become so, and it would be very hard to explain the difference other than as a like us/not like us issue.

As many people have said, I don't mind pseuds if they're either created and used for a specific joke (Clovis, the Ferrets), or if they're alternate logins that can be easily linked up (e.g., Xanderella/Cindy). But when a login is clearly a pseud and it's not clear who for, I can see why people get twitchy.

I wish I had a solution to offer. I don't. It would be nice if pseuds put who they were in their userinfo so anyone who was curious could check, but I don't think that should be a requirement. And if there was sockpuppet havoc someday, we could always invoke the "demon-like behavior" clause of our TOS, while still letting the ferrets and the lurkers frolic.

Two more things:

I'm fine with things like the ferrets or zombies posting as ferrets or zombies, especially since it's generally pretty clear who the actual person behind it is.

This may be a skimming-related issue, or a not-being-in-all-the-threads issue, or just me being oblivious, but I have no idea who types for any of the pseuds except Clovis. I assume the ferrets are victor-or-thessaly, because they're the ones who have ferrets, but I wouldn't put money on that.

I'd mentioned my "lurkers support" idea a few days back, and figured since I mentioned it ahead of time, there would be no "we're being played" issue. I must have mentioned it in Spoilers.

I'm sure you said this, but honestly? I remember the "lurkers support" conversation. I don't especially remember who said what. Even if I did, I couldn't have guaranteed that the Lurkers ID was you and not someone else who read the post and thought it was a cute idea.

I've been reading this discussion going, hmmmm... and ahhh...and, well, I had to change my psued about a year ago...and I had to do it without making an announcement on the board...not for board reasons, but for personal reasons. So, I totally get where Cindy is coming from here. While her personal reasons for not wanting to be "Cindy" and my personal reasons for changing from "vw bug" to "Elphaba" are very different, they were still personal reasons...ones that had basically nothing to do with the board.

I at first wasn't going to post, because I ususally just lurk in bureaucracy, but since I have some personal experience with doing this on this board, I thought I'd poke my head in.

People didn't seem to have a problem when I did this a year ago. I felt badly, because there was no way I could let everyone on the board know of my name change. I tried to let as many people know through backchannel, but it was very important that I seemed like a new member of the board, and I was somewhat treated as such. So, I couldn't put it in my tagline or anything.

Shit happens. People need to do things differently in their lives. If that includes changing their psued so they can stay a part of the Buffistas on a different level, and they're not doing it for problem-causing reasons, I don't see why this is such a big deal. I guess I felt the need to post, because now I'm all wow-I-wonder-if-I-caused-this-big-of-a-fuss-when- I-did-this-oh-but-yeah-it's-not-all-about-me-ish. I mean, I get why it may seem a little unfair to people not in the know, but honestly, if the person's not causing trouble...