There have been several discussions recently about the number of very formulaic and almost certainly fake dilemma/ AIBU threads, always designed to strongly polarise opinion or get people's backs up somehow, always started by brand new user names who are never seen again outside of that thread.
These posters rarely or never even bother to engage much in the thread they started, while it rumbles on for pages and pages without them. It's pissing quite a few people off and ultimately leading to the dumbing down and 'enshittification' of the forum.
It's been discussed at length who might be motivated to do this and why, but pretty simple to stop, or at least massively curtail those sorts of threads.
I appreciate the ability to name change and I do it fairly often to keep as anonymous as possible, like many people. Gone are they days where we have one user name for years, everyone knows us by it and anyone who wanted to piece together our life story and therefore our real identity could do so.
However, is it really necessary to have unlimited name changes with no restrictions on the frequency at all? Of course it isn't. As it is, I could literally start twenty fake threads a day under twenty different user names and not engage with any of them beyond my OP, or engage on anyone else's threads either. Just sit there all day long creating fake threads to wind 'em up and watch 'em go. Rinse and repeat daily for a year. It could be my job. I mean it's clearly someone's job.
Is this really the forum anyone wants?
Why not limit the number of name changes a person can have in a week? Or certainly within a day. That would be easy for tech to do and would not stop people being able to name change for their own genuine and valid reasons. But let's be honest, no real poster has ten of those reasons in one week all requiring a separate user name, do they?
It's been suggested that clicking on a user name could show the number of posts (or threads started) under THAT NAME ONLY, how many other user names they have had under that account,and the date that account was registered. Obviously you wouldn't show their other names so there could be no cross referencing, but it would highlight the people/bots who are only here to create fake content multiple times a day. If you've had 30 user names in 36 days something's not quite cricket, is it?
Of course all of this assumes MNHQ actually wants to stamp out fake content that is irritating the hell out of many of us. Does it?