quickchange / getreal / shinyone

[Thomcat]

Dear mumsnet

Can you please do a check and see if quickchange / getreal and shinyone are all the same person and if so can you have a private word or perhaps look into barring them.

Things like this usually are water off a ducks back to me personally but she/he/it risks really, really causing serious pain to reqular mumsnetters and I think it might be a good idea to look into this.

Just an idea.

If this person is changing her name all the time just to say spiteful, nasty, things on mumsnet surely we want that stopped, right??
Anyway, nuff said, over to you to do what you think is best.

Fuchsia

"Not the one I've had many encounters with - she just used name changing facilities, but admittedly did have 2 or 3 different user ID's on forums where names couldn't be changed"

Er... if names couldnt be changed, how did she change them with only one email address then? Could you register more than once with the same address?

Hi All,
We've been discussing the name changing thing internally recently as it happens, both because of the ability to use it to cause trouble and just as importantly because of the possibility that any new poster may be a name changer or the same person posting under multiple names, which inevitably leads to an atmosphere of suspicion. (This thread is a good example because we can confirm that quickchange, getreal and shinyone, though name changers, are in fact 3 different people).

As Marina rightly points out the number of users, threads and name changes makes it hard to keep up with who's just having fun (by far the majority) and who's trying to cause trouble.

We've raised before the notion of restricting names to two per registration, with the idea that you have one name for everyday use and a further one for sensitive stuff. We believe this is the way to go now.

Of course Soupdragon is right it won't stop the ability to troll if you are determined, but it will make it more difficult to cause trouble and to confuse. We know some people enjoy having some perfectly innocent fun with name changing and we're sorry to be party poopers in that respect but on balance we think limiting name changes is the sensible thing to do. Were anyone to desperately want/need another name for a pressing reason, we'd happily facilitate on an ad hoc basis and I'm sure Tech could do a special Christmas namechange facility too.
As mumsnet grows (as we hope it might ) it's going to become even more of an issue to keep track of things, so we hope you agree the limit is the right way to go. Tech's away this week (again you cry!) but we'll get onto it soon. Naturally if you have objections/ reasons why you think this is a bad idea - do post them here or write to us directly and we'll give it further thought.
Thanks,
Team mumsnet

Please can you give us warning before it happens... I don't wanna be stuck with Flamesparrow and MrsFlamesparrow...

Ooh, how's this for imaginative - DH has always been called Boy, he could come on as FLAMEBOY!!

bummer

still, hey ho.

onwards and upwards they cry.

will i be left with this...

Thanks a lot Mumsnet, TC xx

it sounds vulgar enid

good point though, which names will we be left with?

was hoping to trot this one out quite soon...

Can't we have more than 2?

And, out of interest, how will you decide which 2 of the names we already have get kept? I've got some I'm rather fond of

I think 2 is reasonable - our 'normal' ones and a 'mad' one...............hmmm I need a 'mad' username - someone help me out (I'm not very clever as indicated by my unimaginative username) LOL

I have forgot most of mine tbh

mumsnet - please could you let me know why you deleted my thread. thank you.

love huggy

i dont wanna be a struggling student for ever-was planning a rather spectacular name change if i successfully complete course in september-
not that i can think of anything at the moment

huggybear, email [email protected] and they'll tell you quicker.

If possible i would like three - the business one, my normal one and one in case I am embarrassing, please and not necessarily the extra ones I have now

Message withdrawn

sorry but having read what the one post was by one of these people I actually agreed and I dont think it was nasty either, maybe inappropriate but not done with malice

agree fio - relieved to hear they are all separate people as the other twos posts werent that bad IMO

Message withdrawn

I didn't think that limiting or stopping name changes was a good idea when it was mentioned last time but after recent events I think it will be a better thing.

Hopefully it will stop some of the nastiness thats been going just recently.

Hi Huggybear,
We deleted the thread you started because twice in it you said you wanted it deleted and that you were going to write to us to ask for it to go. We didn't receive any mails but maybe they went to to Tech (Tech 1's on hols and Tech 2's just had a baby so apologies if that's the case - the rest of us don't see those mails).

The thread was a bit heated with some pretty personal attacks in it, so we thought it a good idea to delete it.

We're very sorry to hear your news by the way. Do look after yourself.
The mumsnet team

I@ve just thought of another time when name changes are necessary and you wouldn't want to use an existing one - when you are posting under an assumed name to protect someone else who's being anonymous.

As essbee says, she's had quite a few* and I've had an equal number I've used so that my name isn't associated with her anonymous name. These can't be used toother threads and having a restrictive limit would have made it difficult (although I wouls simply have used an alternate email address and re-registered or created an email address specifically for this purpose.

I honestly think the instances of nastiness from name changes are hugely overwhelmed by the amount of fun and necessary changes that have gone on.

• name changes!

Hi SD,
Instances like that (name changing to protect someone elses namechange identity) would fall in the category of special situations I guess - as said we'd be happy to facilitate another name were there a good reason. We agree that trouble causing name changing is not as prevalent as folk think but the fact that folks are suspicious is a good reason to cap it in our view. Sorry again to be party poopers and maybe it's something we could trial for a bit and see how it goes. Unlike other changes (I'm thinking chat rooms ) it's relatively simple to limit/ unlimit. And yes we'll give you a few days notice, so you can all make sure you've got the name you want to stick with before we switch on.

Justine, may I ask why my thread was deleted the other day, I asked for a link to be deleted, which was done, then the whole thread dsappeared.