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.
As Marina has elsewhere rightly pointed 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 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