First off, I have to say that I am generally in agreement with the sentiment of the TalkBoard on the topic, as expressed in the motion and amplified upon by the TB members to post here. To allow people to change their handles (on a one-off basis or otherwise) is a generous thing for Randy and the TB to do. I just disagree a little on the wording of the motion.

Very good point - to borrow from Oscar Wilde, to stuff up one FT account might be regarded as misfortune, to stuff up many looks like carelessness at best.

I think we all may say or write things that we might regret sometimes (and I'm hoping that my original post on this topic won't be one of those ), and I feel that someone might geniunely want to start again with a clean slate. One of the advantages of a pseudonymous forum such as this is that it is possible for someone to start anew, if they really want to put an embarrassing past behind them.

As for trollers stirring the pot with handle after handle, I would have thought that the existing TOS condition on multiple handles should catch that.


Respectfully, I disagree with you on that. The text appears to confuse the concepts of changing a handle and re-registering a new account. If you change your handle, for any of the very good reasons that you outlined in your earlier post, I would expect your posting history to remain. In this case, you are changing your name but not your actual persona. Presumably someone who is changing their handle in this way wants to still be associated with all their past postings. In this case, the user ID would be the same (for example, yours would still be 2922) but the handle would change. All your posts would appear to be from the same person. This was the very "nice offer" I was referring to - there is no requirement for FT to do this, it is a favour being done for members who did not really select their handle carefully enough in the first place.

However, the text of the motion does not indicate that this is what is taking place. Instead, it points to an officially sanctioned deactivation and replacement of an account. The user ID would presumably be different, and there would be no association of posting history. Again, I think it is a nice gesture to make, but it does strike me as odd, at least as it has been worded. The option to throw away an account and just start with a new one has always been there for people, just not with an official deactiviation of the old account. If someones intentions are not malicious (i.e. they are not doing it just to allow them to stir up more trouble, or to try and get away with hit and run postings), then I don't see why this would be a problem for anyone. If it is being done with malicious intent, then the existing rule on multiple handles can be applied to discipline them.

I guess in short, what I am trying to say is that the "one time only" bit makes sense if used in conjunction with a handle change that preserves all other aspects of the account, but does not make so much sense if you are talking about just getting a new account instead, which is what the text of motion appears to be saying. In practice, anyone can just register a new account at any point, without any intervention required from the administrators, and if they are doing it for honourable reasons, then there's no reason (IMHO) that it should bother anyone.

I'm not complaining that an offer to change a handle while preserving history is not being made, because the TB has looked at that option and decided not to do that, and I respect your decision entirely.

Full discolsure here: I took Randy up on an offer a while ago to change my handle. I am very grateful for this, because I did not have a particularly valid reason to do so. In my case, I'd just chosen a handle that wasn't very good, not realising the prominence that it had at the time. I was considering just dropping the old one and registering a new account, but I'm very grateful to Randy for allowing me the option to keep my history.

I absolutely agree that there should be a bold message to new users when they sign up saying that it's generally not possible to change your handle in future, and you should just get it right first time. Mea culpa

As I said before, I'm not trying to be difficult or cause trouble. I'm not even trying to get you to change the text, as it's not something I'm likely to lose sleep over. I just thought I'd comment on what I feel to be a slightly flawed TB motion.