[GEN] Giving away usernames...

I used to have as one of my socks the username Anakin Skywalker, which I was lucky enough to register back in May 2000.

Registered or given to you?

 

Enjoy the glory, my friend. KK works in mysterious ways. I love that man.

 

Registered or given to you?


As per the current policy, I verified that he was the original account holder before I gave him access to the account. Under that policy, no accounts are simply handed out, but are instead deleted and reregistered, making accoutns with spaces off limits.

In this case, as the password had definitely been changed and the email information was removed from the account, I was able to verify the account by asking for details about the old ISP that was used to register it, and matched that to IP addresses on several old messages.

Kimball Kinnison

 

"Registered or given to you?"

I actually registered the name myself back in '00. I have no idea why no one had taken it before then...

 

I'm sorry this happened. That's whay I make it a practice to not give out old names because of this very situation.

 

So once again, we have one administrator with one policy, while another administrator has a completely different policy.

*shakes head*

 

This policy started when I wasn't an administrator. My feeling on this has always been the same since I registered.

 

So once again, we have one administrator with one policy, while another administrator has a completely different policy.

Actually, this is a case of an administrator who was not familiar with the current policy. The administrator ar fault was not a member of the MS at the time of the policy change and was not aware of the new policy. That has been corrected.

That's one of the reasons why we are working on documenting all of our policies into one easy reference, so that we can all be operating on the same page. I have been trying to work on this, but I have a heavy work and courseload this week (last week of the summer term before exams). We are working on this and are trying to take steps to prevent such misunderstandings of policy in the future. Please bear with us.

Kimball Kinnison

EDIT: I will point out once more that the account of Anakin Skywalker was not given out by an administrator. That one was hacked. Another admin did give out another account contrary to the current policy, but that issue has been resolved and clarified with that admin.

 

That sucks other people can't see your (correct) point of view on this matter, Sape.

 

What happens when you know a user that was gone for a long time for accident, death etc and you do not want anybody else to use this old account because will bring some old sad memories? Also you know that this user is never going back. What we can do?

 

EDIT: Ooops, i posted the wrong thing in the wrong thread in the wrong forum.

Anyways, we can only hope that won't be the case. There's only been a few cases where people have died that post here.

 

I think the whole giving out user names thing was a bad idea.

 

I really should change my password from starwars

 

Just out of curiousity, who owns the name Luke_Skywalker?

 

"Giving away old usernames really bothers me. The administration needs to stop this IMO."

I agree with Rox, handing away old usernames is not up to the administration.
It's up to the person who registered it.

It's like a Government giving away land that's already owned.

"Hasn't been lived on for a year! You guys might as well take it and get some use out of it, the people who actually own it probably won't be back anytime soon....."

 

It's like a Government giving away land that's already owned.

"Hasn't been lived on for a year! You guys might as well take it and get some use out of it, the people who actually own it probably won't be back anytime soon....."

Well, I obviously agree with you, but that might not be the best example. A lot of governments do something like that. I believe in the US your neighbors are allowed to take over/use unused land on your property after seven years if you as the rightful owner doesn't object. Fortunately for our position, though, there's a difference between usernames and land. A username is more than property because it also identifies a person and can have sentimental value.

As an aside, I see nothing dramatic about administrators having conflicting opinions on something as long as they agree to enforce the same rule. That's how it's been among the regular moderators for ages.

 

It's healthy and important to have conflicting opinions. Sometimes it's the only way to make progress and to gain greater understanding of an issue.

 

I agree. Oppposing opinions should not be outlawed in any group (the mod squad in this case). It doesn't allow for change or understanding of other opinions.

 

I agree. Oppposing opinions should not be outlawed in any group (the mod squad in this case). It doesn't allow for change or understanding of other opinions.

We don't outlaw opposing opinions in the MS. I've seen and participated in many heated discussions there, with many different views expressed.

However, once an official policy is set, we ask that all mods publicly support it. That's because otherwise it would undermine the authority of all mods.

For example, let's say that one of the admins is very vocal about opposing the username policy, claiming instead that we should simply hand out the old names, spaces and all. If they give public opposition to the policy, it only encourages users to contact them and encourage them to violate the policy.

Individual mods aren't here to decide what policy is. That's done by the MS as a whole under the direction and final say of the owners and head admin. For individual forums, policy is set by the forum mods as a group in accordance with the TOS.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that I didn't think people could speak out about anything. I apologize if it came off that way. I was just talking about more life in general, and was actually agreeing with Sapient, saying that it was good that (as far as I know) the mods could speak their mind in such a way.

 

"However, once an official policy is set, we ask that all mods publicly support it."

Sounds like y'all better smuggle this one back into MS and get it sorted before we go much further then. Obviously there's mods that disagree with your policy there, K_K

Now to put the thread mods put off-topic back on topic:

I still don't understand why admins are involved in giving away usernames. It should be between users to sort out, if one user agree's to pass the account over, that'd be fine. If it goes as far as a mod performing a simple IP scan to ascertain the socks owner then passing it over to the users to sort out, that I can understand.

But admins giving away accounts causes nothing but accusations of favouritism and leads to pissed off users like hew finding out their sock has been stolen without their knowledge. And that sucks, IMO.

 

But admins giving away accounts causes nothing but accusations of favouritism and leads to pissed off users like hew finding out their sock has been stolen without their knowledge. And that sucks, IMO.

You can't use hew's case as an example here. I have definite proof (including the old password) now that hew's account was hacked, not given away by an admin.

Once I was able to verify that hew was the rightful owner of the hacked account, I restored the account to him. The hacking of his account has nothing to do with the policy of deleting old usernames and allowing people to reregister them.

Also, accounts are not personal property. I have accounts with many different online services and servers, but I don't actually own any of them (except the ones on my own, personal server). This is not a matter of favortism in handing out accounts. There is set criteria (albeit with a certain amount of lattitude for "case-by-case" situations) that is followed for everyone.

Since the enactment of this policy, I've only denied a very few requests, and each of those was because the user requesting the account had a recent history of sock-related problems, or an extensive history of problems (novel-sized notes) that included sock abuses.

I hardly see how that's anything approaching favortism.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Also, accounts are not personal property. I have accounts with many different online services and servers, but I don't actually own any of them (except the ones on my own, personal server). This is not a matter of favortism in handing out accounts. There is set criteria (albeit with a certain amount of lattitude for "case-by-case" situations) that is followed for everyone.

Most places I have posted at have a pruning filter for inactive accounts. Since we don't have that here just don't give them out, period. Stop all forms of handing out usernames whether it be handing over the password or deleting the name and letting people reregister it. I don't understand why the old policy was changed to begin with, you people opened up a whole new can of worms for yourselves.

 

Look what I started.

Sorry I didn't just PM you directly to begin with, KK.

 

Most places I have posted at have a pruning filter for inactive accounts. Since we don't have that here just don't give them out, period.

Wait a moment.

Are you saying that just because we don't have a tech feature that automatically applies a set of criteria to all accounts, it is improper for the administration to act as a manual filter on request (only on request) from users?

Basically, the only limiting factors are that you not have a history of causing trouble with socks (as we'd likely just wind up banning the account anyways) and that we reserve the right to limit the number of accounts given out to one individual. That's it.

His is an admin manually deleting an account that meets the criteria any different from having a filter that automatically deletes the account according to the same criteria?

Your conclusion does not logically follow from your basis. You seem to be missing several steps.

Kimball Kinnison