Change to real names policy.

James Puckett

I have decided to relax the real names policy a little. If you do not wish to use your real name then you may use a trade name that obviously identifies you. Examples of an obviously identifiable trade name would be Yanone, KLTF, or Chank. Please do not use the name of your business if your business is not obviously the business of one person. An example of a name that does not obviously identify one person is “Dunwich Type Founders”.

Ermin Međedović

How about one person company "Lettermin"? Is it obvious enough?

Deleted Account

Oh, I was hoping to change my name to Guy O'Teen.

Scott-Martin Kosofsky

David, this is infringement. I'm Guy O'Teen™, you're Sal Minella.

James, this is a slippery slope--a bad idea.

SiDaniels

Great idea!

Jan Schmoeger

A step backwards, imo.

Nick Shinn

Pandering to the Smart Alecs.

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

Finally I feel like myself again.

John Hudson

James, I think the sort of thing you want to accommodate could be done by changing the rule to say that one must either post as an individual under one's real name or as a business entity under a recognised corporate or DBA designation.

Dave Crossland

I think this is fine.

@John I think its too much beaurocracy

Eris Alar

I don't know if this is anything to go on, but the Recent Activity section shows a lot of names that don't obviously look like 'real' names.

James Puckett

There have been a lot of spambots joining lately, and I took a break from culls after moving house. Yesterday I banned a bunch, and more will be banned later. I tend to sit on them a while to differentiate returning forum lurkers from spammers creating sleeper accounts and not visiting the site again.

Chris Lozos

I recently marked a post as spam because it seemed obvious. Should I be doing that though?

Stephen Coles

Yes.

James Puckett

If enough users flag spam it automatically get sent to the spam queue. This is useful when moderators aren’t watching.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

FWIW, I don't agree with making any exceptions. Every individual has a legal name, and they can use that; any associative information can be included in their profile. Best not to encourage celebrity pseudonymism and/or using a business as a veil.

Claudio Piccinini

I agree with Hrant. After all this is a "profession" forum, rather than a "leisure" one. :-)

Vasil Stanev

I agree with the previous two comments. In my experience psuedonymity has many negative effects. If need be, John Smith can be changed to John Smith - Foundryname, and that be changed again if the foundry is changed. Provided Vanilla can handle this easily and we do not end with dismantled threads.

Vasil Stanev

Also, can an account be accessed simultaneously from more than one point? A friend of mine had given his lady friend the password to a forum, and after they split up she used it to get revenge. Often there were entire threads of the user arguing with "himself". 

André G. Isaak

Vasil Stanev said:

Also, can an account be accessed simultaneously from more than one point? A friend of mine had given his lady friend the password to a forum, and after they split up she used it to get revenge. Often there were entire threads of the user arguing with "himself". 

Even if someone is your significant other there's no reason to 'share' a single account, and pretty much all online fora have 'don't give out your password' as part of their terms of service. So it's really not the forum's responsibility to deal with the above scenario.

Vasil Stanev

What I have written is 'simultaneously'. As in 'constantly logged from a desktop computer and a mobile device, editing the same post from two places'. A purely technical question. Is it possible?

Mark Simonson

It's possible. A draft is saved about once every minute while you're composing a post, so you can start in one place and continue on another (drafts are automatically loaded when you're logged in). I guess if you were editing in two places simultaneously, one of them could get overwritten, but I'm not quite sure.

Thomas Phinney

It would depend on the software, whether it allows multiple log-ins, and if so, whether both log-in locations would have access to the draft-in-progress. I am guessing the latter is unlikely. If you're curious, you could test it.

Mark Simonson

I am typically logged in on several devices at once: Desktop, laptop, two tablets, and/or a phone, so I know multiples logins is possible.

When a draft is saved (automatically or manually), the changes are written to the server. But it requires reloading the same page on other devices in order to see the changes in the draft on those devices.

If I'm working on a draft on device A, and I open the same page on device B, it loads the current draft, and it will appear the same in both places. I can continue to make changes on device A. Nothing is happening on device B, but it does an automatic save once a minute. If I then reload the page on device A, and device B has done an autosave more recently than device A, it will load the old draft, which is still current on device B.

This is all also true if the page is open on multiple windows or tabs in the same browser on the same machine or in different browsers on the same machine.

It's also not really a problem unless you reload the page while a draft of the same page is open elsewhere.

Bottom line: If you're writing a post, best not open the same page in more than one place.

AbiRasheed

I hated this policy when I first joined but I started to like it because transparency forces you to be accountable for the things you say around here. You're gonna have to think twice if not more before you say something if your name is attached to it. Also I find it useful when people give critique to know who it's coming from than some random business name. 

Adam Jagosz

Then there's the issue of the space character which is allowed in usernames here, but often intuitively omitted. As type folk, I suppose we could be more consistent on this matter?

Thomas Phinney

If somebody wants to use their foundry name, why not let them use it in conjunction with their real name? Then they get the “branding” (and helpful association), while still doing the Real Names™ thing.

So for example:
Ermin Međedović - LetterMin
John Hudson – Tiro Typeworks
Scott-Martin Kosofsky - Guy O’Teen™

This doesn't directly address whether you need a Chank Exception (which seems fine to me). Just a general idea.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

Should a discussion forum be a marketing tool?

Thomas Phinney

It's not just marketing. It's knowing a little more about who everybody is without reading their bios.

The status quo is fine for us “insiders” who know all the others within in our little TypeDrawers clique. I just wonder if something like this might be helpful to everybody else.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

What's more informative about a participant than exactly which individual they are? Is it hard to click on a name to find out associated professional information? If your company starts off as just you, but then you get a partner, do you have to change your account from your company name to yours? It's just a complexity that does more harm than good. (But frankly it's not that big a deal, and I don't mean to drain so much time.)

Tiffany Wardle

This whole thread is a study in time draining. 😏😉

Edit: Sorry had momentary flashbacks to playful banter on Typophile.