Once the new site layout and design has gone live on most of the pages on the site (as seen here), then I'll be working on making it so that users have the ability to alter many aspects of their profile. Now one of the big things I plan to do is to all users to change their username but it'll cost them probably 1000 Viz * their user level (your user level can be found in your profile). I have by far the highest user level so it'd cost me for example 292,000 Viz to change my username. For those who don't know, your user level is based on your post count and how long you've been registered on the site. I think the Viz price being based on this is perfect because the higher your user level, the more well known you are and the more well known you are, the more complications there are with having your username changed. Having a high Viz price will also help reduce the amount of times a user changes their name.

So my question is, how should I go about username changes? Should I make it so that all current names are your "username" and what you'd be adding/changing is a "screen name"? In this situation, you'd log in with your username but your screen name is what users would see. If they hover over your name or go to your profile, then they'd be able to see your username. In this situation, summoning a user name and a screen name would both work.

Or should I make it so that when you change your name, it completely changes and there's no trace of your old user name? Or maybe I'd make it so that the site keeps track of your previous names and displays all of your past user names similar to what steam does.

I'm open to ideas and I want to take which ever route seems most logical.

Davideo7 : Something like what Steam does would sound the best, but that would get really confusing when youre trying to look up someones posts or whatnot. Maybe something that's more like an official Nickname. Login stays the same, and similar to what you have with the tiny userpics, maybe on someones profile both names will be displayed. WHat if somebody had the ability to buy another name but then switch between the two at will and have both display?

As someone whose memory is absolutely awful, I'm always tempted to lean towards the option that requires remembering less information. I think it also might be worthwhile making the past names list feature able to toggle from public to private for people who don't want to be associated with a previous name.



Davideo7 : Also wouldn't the first option mean that every present Vizzed member would have to come up with another name? 

Edit: Saw you answered my second question already in the first post~

I think we can do something similar to what DeviantART does. What they do is that you can be able to change your username once every 6 months. I think we could go with 3 username changes per 6 months.

Also within a month after the username has been changed, it will say "Formally known as [the last username]", like for an example, if I change it to "The IB", it would say "Formally known as IgorBird122"

You can still have the same amount of stuff, stats, and everything, but under your new username, but old summons wont be changed but redirected to your new username.

Those are my ideas.

I like this idea, I would say make it a full change but keep a list of previous alias in the profile.
Namco
Previous Jimbo
Previous Nabisco

also maybe have a kind of limit, one a month, once every 60 days. Because you would want to keep track of who they are and were because you wouldnt want to lose track of a troll.

I like the idea of allowing a full username change, but in a user's profile, it mentions all of his/her previous usernames. That way users wouldn't be too confused if someone well-known changed their username. And also, if someone summoned a user with his/her old username, there should also be a way for the summon to still work. But at the same time, you would still login with your default (original) username. And if you hover over a user's username, it still shows their original username for quick reference.

And all previously used usernames from all users shouldn't be usable by any other user. So for example, if I were to change my username from "mohammedroxx3" to "mohamroxx3", no other user will be allowed to change their username to "mohammedroxx3" or "mohamroxx3" (except me if I wanted to change it back but it should still cost viz). This is to prevent users from possibly abusing the system. And there should be a daily limit on this just in case someone is a new user and has a lot of Viz.

zanderlex : I'm not so sure I'd like the idea of someone having multiple display names that they could switch between whenever they want. That'd make things even more confusing.

NVTaks : No the "screen name" would just be optional. If we took that route then the current user names would also be their screen name if they didn't go to change it.

IgorBird122 : I'm fine with allowing up to 3 user name changes per 6 months but I'm still wanting to charge a lot of Viz for it. There's a lot of users on vizzed and it's hard to keep track of everyone, especially for me since I'm in charge of the entire site and respond to a lot of users and have been actively part of the community since the beginning; I have a lot of user names I have to try and remember. The more users who change their names, the harder it is for me to remember who is who. In the past during the few times that I did allow user name changes, I pretty much viewed the user as a completely different user once their name got changed.

Darthdaishi : The 2 problems I can think of with the 2nd possibility that I mentioned are: 1. Summoning or looking up a user. If you didn't know a user got a name change or went to look them up, you wouldn't be able to find them. 2. Some features refer to a user based on their ID and name their name so when a user gets a user name change with that way, their various stats would completely start over.

mohammedroxx3 : If the site kept track of every user name a user has used then it just doesn't seem realistic to keep all of those user names reserved and it'd be pretty difficult to code it so that each of those names could be summoned. Also, when someone is creating a user name, they'd want to be able to search the memberlist page to make sure potential names that they want aren't already used. If someone had a ton of names that they've gone by, those wouldn't come up in the memberlist.

Davideo7 : Yeah, a constant name change would be confusing for you, and everyone else, personally, I wouldnt change my name. It is who I am known by. I wouldnt expect someone to keep up with every name change I do if I did it every other month. Seems like their would have to be limits.

I've been on other sites where you were allowed a name change once in X time. I don't remember how much X was, but we definitely should give X a value, like IB said.

I don't think we should keep track of all the name changes, just do as David said: one thing is the username you registered with and another thing is your screen name. We only have to keep track of the username used at registration, that way we could easily recognize everyone no matter how many times they changed their screen name. 

I'm in for the first option: a login username and a changeable screen name you can modify every X time.

Davideo7 : Yeah, I think with 3 change attempts (1 major change and 2 minor edits) sounds good because a user could make a typo with their username and they don't want to be stuck with that username for the time being, and having 6 months in between name changes would do good so that way, users don't steal any usernames.

I think I was one of the first to get my name changed with this system.

In my opinion 3 changes/ 6 months is a bit too much. I'm honestly fine with 1 change/ year. Your username is something other people know you by, and changing it that frequently is just going to cause confusion.

I also think users should still submit a reason why they want their username changed. There should be less restrictions of who is qualified for a change, but you shouldn't be allowed to change it "just for lolz".

I'm going to agree with Furret that 3 changes per 6 months is too frequent. Once per 6 months, or once per year makes more sense to me.
I would almost like the first option more, if only because it seems really simple. Any complaints I can find would probably happen no matter how a name change how done and would probably get sorted out fairly quickly.