Re:Let’s talk about usernames
by tjoff on Monday February 12, 2018 @12:00PM
(#16359959)
In the real world we have faces/voices/personalities etc. and an insane amount of context that we associate with a person, in most cases two people can have and use the same name and there won't be any confusion because the context is trivial. In written form this information is greatly reduced. This gets increasingly apparent on the internet where the number of participants can be huge and the time spent with each one minimal.
Your examples are games, which greatly limit interactions both in number of people and in time. I don't jump in and offer help in a game that ended 4 years ago. Everything is already in a very specific context.
It is often desirable for the username to be consistent across the entire site, if you recognize the username you remember past interactions and conversations which gives you a better context. This is a valuable part of a community.
Sure, there are places where you deliberately want to maintain pseudo-anonymity, where you'd get a new username in each discussion. But that's something else.
Your examples are games, which greatly limit interactions both in number of people and in time. I don't jump in and offer help in a game that ended 4 years ago. Everything is already in a very specific context.
It is often desirable for the username to be consistent across the entire site, if you recognize the username you remember past interactions and conversations which gives you a better context. This is a valuable part of a community.
Sure, there are places where you deliberately want to maintain pseudo-anonymity, where you'd get a new username in each discussion. But that's something else.