Special Name-Change Thread

[Rosà 37]

I've been thinking about forum admins, while making this topic. Instead of PM-ing about name change, let people write their old nicknames, and after "--->" the new one. I think it will make life a little easier and forum admins wouldn't receive new PMs about name change, which obviously clog their private message box. How do you see it, guys?

[Champ213 1858]

Dunno. Name changes don't really happen that often that they "clog my private message box". I would say that I maybe get one or two requests per month. I figure that a name change thread where people only need to post would actually create more work, because it seems that the "barrier" of leaving a post could be smaller than actually pm'ing an admin privately. And there are more obvious advantages of the PM system:

- When I get a PM I always immediately see the request. I usually fulfill name change requests within 24 hours, at best it may take up to 48 hours. Posts on a thread, which we would have to check constantly, would be much easier to overlook, so it might take longer until a request gets fulfilled.

- We cannot guarantee that you get the name you want. It may be taken already. If that happens, we would have to get back to the person and they have to pick a new name or stick to their current one, and these discussions would bloat the name change thread with confusing and unnecessary information. It's seems much neater to me to handle this business behind the scenes (ie. via PM) and only announce the final name in a locked thread, as we do now.

- Lastly, it could encourage even more people to randomly change their names whenever they feel like it. I have no problems with name changes, but I think they should be taken with caution. If it happens too often it's quite confusing for the rest of the users.

Anyway, I appreciate your input but I think the PM system is more convinient for us. And writing a PM doesn't take much longer than making a post, so I don't think it's overly inconvinient for users either.

Or in other words: if it ain't broken, don't fix it.