Q: Do we allow users to change their vanity name, or is it fixed?
A: For MVP, fixed. In the future, I don't know.
Q: If people can change their vanity name, what do we want to do
with
the old name? Allow someone else to claim it, or keep it as a
redirect
to their new name?
A: I see arguments both ways. If we allow others to claim it, links
to
vanity names lose their permanence. If we keep it as a redirect,
it's
possible to abuse the system and take up large numbers of available
vanity names. It's also easier to run out of (good) names, and there
might (?) be confusion if user A changes their vanity name and user
B
takes user A's old name. These problems are solvable, but they add
additional complexity.
Q: If people can't change their vanity name, what's the point in
having
a separate vanity name?
A: Well, a login name might be something ugly, or it might be their
email address, which we don't want to *require* people to expose.
Another implementation is Twitter or reddit's: your log in name and
your vanity name are the same thing, and are linked to an email
address
(which you can use to recover your username if you lose it). Twitter
allows you to modify this name ("username"), reddit does not. When
you
change your Twitter username, as expected (since they're the same
thing) it changes both your login name and your vanity name. It does
not leave behind any redirect trail.
Generally, I don't like the idea of being able to change your login
name. I do like the idea of being able to change my vanity name (at
some point I want better than smichel17), but I don't like the idea
of
others being able to change their vanity names, which is confusing
for
me (from experience -- League of Legends lets you change your vanity
name (there called a "Summoner Name") and when people do that on the
forums, it can be confusing to figure out who is who anymore). I
don't
know how the way people use Snowdrift.coop will differ from the way
people use the systems I've previously mentioned, so we may not
need to
worry about the same things.
