Ok, I just need to ask everyone here how they feel about this. I suppose we could end up making a poll.

Anyway, my question is about aliases (if you couldn't already tell). I just don't understand why we need them, or why people want them. They clutter pages, confuse people, and contribute (however negligibly) to bandwidth and space issues. I think you should be given one username. If you wish to change it, fine. But I don't see why we need 2-3 different names for each person.

What are your guy's thoughts on the matter?

-Stu

Agreed. Nobody needs more than one username for any reason. -- ij

Yeah, we talked about this a bit in WikiIdeas too. It should be easy to convince users that currently have them to get rid of them because we figured out how to modify the display of links like this: ((someusername|some thing else that isn't someusername)). Now they can be as many "different" names as they want, and it will still be linked to their userpage. It really is a perfect solution. Now we just need to go through and change them. I'll do it this weekend, if that's cool. -- Tom


Hey I'll tell ya what...I'll help ya out El Tom-o.
- Agent "the yellow dart" Seethroo
^
Cool nickname! 5-10 extra points!

Yeah, it shouldn't be too hard. We just have to do a text search for "((da princess))" and then change them all to "((PrincessOfStrongbadia|da princess))". (Just to pick one for an example, no hard feelings Mrs. Bad/princess/ObsessionalConfessional/da princess.) -- Tom

Oh, one other thing. We are going to have to make sure users don't set an alias as their username in their "Preferences." I don't know how that's going to happen, other then putting a friendly note on their respective userpage telling them to change it. -- Tom


That's about how I felt. Glad to see that I am not the only one. :) If you want to change the current pages, go right on ahead. I will just keep an eye out for new ones... aaaaaannnnnndd BALEETE them. -The stu'ninator

I think some simple application of threats of violence should do the trick. But if that doesn't work, we can just do like you said. All friendly-like.

~ Agent "really, I'm not THAT violent" Seethroo

Nah... we don't need violence. Just...... .... BALEETION. - man how I love that word

All my aliases are belong to MATT!!? I guess thats ok... Crap

We should be able to put short forms for our name because it might be a long name and typing "Gravy Train Captian|GTC" defeats the purpose but it should just be short forms.
~~ GTC

If your username is always going to say "GTC" then you should just change it to GTC in your preferences, make GTC your one and only userpage, and do ((GTC|Gravy Train Captain)) when you want to show the longer version. -- InterruptorJones

And really, are you wasting so much time that you can't write your full user name?
-The Brothers E

Okay! For those of you that are going to be fixing aliases: You have to fix all of the links to that page. This is the most important part. Any one can just delete a page. But the work that goes into re-linking is the hard part. -- Tom

Yeah. I had to change like 36 or so pages that had Agent on em. If I had to do it, then everyone should as well. ~ Agnet Soothree

Yeah, I guess I don't really need to shorten my name. I will change the links. --the grapefruit that is dark

I think that the ((realusername|othername)) system is not that good and is confusing, and doing that system with the | would mean it takes longer to type your username with your alias, and I always thought that making aliases was to save time typing. Examples:
AgentSeethroo --> Agent
PrincessOfStrongbadia --> Princess
So it would be better to have the one username for everywhere, and not make other pages linking to your alias.
But if you are going to use the ((realusername|othername)) system, please don't use it in the polls! ~Rainer~

I agree with the using the shortest version of your name, and then when you want to do your 'full' username, do the realusername othername style -- ((Lord Karkon))

I agree with using your real user name in the polls, but i think if ppl want to waste time typing in ((username|some realli long name)) they should be able to. I mean when you scroll over the link to their page, you can see who it is at the bottom of your screen. -ImWastingMyPreciousTimeTypingInThisOtherName

This really dosn't matter. I mean we can do this: (Mysterious-Stanger| Mysterious "The guy next-door" Stranger). And that doesn't really count as a problem.
- Mysterious "The other guy nextdoor" Stranger

Ok. Here's the thing. Policy has changed, and aliases need to be BALEETED! Jones, Tom, and I have been removing any aliases we find, and I plan to continue doin' it. It's not that big a deal. Seriously. CONFORM!!! Agent "not too frickin' lazy to type crap out" Seethroo

Arg. Just as I feared, this is not going as I planned. I just finished fixing all of the aliases for PrincessOfStrongbadia. If you take a quick look over at RecentChanges, you'll be able to see that I went to every single page that had either a "da princess" or a "princess" or a "Mrs. Bad" or an "ObsessionalConfessional" on it and changed it to either ((PrincessOfStrongbadia|da princess)), ((PrincessOfStrongbadia|princess)), ((PrincessOfStrongbadia|Mrs. Bad)), or ((PrincessOfStrongbadia|ObsessionalConfessional)). I also left a nice note on PrincessOfStrongbadia's user page. I even moved the comments from each alias page to a subpage of her userpage. This is how fixing aliases must be done. Simply deleting the alias page itself is not acceptable. In addition, I have noticed some users taking it upon themselves to fix their own aliases. This is fantastic. -- Tom

I'll tell you what. I'm lazy. I don't want to type a long UserName? every time. Someone do me the favor of telling my how to change my username, and I'll kindly shut up about the whole thing. -M'fox

Okay, Mechafox. Here is what you have to do. I'm assuming that you want to change your name to "M'fox". First, you need to change your name in "Preferences" to "M'Fox". Then you need to move your userpage contents from the "Mechafox" page to the new "M'fox" page. That's the easy part. Then you need to go through the entire Wiki and find every instance of the old "Mechafox" and change it so that it links to the "M'fox" page. The best way to do this is by using the search feature down on the bottom of every Wiki page. Now, this search goes through the text of every document like you see it in the edit box, so a search for "Mechafox" and a search for "((Mechafox))" would give different results. Also, remember that a bunch of places have your name linked as "((Mechafox|M'fox))", so those would need to be fixed as well to just plain "((M'fox))". Good luck, and I'll see what I can do to help. (Though I won't start until you confirm that it is in fact "M'fox" that you want to change your name to.) -- Tom

Okay, M'Fox. This has all been done for you. All you have to do is change your name in "Preferences" to "M'Fox". -- Tom


Okay, to solve some of the confusion, I'm starting a checklist here to see what still needs to be done. (There's probably more, feel free to add.) When someone finishes with one, just move it and leave a note with your name.

TO DO

S Song
Mechafox Omega
HomeschoolDJ
SibbieSong
Agent9
StrongBadZone22

DONE

Warmaster129 -- Jweb Guru
The Fox -- ?
Sibbie S -- Jweb Guru
da princess -- Tom
princess -- Tom
Mrs. Bad -- Tom
ObsessionalConfessional -- Tom
DG -- Dark Grapefruit
Agent -- AgentSeethroo
BlinkDragonman -- JestersOfTheMoon
BlinkDragonman (you missed a bunch, but I got 'em) -- AgentSeethroo
M'fox -- Tom
dog -- Tom
Huttah93 -- Tom
MechaFox -- Tom