Ask HN: Should web services recycle usernames after 120 days of inactivity? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should web services recycle usernames after 120 days of inactivity?

If a user does not log into their account for 120 days why don't providers strip the user of their handle and release it?

I've noticed many twitter (and other services) handles are claimed but not in use.

Is it time for major providers to implement a 'use it or lose it' philosophy if a user doesn't log in every 4 months!

Kudos to Github! A few months ago I noticed a handle was taken but not in use for couple of years (no repository). Within minutes of investigating, they assigned it to me. They get it!

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If someone is looking for a specific name, it's typically because the name is publicly displayed on the service. This presents a couple of major issues.

1. Let's say someone wants your HN username, andrewhillman. You've been inactive for a few months. What do we do with your old posts and comments? Deleting all the data for inactive users seems like an awful approach. If we keep the data, you lost your username, so what's displayed beside your comments? Do we just replace your username with the word, inactive? What about your profile? If I come across your old comments, enjoy them, and want to see your profile, I obviously can't go to https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=andrewhillman any more, so where is your profile moved to?

2. People expect their identity to remain consistent. What happens if you take a season off HN since you're busy at school? Meanwhile, you have links to https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=andrewhillman on your linkedin profile, or your website, or maybe you have business cards or flyers printed with that URL. Uh oh, you come back to HN, and that profile now belongs to someone else. All those great contacts you recently made, and gave business cards to, they're browsing the HN profile for someone else, believing their opinions are your own.

Ok, now printing your HN profile URL is unlikely, but what about your Twitter? Or Facebook? Or Gmail? This could be a disaster if you have hundreds of links to your Twitter account in blog posts and comments around the internet, then you decide to abandon Twitter. Someone else takes the account name, and has a less than stellar reputation. Lots of communities will not allow you to edit posts past a certain date, so you're out of luck, and all your old data is asking people to follow you on Twitter, andrewhillman. Meanwhile, that account now belongs to someone posting NSFW images.

As someone else said, it depends on the service. In some situations you might be able to allow non-unique usernames, so you wouldn't have this problem to begin with. Another solution could be unique usernames, but linking profiles to IDs, instead of specific names. That way old links still function properly and don't change with usernames. Of course, it makes for longer and ugly URLs.

120 days seems incredibly short though. I'd say 1 year minimum before declaring an account inactive.

I was referring to accounts that were active but clearly not being used.

Hotmail used to do this (they might still). It was horrible.

About once a year or so, I'd log in to my creaky old hotmail account from the 90s to find that they'd deactivated my username for inactivity. It's still the 2nd contact for some old accounts, and the only way into MSDN, so that's not cool. The only way to turn it back on is to upgrade to whatever their current flavor of "pro" is, pay $10 for the month, then immediately cancel it.

They take the further step of completely wiping all your old email while they're at it, so you come back to an empty inbox with no hope of finding that old email you were hoping to fish out.

Rows in your database are free. Don't do this.

I kind of like this idea. I think it's terrible to have to succumb to a username like mankhool48723 when you really want something, better. If you were creating a new service today, how would you handle usernames, not about just the use-it-or-lose-it issue, but about username creation and uniqueness? Logan 6 identify please.

github does that ? a username is inactive for like 3 years but they won't give me the handle.

Yes. It was a while ago. I contacted support, made my request and minutes later I received it. I was shocked but realised they get it!

Thanks dude changed mine too :)

my new github (https://github.com/karan) was taken by another user and was inactive for 5 years. I requested it, and they deleted the account.

Nice!!! I guess you just have to ask and see what they can do for you. For the service I am building I plan to set 120 day rule. Send out message on the 60th, 90th and 110th day. If they don't log in -- bye bye account!

that really depends on the type of service it is. If it is something where user generate content on the account, then reusing usernames could be a bad idea.

I agree but it's a consumer service and the will be notified every 30 days. If not logging in then that are just wasting space!!'

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