Ask HN: Have I earned the right to edit my HN username? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have I earned the right to edit my HN username?

15 pointsbabyshake20 comments

When I first signed up for News YC as a junior in college, I gave myself one of the few throwaway account names I was using on other tech-oriented forums at the time.

Well, two and a half years later, and I'm increasingly unhappy with my username, although I know the only solution is to create another account. An alternative I'd like to propose is that after hitting a great enough amount of karma, I've earned exactly one chance to change my HN username.

There are some technical considerations. Would the old profile URL simply redirect to the new one? Perhaps it would require some refactoring of user models or queries. There may be other issues I haven't even considered.

But aside from implementation details, are there any opinions about whether or not I should be able to edit my HN name?

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I would attempt a "Fanboys" style trip to the datacenter that hosts ycombinator.com and change it yourself. I will go with you so I can add a search box. Along the way we can interrupt the diggnation and TWIT podcasts, and mock all the reddit readers.

It will be pretty sweet.

You have gone past the point of no return, embrace babyshake, be proud of it. It has brought you to where you are today.

Remember this experience the next time you have to choose a username. When I worked for Kaplan, I scheduled teachers and tutors, and I once had to tell a student that the person most directly responsible for her success on the LSAT could be reached at drmonkeystud@[schoolname].edu (changed to protect the innocent)

I'm really boring when it comes to usernames, opting for the first initial, last name, and a number at the end just in case it's taken. You won't likely grow tired of it, and there's less explaining to do.

Instead of numbers, I use my middle initial too. d=Daniel, k=Kenneth, okelley=O'Kelley.

I've found that I'm much less likely to run into any other identical usernames. In fact, when I do find that the username has been taken, it's always been because I registered for the site earlier, and it was time for a password reset.

"(changed to protect the innocent)"

Probably not well enough. I'm pretty sure I found a picture.

Yes, but you have to work out how. It is the final test of HN.

And now I'm stuck with this name because babyshake was already taken!

make a new account, leave a note in your profile saying who your other account was, sorted.

How will he port his Karma and reputation.

Specifying the link in my about section would work in most cases, but it would be somewhat kludgey.

you could choose formerlyknownasbabyshake as your username

Good advice. This is probably what I'll end up doing.

Keep the username, implement a "display name" option so nobody sees your actual username, just the name you'd like to display - but everything else stays nice and connected.

Sweet, I can't wait to change my display name to pg.

Yes. I like this option. I would just assign my real name as my display name instead, and all my URLs would remain the same.

Is there something specific that you'd miss being able to do, when going from high karma account to newbie account?

I'm pretty sure pg has changed people's usernames by request. Email him.

Actually I doubt I have. Usernames are built into all sorts of things.

I must have remembered someone that made a new username and just wrote in their profile what their old username was.

...You use auto-generated integer IDs for pagination links, but not for users? I don't mean to be disrespectful, but... it's wrong.

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