Username rules updates
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Steam, the largest gaming community of all time(?): Change your name as often as you want whenever you want with no restriction.
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Clasic mods having mental breakdown over funny renames moment
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I think a good middle ground solution that gives the best of both worlds would be to show two names in the lobby, one chosen freely changed name and another permanent handle. Here's a mockup of what I'm envisioning:
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@archsimkat said in Username rules updates:
I think a good middle ground solution that gives the best of both worlds would be to show two names in the lobby, one chosen freely changed name and another permanent handle. Here's a mockup of what I'm envisioning:
This would solve a lot of technical problems in the long run.
He said, "I've been to the year 3000
Not much has changed, but they live underwater
And your great-great-great-granddaughter
Is playin' FAF, playin' FAF" -
@archsimkat that kinda kills the need for names, why even use them if theres a handle that wont change
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@snoog steam is more of a alias as you can't changes the name you signed up with.
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Thats hybrid not bully dude!¡!!!
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I think having a user name that is use technical stuff that you can't change but then have the ability to have an alias that you can rename every month or what Evey is decided.
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I think it's obvious the best solution is to just have a FaFID, something akin to a SteamID, or even use the linked SteamID. Obviously that means work for some contributors. But it doesn't seem like there's a solution that will please everyone without some work.
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@ftxcommando I was ruminating on this, and I think the impersonation renaming fun times are worthwhile. Perhaps the rule can be amended to require a complaint against the impersonator when the impersonated player is active, but if the player is inactive then no complaint is required.
It's an instance where I think the community can be relied upon to pass that information around--"hey this one is impersonating you are you buddies or..?". If the original player can't be contacted, then it's obviously a problem.
@snoog Valve is a multi-billion-dollar company, has the moderation muscle to match, and most pointedly wouldn't give a single stainless-steel fuck about ~20 people complaining if they identified that a change like this needed to be made.
Re: permanent handle + display name--if it solves all kinds of problems then it feels like the best solution. Only thing is the lobby aesthetics with showing both are a little off ("you don't get it man I want to be TheWheeler"), maybe we could show the permanent handle in a tooltip instead of having it always displayed?
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@archsimkat said in Username rules updates:
I think a good middle ground solution that gives the best of both worlds would be to show two names in the lobby, one chosen freely changed name and another permanent handle. Here's a mockup of what I'm envisioning:
This looks disgusting
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Wow that was a lot of posts to read with very little actual discussion. Anyway here is my attempt to contribute to the parts of actual constructive discussion.
It’s even created issues for moderation, where reports for one person were meant for another player, or creating additional work because a user in a screenshot has changed their name four times since, or even it’s not the player they think but a username that looks identical.
FAF already uses a player ID, that's how you keep all the account info when you rename. When the mod team has issues, because there are ambiguous reports then we should talk about how we can base reports more on the account ID than the name. Whenever you make a report by rightclicking a username we could internally use the ID to prevent moderation problems with renames or similar names.
The rule regarding user-impersonation in particular has been criticized as vague and applied unequally, which has prompted us to review it with the moderation and administrative teams.
The attempt to remove ambiguity from the rules didn't really work, because we still have "Are difficult to distinguish from other usernames or otherwise too similar to other usernames" in the rules. That's still ambiguous. I seriously don't know where this rule draws the line. Is TheWheelie and Wheeler too similar or not? How can I as a user determine if I am breaching the rule?
Usernames that are difficult to distinguish from other usernames may no longer be used. This includes usernames that exploit visually similar characters, such as 'l', 'I', '1', 'O', and '0', or are otherwise intentionally designed to be difficult to read.
I think I understand the intention of this rule, but the way it is worded is not optimal. I am not sure what the "designed to be difficult to read" part is supposed to mean or which problem this is trying to solve. Maybe change the rule to something like
- Usernames that are visually identical to other usernames by exploiting visually similar characters are not allowed.
We will be limiting the ability to change your username to once per year. We will maintain the current policy of making previously used usernames unusable for six months, meaning that another player may not immediately pick up the name that has now been freed up. This grace period will give the community some time to get used to seeing players under a new name, and helps mitigate player-impersonation. Be aware that this means that changing your username might mean that you lose that name permanently: your old username will become available several months before you are able to rename again.
I understand the 6 month grace period and I agree with it. However the increase of the rename period to 12 months seems overly drastic and lacks good justification. Why do we need this change that you run the risk to permanently lose your original name? I don't see any reason why this would help anybody.
The rename period seems to be the main thing people have an issue with in this thread and increasing the period can only ever mitigate issues, but not eliminate them. There is some explanation, but it is quite vague. From the given explanation I don't really see why a change that affects the players so much is needed. Can't we limit rename confusion with the other rules for example the banning of identical names?In general the rules should specify better when action will be taken. From what I read on discord it seems to be an unwritten rule that derivative names (like all the wheelies in this thread) can be punished, but only if the original name owner makes a report. This seems like a good rule, but I don't see this in the new rules. This is also relevant for other areas, for example that in-game misbehaviour can only be reported by people in the game and not outsiders.
One last thing: Discussion along the lines "do you need this feature to have fun" doesn't lead anywhere. There is hardly anything that is required to have fun. I couldn't justify why we need a faf-memes channel, but it would be sad to see it go with the justification that there were people not behaving in the channel so it is easier for moderation to remove it. It's a similar thing here. If the current situation creates issues for the moderation team then we need to talk about it, but I didn't see much of that in the justification of the change, or not detailed enough to be able to discuss possible alternatives to the current rule change.
The ability to have fun interactions with others is important for a community and the rules that we have should have clear justification why they are needed, so we can have the minimum of rules required to have an enjoyable community. "We think it is very important that usernames are unique and easy to read" is too vague for me to justify a rule that limits everyone in choosing their name. -
@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:
Usernames can be renamed:
Once every year
Once a year seems too long. Was there a reason it's not once a month?
We'd like feedback on:
When renaming an account is required due to rule breaking, should the account be locked until the account owner contacts the moderation team, or should the account be reverted to the last used acceptable username?
Revert to last used seems easier for everyone involved. And lock it for a short length of time (a week perhaps?), to hopefully prevent them further abusing the ability to name themselves.
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@arran said in Username rules updates:
@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:
Usernames can be renamed:
Once every year
Once a year seems too long. Was there a reason it's not once a month?
We'd like feedback on:
When renaming an account is required due to rule breaking, should the account be locked until the account owner contacts the moderation team, or should the account be reverted to the last used acceptable username?
Revert to last used seems easier for everyone involved. And lock it for a short length of time (a week perhaps?), to hopefully prevent them further abusing the ability to name themselves.
That is exactly the logic before this change (username is reserved for 6 months though IIRC)
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I was considering writing a lengthy response but @BlackYps summed up everything I wanted to say basically.
If there are issues with distinguishing users, we should use the user ID anyway. That's what it's for.The rules regarding impersonations and making similar names to somebody else should be more clear.
- You shouldn't be allowed to create a name that is indistinguishable from Admins/Mods etc.
- If you create a nickname that is copying/attempting to impersonate another player and said player has an issue with it and reports it then mods should force the player to rename.
- Other than that you should be free to choose whatever (unique) nickname (that isn't breaking standard rules) you want.
The limit of 12 months is IMO pretty insane and doesn't solve the underlying issues anyway. It should be reverted to the original 1 month.
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I think the community has spoken on what they think of the name change rules.
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Tagada for president
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We managed to spark some activity around these changes and have been following the discussions here and elsewhere in the community. We want to thank those who have provided constructive feedback so far, and hopefully any other constructive feedback after this post.
Your comments are taken into consideration and we aim to share our thoughts and more details regarding these changes in a few days.
Best regards,
FAF Moderation Team -
Bask has made a valid point that the rename cooldown should be shorter than the "owned by another player" cooldown, otherwise it's a dicey proposition to ever get a name back that you had before.
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I was watching a replay yesterday when I spotted "TheWheelie" on one of the teams. Well, it sure looked like "TheWheelie" to me.
2000 rating."Has he had a string of really bad results, to bring him down to a 2000?" I thought to myself. He certainly didn't play like "TheWheelie" that I've seen on several Gyle casts and multiple Jagged Appliance streams.
Checked the name history. It was a totally different player altogether.If I was TheProperWheelie, I'd be feeling irked at someone using my name, or such a close resemblance to my name.
So I can understand the reasoning behind limiting how often players can change their name. And how close a match they can have.
But then again if someone copied my name it wouldn't bother me as I'm an incompetent & infrequent player.
And then again, we can't have 1 rule for the well known player names and one for the lesser known players.
So I can see both sides of this.
One of those where I'm happy to shrug my shoulders and go with whatever the admins decide on this.
