Uhh, I wouldn't allow them (well at least not as extensively as it's being practised right now), it's the admins who fulfill name change requests.

I meant admins, anyway.

I think it would be nice to have a custom username that could override your official username. What would happen is that whereever your temp name would be displayed you'd have a dot or something to indicate that it's a custom username and if you hovered over it with the mouse or clicked it, it would show the official username.

Here let me show you:

http://img239.imageshack.us/img239/5492/blank8pr.gif
http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/8...amplep13rw.png http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/1...amplep22dz.png


What do you guys think?

I like the idea of having the real username in the little dropdown box, but if you're suggesting we have free reign over what our username is, I think that's going a bit far. I don't want to see everyone with some completely random name whenever they feel like it, even if there's a mention of their real name somewhere.

Look, if you people can't recognize a certain member after a name change, chances are that they're not worth your attention in the first place anyway.

(oh snap)

While I wouldn't enjoy an MSN style of constant name changes, I'd think people would have some self control. And this way if they had a custom username they'd still be able to login with their official username and admins wouldn't have to change names back and forth all the time. Like blah said, if we lose track of people somehow through this as if avatars, sigs, writing styles, and keeping in touch with members don't allow us to tell members with new names apart then they're probably not worth your concern anyway.

So blah, would this be possible? It certainly would relieve admins from having to do a ton of name changes, theme weeks would have the custom username option for fun times, and it would be much easier to keep track of who is who.

Also, wouldn't it be hilarious to go into a thread where everyone has their custom username as Tails? ='D

One of the message board packages (or perhaps several) have the ability to have a "display name" and a "username." The username is permanent and always displayed in the profile but the display name can be changed by the user at will. This is along the same lines as what Acer was talking about and would make theme weeks even easier and slightly less confusing! I am all for it.

It's easy enough to add another field to the profile, and then that field can be edited by the user. It should also be easy enough to edit the postbit template so that it displays the "custom name" rather than the username. I don't think technical barriers are what pose a problem here... it could be done.

I believe it would be quite easy, but then I'm not the one who would have to do it, so that's an easy thing for me to say. I've not had chance to play around with the guts of vBulletin in a few months, but theoretically it should be a piece of cake to have the postbit display a custom field in place of the username. Then, when you click the profile, it would show you the username. I'm pretty sure the drop-down menu would show the real username too.

The obvious solution is to have an admin-controllable option to turn these custom usernames on and off for theme weeks. When there isn't a theme going on, then the custom usernames are off to prevent mass stupidity.

I'm not saying that I entirely disagree, but why? When you can see the real name at the click of a mouse, what exactly would be the problem?

Well if someone abused it we could always just take the privilege away or something.

Actually, I really like Ultima's idea. If that could be implemented, as well, I'd be all for Acer's idea.

GFF is finished.

Well, considering that you can just turn Custom Display names off, I see no need to disable this, even after theme weeks. After all, a single click reveals the real name of the user, WHY DO YOU NEED TO BE SO FUCKING LAZY?

also bump ftl