Puddin' n' Tain...

...ask me again, I'll tell you the same.

For over a year now we've held to the policy of using real names here instead of handles or nicknames, and it seems to have served us pretty well. There's certainly less trouble than a lot of places where anonymity is the standard. I'm also not so foolish as to think that someone could just sign up and say his name was John Smith. I'm also not totally ignorant to the security of being anonymous. I do, however, have to maintain some level of sanity for the chat, and the real name policy has served us pretty well. Heck, most of us were calling each other by our real names anyway...

Here's where the dilemma begins. On the login page it clearly states: Please use a real name instead of a handle. We feel like it adds to the experience if we're not dealing with anonymous chatters. However, since turning on the registration feature there hasn't been a day that's gone by that I've not had to email a new user asking them to use their real name, or catch them in the chat and have them re-register using their name. It's a daily thing folks.

I've tried to be fairly lenient regarding nick names, and cute spellings, or abbreviations of names as long as I feel like the person isn't here just to cause trouble. So what?

Well, if you are a user that has complied willingly with the policy, and you use your real name, or at least something so doggone close we all still know who you are, how do you feel when others just don't want to do the same?

I know some of you don't care, but I know some of you would feel hurt - especially if you were asked to change from your clever handle to your real name and had done that. I'm just trying to figure out the right thing to do.

Let's face it, we don't have any other written down, hard fast rules... I never wanted any. The name policy/rule came about when we were using space that was donated to us from another party and that was his rule. When we declared independence we just kept that rule; it seemed like a good idea.

Thoughts? Ideas? Comments? Concerns? Find me in the chat, we'll talk!

-=Jim