Forum OpenACS Q&A: Why unique screen_name in users table

I think screen name should really be unique. You see there can be people with the same first and last name. If you allow the users to have a same screen name. This can happen.

• User #1: John Smith, with screen name john
• User #2: Joe bloggs, with screen name Joe
• User #3: John Smith, with screen name john

User 1 posts in a forum, User 2 replies, User 3, having the same name as User 1 posts and flames user 2. User 2 gets angry at User 1. He doesn't know that User 1 and User 3 have same names.

I have to offer the forum admin the choice to create an anonymous forum. So what shall I do to have unique aliases in the forum but not empty ones. I could go over the users table and automatically create screen names as a combination of first_names and a counter. What do you think of that? If a user wants to change his screen name he has to find then a unique one later on.

update users set screen_name = (select first_names from persons p where p.person_id = user_id) || user_id;

One more package that needs screen name is Lars Blogger.

What you can do, is when users log in to forums, you check if the screen name is empty. Then redirect to a page that says you need the screen name set up first before they can post. And of course create a hyperlink to update their screen name.

I think you can find a code snippet for this in lars-blogger package. Lars-blogger requires screen name in version 5.0.4, you might want to take a look there.