Forum OpenACS Development: Re: Screen name / real name parameter

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30: Re: Screen name / real name parameter (response to 29)
Posted by Benjamin Bytheway on 10/04/03 12:31 AM
I wish this discussion had received this much attention a few months ago.

In retrospect, the solution I came up with and implemented is insufficent.  With external authentication, we now have 3 main possibilities for what name the user should go by: Real Name(with all it's variations), Username, and screen name.

I think all of these variations should be user-configurable.  If a user really does want to be know by his real name, instead of his screen-name, let him do it.  Likewise, if his username is already generic and anonymous enough, why require a seperate screen name?

My previous work put all of these decisions in the hands of the administrator, I think they should be up to the user with the administrator setting the defaults.

Thoughts?

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33: Re: Screen name / real name parameter (response to 30)
Posted by Lars Pind on 10/04/03 12:37 AM
I think they should be set by the administrator, so it's consistent. It would be very confusing if each user is identified differently.

There's an issue with username vs. screen_name, which is that screen_name is unique site-wide, whereas usernames are only unique per authenticating authority, because we cannot control these. So there might be two users with the same username, if you have multiple authorities configured.

But right, for single-authority-sites, they'd be equivalent.

/Lars

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34: Re: Screen name / real name parameter (response to 30)
Posted by Lars Pind on 10/04/03 12:38 AM
Also, regarding the attention this is getting ... it's a volunteer effort, so you can't do much to force anyone to pay attention, you can only encourage ... Such is life :)