Suppose your subscription ran out and then you waited a while, perhaps months or years before renewing. Is there a rule saying you have to use your old LogIn name?
Yes. From the registration agreement:
and:
That said, you can request a user name change. So, as an example, if you originally signed up as Outis and let your account expire, pay the money to become current and then contact an administrator to have your name changed to, say, Odysseus.
Is that the official stance, or your reading of it? I don’t read it that way at all. (Possibly, I’m not reading the question closely enough.)
A paid membership is, by definition, not a guest membership. The section I listed under ‘Also:’ then doesn’t apply. (I appreciate your thoroughness, but the OP is from a member.)
As for the first part of the membership agreement, I don’t see how letting a membership lapse and the then coming back with a different screen name violates the letter of the agreement; one user, one screen name. I can see how playing musical screen names once a year could be a problem, but the agreement addresses sock puppetry, not return members. IMO.
If I remember correctly, you need to register whether you are a guest (free, trial basis) or a member (paid). Once you register you have to abide by the terms of the agreement, regardless.
Skip is correct; it’s one registration to a person period. When we find someone who has more than one registration – one old, one new – we merge them together under one name, the name you choose.
If you want to change your user name, we’re happy to change it for you, we won’t make you carry a screen name you don’t like anymore. That being said, we feel names have meaning and are not to be changed like this season’s fashions, neither, so choose wisely, choose well.
We expect some continuity in screen names and do not want our users to abandon the old to take up the new. There have been some situations where this has actually been allowed to happen, but it is rarely granted. There would need to be compelling reason for such a change. I do not want to get into details and I’m sure not going to name names here – that’s the whole point – but there have been situations where for legal and/or security reasons it was appropriate to let someone abandon an old name and take up a new one. It does not happen often.
I guess my point was that some parts of that agreement refer specifically to guest memberships and attempts to get “free” membership by constantly getting new guest memberships.
Now that’s what I call clarification! And with authority!
How could I have ever thought otherwise? I was wrong to challenge your interpretation skip. I just parsed it differently.
You’re exactly correct. We do greatly discourage serial guest memberships.
There are some people that got it into their heads that when we went to subscriptions and they didn’t immediately sign up that they lost their old screen names. This is not true. They merely lost the ability to make posts, to search, etc., member functions. If they subscribe, it all comes back. AND they can have a name change if they like, that’s fine with us.
I know this is going to border on tetrapyloctomy, but, lets say someone let’s their subscription lapse. Then they re-subscribe but, before any postings, they have their screen name changed. Then they go about their business as if they were someone else; base sock puppetry.
Would there be some notice that they had done those things, or is it enough that the mods know who they are?
When your screen name is changed, all of your old posts will show up with the new name attached.
There’s two or three different scenarios for “name changes” here, and perhaps there’s some confusion.
(a) A paid member wants to change their screen name. No problem, notify us, and we’ll handle it, as TubaDiva said above. No need to let registration drop or anything of the sort. Most any time, we’re happy to comply. [Exception: if this is your sixth change in as many months…]
(b) A guest tries to sneak around having to pay, by signing up each month as if he were a “new” guest under a different name. This is miserly (c’mon, it’s less than the cost of two movie tickets), theivery, and a violation of rules. The jerk, when caught, will be banned and have all his prior posts “disappeared.”
© A member goes away for a while, lets membership lapse, then comes back and re-ups. We want them to use their old identity, not to register under a new name. Sometimes, they do register under a new name; perhaps they forgot their old password, or something. We’re pretty understanding that this wasn’t deliberately trying to be a sock puppet, this was just being forgetful. When the situation is found, we’ll merge the two names. [As TubaDiva notes, there are some exceptions to this for exceptional circumstances. But they’re few and far between.]
That help?
And you will have always been at war with Eastasia.
Yep.
</table>
<h1>Hello</h1>
<table><td><tr>