Let’s say I go to a regional gathering of Dopers. There, I am introduced to individual Dopers. (Let’s use ColdFire as an example.) What’s the protocol? Do I continue calling ColdFire “ColdFire” the entire time? Or does ColdFire tell me his name IRL?
When will the New York City Dopers next get together? Yes, I am aware there’s something going on in Brooklyn, but I’ll be on a cruise to Halifax that week.
Apparently it has a bit to do with what your IRL name is. At this past weekend’s Las Vegas gathering people were generally called by their real names, with the exceptions that people called techie both that and “Liz” about equally and I remained “beatle” to most.
Usually, you ask the person what they want to be called, and go with that.
Generally, though, I call people by their usernames or some variant thereof (for example, I generally call RTFirefly “Rufus”, and Satan shall likely always Satan be).
People usually let you know their real name, and whether they prefer one over the other. If a 'doper does not answer to the sdmb name, try the other one.
Please do NOT use his SDMB name when it comes to the sentences like, “Ready for another enema, Coldfire?” Or even, “Coldfire, you shore have a purty mouth.”
At the DFW meetings, we tend to keep using our SDMB names, or shortened versions. They call my Ag, usually. I wonder if they even know my real name? I don’t think it’s ever come up.
At CopeDope we called each other by our user names, I’m not sure why. When I go to DubDope, I absolutely refuse to call John Larrigan Twistyskates or whatever nonsense he’s taken to calling himself. And I shall have to call Ruadh by her real name because I don’t know how to pronounce Ruadh. And I have to say Coldclogs real name provided us with lots of giggles at CopeDope, it’s just fun to say.