My wife mostly uses this computer (that I’m typing on now…not my usual PC), but because I logged in once or twice, she can’t register on the Straight Dope. No doubt, the system thinks I’m trying to set up a sock puppet, which I’d never do.
I emailed Lynn, Manhattan and Coldfire about this problem, but they probably won’t see the message for several hours. I’m hoping someone out there might be able to help us out before then.
there is a log out link on the main page of the SDMB
on the bottom of the page, after the list of all the forums.
click on it, and your wife can login as herself.
Did you sign out completely? I share this computer with my son who is also registered. At work I share the communal telephone computer with another Doper. There are many Dopers who share computers.
You need to go to the main forum page. Here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/
Way at the bottom, not in an obvious place, over there at the right hand corner past the last forum listed (The BBQ Pit) there are 3 hyperlinks: Log out, Mark All Forums Read, Forum Leaders.
Click on the Log Out link. You should get a message that says something like “Thank you for logging out. All cookies have been cleared.” Your wife should be able to register after you get this message.
It’s the same rigamarole. Sign in, get the e-mail, change password-- yadada, yadada.
The real problems starts when you forget to log out after your wife has used the computer and make a wonderful, insightful post under your wife’s username.
You do, however, need separate e-mail identities for the two accounts, unless things have changed in the very recent past. Two board members cannot (or at least could not) share the same e-mail account for their registration.
Yeup Polycarp. My son had to open a hotmail account to register since he couldn’t use my e-mail account.
Yeah, what they said.
Spider Woman and I share the same computer (although she rarely posts anymore) and things have gone fine.
Just be sure to log out, to save you the time from making the follow up post “Uh… that was me, not my wife, as she would have said something intelligent, not the mindless drivel that usually is associated with me.”
You can also use two separate browsers where cookies are stored separately, as long as e-mail addresses are different. Try using Mozilla or Phoenix as your secondary browser.
Does the SDMB still prohibit registration from free e-mail accounts?
Did it ever? I signed up two years ago with a Hotmail account.
Thanks everyone for your responses. Please welcome Dr. Dawn.
You don’t have to go that far. In Netscape (any version 4.x or higher, including Mozilla) you can set up separate profiles, which each have their own cookies and other settings. Go to the start menu folder for Netscape, and under “utilities”, you should see something called “User profile manager”. Run that, and it’ll set up thenew profile. Then, whenever you start up Netscape, it’ll ask you which profile you want to use.
I suspect that Internet Explorer has a similar feature, but I’m not sure how to use it.