Nobody else deserves to wear that mantle since Wally has passed out of it. His shoes are too big to fill. Anyone trying would just be a mockery of a great man. Wally will be remembered by many only as the nickname WallyM7. In deference to a great man I never even got a chance to debate with, in honor of a great person so many came to love and cherish, and in respect for his family and those who knew him best, the nickname WallyM7 should be officially and respectfully retired, perhaps with a small page saying why we, the SDMB members, admins, and mods, chose to honor Wally in this way. This is a serious thread, and I think a good head count of those who want the nickname retired should post here.
Second. All in favor vote aye.
Agreed. And this is my first post ever. Appropriate, I think, that it should be in regards to someone that this community so obviously admired and adored.
Please say yes.
Absolutely.
That is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. Should we Americans stop naming all our children George because of the great George Washington too? I realize that we all miss him but there’s a time . . .
All hell, I’m not fooling anyone with that crap.
You have my vote.
WallyM7 should be retired. Any newbie daring to bear that name should fear our wrath.
I vote yes.
Absolutely.
Just a quick point,
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that all usernames were supposed to be unique. If that’s the case, no one could use WallyM7 again whether he passed away or not.
Therefore (not meaning to compare myself to Wally) I would think that my name is retired too.
Zev Steinhardt
Sounds very appropriate to me.
Perhaps the meaning is to have the “member” status changed to “Retired”.
Well, I thought this just kinda went without saying.
But here’s another issue …
It certainly isn’t outside the realm of possibility that a newbie will come along sometime, type in the user name ‘Wally’ or ‘WallyM,’ and start typing away.
I’m not sure the mods need to get into a major, ban-every-name-even-remotely-close-to-Wally’s mode. But I would see this as a bad thing, and I don’t really know what to do about it.
Perhaps an email to the newbie early on, explaining why those he’s attempting to interact with are a little off-put by his handle, would be all it would take to nudge the person into changing his name.
But what if it was a jerk who said, “Nah. Screw yas.” ?
We were discussing this in chat last night. Apparently, there was for one brief moment a copycat Wally troll in ATMB yesterday. Frankly, I think if any troll deserves to have their ISP contacted, it’s that one. I think the name should be retired so trolls don’t get it, not so a newbie doesn’t come along and use it.
But then the trolls will just use something similar. They’ve already proven they’re not below using the exact name just to piss people off. And this doesn’t just piss people off, it HURTS people.
So perhaps all the similar names SHOULD be retired. I dunno.
You know, I wanted to toss in a reply like:
Yeah, retire the :wally !
It was going to be my attempt to capture his off-handed, insulting-but-only-in-a-fun-way manner.
Can’t do it… it’s too hard and I’m too afraid of being misunderstood. Not having the big guy around is going to take some getting used to… I think I’m going to keep running into these kinds of things just when I least expect it.
Does this make sense to anyone?
I think the only thing that got me take notice of this board in the first place was Wally’s humor. No one else is worthy of holding such a great man’s legacy; I vote to retire his name.
Ya got my vote. Nuff said.
Aye.
Is there any way to write the code for this thing so that nobody can, like, do WallyM7 with a space after it or whatever? I know that’s how we got a fake matt_mcl and a couple other trolls in here.
Because you know someone would just love to come over ehre with the SN WallyM7 and a space after it and be like, “Hey, guys! The doctors were wrong! I didn’t die after all!”
Of course, said person would be ISPed, and someone who knows their computer stuff would find where they lived and get a great mob of SDMBers over there to put the little fuckhead in his/her place . . .
Sorry, getting a bit carried away. But I do think there should be a permanent thread dedicated to the memory of wally on the first main SDMB page. Something like, “Newbies, read this before proceeding.” or something like that. Am I crazy? Possible. Am I the only one of this opinion? Lordy, I hope not.
Aye says Aye.
As DB said, some horrible troll already did use Wallys name, several of us saw it. I’m afraid our reaction was , well , unfriendly to say the very least. The whole thread was taken out. It started out as a great thread asking to make the :wally smilie offical. At least that got done.
In a way I am glad, when I saw that name I almost fainted. Then I figured maybe Amy had signed on to let us know about arrangements, forgetting to check if Wally’s name or her’s was showing.
My feeling when I saw it was a troll was so bad, I cannot imagine how his family would have felt had they seen that trash.
AYE!