# What is an 'obvious imposter'?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-an-obvious-imposter/72392>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [July 13, 2001, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-an-obvious-imposter/72392 "2001-07-13T17:32:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![N\_A\_M](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/6de8d8/32.png) [@N\_A\_M](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N_A_M)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2001, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-an-obvious-imposter/72392/1 "2001-07-13T17:32:43Z")

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I noticed this when I took a dive in the search engine. Under some user’s name, there was the label ‘obvious imposter’, instead of ‘member’, ‘moderator’, etc… I gotta admit, I’m pretty curious about this. What, pray tell, is an ‘obvious imposter’? I assume it’s a bad thing, so how do I avoid becoming one?

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**Author:** ![zut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zut/32/2875_2.png) [@zut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zut)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2001, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-an-obvious-imposter/72392/2 "2001-07-13T17:56:06Z")

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As I recall, a while back, some person or persons were making a nuisance of themselves by signing up with usernames that were indistinguishable from other names currently in use. They did this by exploiting an interesting little feature which I won’t detail because I can’t remember if that particualar bug was fixed or not.

Anyway, the appearance of what were (apparently) members in good standing making, shall we say, out-of-character comments was confusing, to say the least. Rather than add to the confusion by labelling the imposters “banned” (as they eventually were), the administration labelled them as “obvious imposters.”

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**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2001, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-an-obvious-imposter/72392/3 "2001-07-13T23:01:35Z")

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Yes, the bug was fixed. It involved the imposters registering names that were the same as already registered names with the exception of a space before the first character. For example, ’ Derleth’ to impersonate me. This would show up as merely ‘Derleth’, the board having eaten the initial whitespace with a nice sauce. 😃 Anyway, I don’t think you can register a username with initial whitespace anymore, so the problem is solved.

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**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2001, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-an-obvious-imposter/72392/4 "2001-07-15T19:13:15Z")

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Wow! Isn’t that exactly what Ender did in _Ender’s Game_? Talk about life imitating art!

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**Author:** ![White\_Lightning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@White\_Lightning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/White_Lightning)\
**Post date:** [July 16, 2001, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-an-obvious-imposter/72392/5 "2001-07-16T08:27:24Z")

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Lovely book.