Username Taken

[Reverie]

Often times on smaller or just starting out communities you don't find your typical username taken. For example, mine is not a common username on forums. However, when I used to be on a niche specific forum and I used a popular name I started having to add numbers or symbols in order to register with something similar to the name.

As an administrator, have you ever had someone register, but then reach out saying they wanted "xyz" username but it was taken by someone who hasn't been online in a year or longer? Would you ever consider changing the original person's name to something so the new user could use it? Would you reach out to the original and let them know someone is interested in their name? Or do you not even mess with that and tell the newer user sorry, but this is taken?

 

[Ravenfreak]

I never had this issue come up before on a forum for myself or members, but I had to change the name of both of my Youtube channels because someone else used the usernames I wanted or typically use. That's how I ended up with the name "Sonikku1011" for my main channel, it fits my personality though since I do hack the 8-bit Sonic titles and the numbers can represent binary, even though that's not what I was going for originally I just picked those numbers since I needed to add numbers. xD

 

[Sinistra]

I really don't have this problem on most forums because Sinistra is so unique it's mainly things like consoles, emails, and some not all anime communities have to put numbers or symbols if my go-to alterations don't work I will use another username

 

[Dismal_Bliss]

We delete accounts that have posted no content and don't come back, freeing up the username.

 

[Darth Cognus]

My experience with 'usurption' is on different software than forums but the practice in that case was to notify the account being 'usurped', give it a week or so, rename that account as above and hand over the name if it was not heavily used in the first place and had been unused for a long time. As I deal tend to work with older or more custom boards otherwise, I have little experience with name reuse on forums as it tends to involve database tinkering or other scary steps that mean it's not worth the hassle. If it's more feasible with the software you're using and doesn't involve playing with the database though, I don't see why not.

 

[Empire]

I never had that before on my end, I had the same person asking for a name change but that's one single account with that same person. I always used "Empire" as my username and that's an name that would get used allot, yet I always been very lucky that most sites that I join the name doesn't get taken,