- 🇺🇸United States smustgrave
As there hasn't been any movement in 12 years going to close out.
If still a valid feature request please feel free to reopen, updating issue summary how this could be useful for D10.
Thanks!
For many good reasons that may vary depending on the site in question, I am very happy about the fact that Drupal facilitates user name changes.
It can be improved, though, with some small adjustments, in particular if my hunch about this having some relevance for OpenID is correct (see below):
If I understand it correctly, as it currently works in Drupal 5, the comments table actually stores _both_ the user id (uid) AND the current user name for each comment. This means that when a user changes his name later, the name used originally when posting the comment, will be used even after a name change, with a link to the user profile which "now" have a different user name. Almost perfect.
When contributions are made (main posts or comments), it should be possible to retrieve a list of (and also to search for..?!) which contributions has been made with a specific user name. To facilitate this, there could be a link on the user page to a page that lists the user name change history for that user, listing only those name changes that has in fact been used in posts (main content or comments).
It should list the user name change history as a distinct list, with each name appearing only once (newest on top), each entry with additional information about the "last post: " with a link to that last post/comment made by that username. In addition to that link on the timestamp, there should be a link on the user name itself to a page that lists all comments and contributions made with that particular username (not the user id, but that user name).
This way, the community is provided practical tools to find back content and relations, and the flexibility of each user is provided. Many of us will in many situations remember the user name rather than the post title etc. So it is practical to provide this option.
Further:
The above may suggest that we might also consider adding a special username_history table with username as "unid" field to store with each main post too, not only for comments. Each time new content is posted, main or as comments, or being updated, then a quick check of the user name will determine if it matches the name currently registered with the current node or comment. if there is a change, a new record will be made in that table, if not, it will leave it untouched. That part might perhaps happen in the cached and not necessarily affect performance. We are not changing user names that often, after all, so I dont expect this to be a performance concern.
OpenID related:(?)
Regarding the new OpenID support of Drupal 6, I havent given it enough thought yet, but it appears to me that some of the concerns regarding multiple identities etc. could further emphasise the importance of having something like the above mentioned features.
End note:
When a user changes his/her user name without making any contributions, either new posts or comments, and then changes it again, so that the previous change had "practically no effect" for the community or contributions, then that user name should be irrelevant. Should not be listed even as part of the "history", I think. This is useful in case a user regrets a name change and want to correct it before it has been used. I see only flexibility in that, not a problem.
Closed: outdated
11.0 🔥
Not all content is available!
It's likely this issue predates Contrib.social: some issue and comment data are missing.
As there hasn't been any movement in 12 years going to close out.
If still a valid feature request please feel free to reopen, updating issue summary how this could be useful for D10.
Thanks!