(welcome James - ctjim - we're sort of involved here at the moment, as you can see, but mustn't forget our manners. and your joining in this context was a good reminder that while i might have been able to guess at Jim, taking that detour to look at your profile was the only way to figure out that you seem to prefer James.)
I hope I don't sound like I'm arguing with you, Roger - we have been asked to express and discuss our views, to help in making the decision, and that's all I'm doing.
This truck is not broken - do not fix it.
Well, the way I read it, the suggested change got something on the order of 50 responses in as many hours - far exceeding even the occasional frenzies to buy those stunning little wooden boxes - and unless I missed something, yours is the lone dissenting vote so far.
While 'broken' may be a bit extreme, I'm in the camp that hangs out here partly because it is by far the most friendly and supportive forum I've ever encountered on the web - not just for Alembic products, but in some far more personal ways.
Like others above, I like the personal touch, and since I happen to be lousy with names, it bothers me when the best I can do without a separate lookup is to use SoM for son_of_magni, as an example. With the new server, it's not as prohibitive as it was before, but it's still quite a nuisance.
Despite what you stated in your first post here (and later corrected), I've been well aware the spiders/bots/crawlers will click the links, and potentially find stuff like our names, email addresses, current bands, ages, sex (what?), etc.
I truly am a bit of a privacy freak, so I thought long and hard about whether to suppress my email address (using the options that Mica describes), and decided that for the sake of this group, and the potential contacts it might entail, it was worth the risk to expose it. To my knowledge - and I had recently switched email addresses - I'm not getting spammed as a result of registering here. And I've made some friends, that I would not have otherwise.
Not to say there is no risk. But you can hide your email (just a friendly reminder - as of right now, you have not yet done so!), and disguise your name as you please (entirely in jest, might I suggest 'Roger ImNotParanoidSpidersReallyAreChasingMe, Esq.'?)
Even if you prefer to think of this as going back (not my view), as Mica points out, it would be to the state we were in at the time you registered.
Given all that, methinks thou doth protest too much. Probably mangled the quote, but you get the point?
-Bob
(edited to add the following)
I really do worry about this stuff - recently a friend wanted to take some photos in my home, and I insisted that he not, because I happen to have some expensive hi fi gear and such, and had a break-in attempt many years back (though they wouldn't have got much at the time). I also keep some of my blinds closed at all times for similar reasons - and you can choose to hide or expose here whatever is right for you, even under the proposed change.
If I understand how this works, changing the display to show full names rather than user names would only affect future posts - unless the site was completely rebuilt, as it was with the recent server migration. In that case, it seems to me it would pick up your current profile settings, and so also not put you at further risk.
(Message edited by bob on May 28, 2005)
