´óÏó´«Ã½ iD: name change to 30 characters or under
Post categories: ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD
| 08:44 UK time, Thursday, 3 December 2009
When Ian first introduced ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD in October Boilerplated had a rant about the length of names being displayed. He (or she?) felt that some users had names which were too long and unwieldy.
Simon Cross who is leading our ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD team commented at the time that we were monitoring this and that we might make some adjustments.
So we're decided to limit the name that displays when you leave a comment to thirty characters or under. This morning that change has been implemented.
We have also fixed a few bugs, which means that the name that you now choose to display in ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD should display correctly. This may mean that some of you may see a different name to the one you are used to. Remember that the name you choose in ´óÏó´«Ã½iD is how you'll be known across ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online. If you are unhappy about the name which is being displayed (for example if you feel it's revealing too much personal information) then go back into your iD settings and change the name to something you are comfortable with.
If you have a name which is that is longer than 30 characters this will be cut short to fit with the 30 character limit. We estimate this will affect a very small proportion of people who use ´óÏó´«Ã½ blogs, message boards and communities. We apologise for any inconvenience this will cause, but these changes should result in a better and more consistent experience across ´óÏó´«Ã½ sites, particularly in terms of look and feel.
There are and if you are experiencing problems with your account please use membership@bbc.co.uk.
Nick Reynolds is Social Media Executive, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online
Comment number 1.
At 3rd Dec 2009, cricket-Angel Tucker wrote:Just checking to see if my name has been shortened.
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Comment number 2.
At 3rd Dec 2009, TV Licence fee payer against ´óÏó´«Ã½ censorship wrote:"When Ian first introduced ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD in October Boilerplated had a rant about the length of names being displayed. He (or she?) felt that some users had names which were too long and unwieldy."
Fame (or should that be Infamous...) at last, oh and it is a 'He'...
Thanks for the change, not only will this change make it easier when 'speed reading' blogs but also make it easier for those who like to quote an extract to cite the author of the comment.
On the down side, the line that tells us for who the computer is currently signed in for seems to be displaying user account numbers rather than user-names - is this being caused by the non setting of the optional user-name field, if so either the help caption (for that field) needs updating/rewriting or the scripting needs tweaking...
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Comment number 3.
At 3rd Dec 2009, EggOnAStilt wrote:I wouldn't be posting on the Bull board anytime soon BP, you are not popular over there. :)
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Comment number 4.
At 3rd Dec 2009, flea wrote:Why are people told that they can use their real name? In the past we have always been advised to maintain anonymity.
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Comment number 5.
At 3rd Dec 2009, cricket-Angel Tucker wrote:Nick,
Was it a good idea to name an individual poster as the source of this change?
Also, I'm not seeing any difference ...
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Comment number 6.
At 3rd Dec 2009, Malyndi munching marzipan wrote:Testing as well to see what name I end up with :-)
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Comment number 7.
At 3rd Dec 2009, TV Licence fee payer against ´óÏó´«Ã½ censorship wrote:5. At 10:17am on 03 Dec 2009, cricket-Angel "twinkly lights" Lightman wrote:
"Nick,
Was it a good idea to name an individual poster as the source of this change?"
What are you suggesting, surely not that some might wish to give the moderators even more work and or have their accounts (and IP numbers hopefully) nuked is they can't behave?...
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Comment number 8.
At 3rd Dec 2009, flea wrote:cricket-Angel, how did you get so may characters in your name? It won't let me do that - it's not supposed to let us do that.
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Comment number 9.
At 3rd Dec 2009, cricket-Angel Tucker wrote:I don't know!
When I signed into this blog this morning I appeared as Researcher123456 or something. So I changed my username to cricket-Angel Lightman. But the "twinkly lights" seemed to be OK on the messageboards, so I put them back in and they seem to be OK here too.
No clue, sorry.
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Comment number 10.
At 3rd Dec 2009, Nick Reynolds wrote:Hi - we are experiencing some bugs on 606 which accounts for some of the things mentioned here.
cricket-Angel - do you have a ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD account or are you using the old system?
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Comment number 11.
At 3rd Dec 2009, TV Licence fee payer against ´óÏó´«Ã½ censorship wrote:Re my comment @ #2:
The comment about account numbers being displayed is slightly astray, it's not about the user 'control panel' at the top of the page but the preview, sorry for any confusion caused, and as such it's not of important concern.
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Comment number 12.
At 3rd Dec 2009, cricket-Angel Tucker wrote:cricket-Angel - do you have a ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD account or are you using the old system?
I'm not sure.
I had to sign in to this blog this morning (after I had signed into the messageboards as per usual). I did that using the only ´óÏó´«Ã½ ID I have. It gave me a screen name of Researcher123456 or some such - a screen name I have used or seen before anyway - just here; my messageboard screen name remained the same as before. So I changed it here on this blog to my usual screen name - which now appears both on the blog and on the boards, as ever it did.
Is that a new ID or my old one?
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Comment number 13.
At 3rd Dec 2009, Bel - h2g2 4eva wrote:Confusion reigns, so I'm now checking which name will be displayed when I post. It says correctly who I am in the 'You are currently signed in as....' message.
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Comment number 14.
At 3rd Dec 2009, D_H_Wilko wrote:why are so many names changing to user id numbers?
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Comment number 15.
At 3rd Dec 2009, John99 wrote:Pity automated change uses my previous Iplayer board display ('John99') name as the new permanent fixed user login name, and until I changed it displayed previously private user name as a new display name.(which now of course is cancelled by the bbc update)
At least in my case the bbc seems to have got that back to front.
I suppose that is down to some peculiarity with the IPlayer messageboard, and integrating it with the other board.
Good job I do not use same password & username on other systems
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Comment number 16.
At 3rd Dec 2009, D_H_Wilko wrote:I've done the ´óÏó´«Ã½ ID already. You sign in then go to settings make any changes you want and press update. OK
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Comment number 17.
At 3rd Dec 2009, The Artist formerly known as wrote:Out of interest, why are we now prevented from using exclamation marks and suchlike? Or have I just misunderstood the error message and the exclamation mark dropped out of the 30 character limit?
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Comment number 18.
At 3rd Dec 2009, My Good Self wrote:So to stop names being too long and unwieldy the brianiacs at 606 HQ have decided on a limit of 30 characters - because that isn't too long or too unwieldy.
How exactly does that 'excuse' fit in with the new character length?
I would have been more than happy to see it reduced further. Given my feedback do can I expect to see disruption and confusion on 606 sometime over the next few weeks.
Also considering that there has been much better feedback presented to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ than something as silly as the length of names (seriously the person who gave that feedback must find their pole very uncomfortable - or maybe they like it that way) I take it the ´óÏó´«Ã½ will be just as active in resolving the major concerns regarding 606 and blogs?
Thanks.
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Comment number 19.
At 3rd Dec 2009, LadyPutt wrote:What a mess. I suppose someone's been paid a fortune to think that up! Caused me no end of truble when I hadn't seen the original posting alterting everyone to the changes and I couldn't understand why my name had disappeared. That, and a perfectly sensible comment being "modded" for some unknown reason. Not a very good day all round.
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Comment number 20.
At 3rd Dec 2009, TV Licence fee payer against ´óÏó´«Ã½ censorship wrote:#18. At 2:28pm on 03 Dec 2009, My Good Self wrote:
"Also considering that there has been much better feedback presented to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ than something as silly as the length of names (seriously the person who gave that feedback must find their pole very uncomfortable - or maybe they like it that way)"
I should be flattered that some think that I have power over the ´óÏó´«Ã½ when they don't, that I can (with one or two comments on these blogs) get the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to make changes - but in reality - I'm just sad that there are these totally delusional people about, who not only need the ego-trip of a 100 charter plus user name, but need to find a 'fall-guy' when their ego gets the better of them and the ´óÏó´«Ã½ makes changes that were obviously on the cards anyway...
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Comment number 21.
At 3rd Dec 2009, My Good Self wrote:"(with one or two comments on these blogs)"
In all fairness, according to Nick Reynolds it appears that that of those couple of comments that one of them at least consisted of a 'rant'.
So it would appear that your desire to see names reduced was more than just a passing notion.
I have an image that you were probably more than peeved off and relayed that anger and disgust through a rant. I may be wrong, but blame Nick for painting the picture.
I have no problem whether the lengths of names are long or not. I couldn't give a monkeys. The disruption and confusion caused today was not worth the hassle of ranting in the first place. There are people who are still having problems and their names were never more than 20 characters in the first place.
My username only has 12 characters. So it won't affect me but at the same time I wouldn't have lost any sleep over other peoples names being longer than 30 characters. So I hope you are not suggesting I am delusion or on an ego-trip. I also don't see you as the fall guy. It would appear though that Social Media Executive for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online has chosen himself to make you the fall guy.
I'm just baffled as to why someone would find long and unwiedly usernames such a major thing to rant about. There are much more pressing and problematic issues with ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online than long usernames.
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Comment number 22.
At 3rd Dec 2009, Simon Cross wrote:Hi All,
Lots have people have been asking why we chose 30 characters?
I can help there. We had our guys run up a lovely spreadsheet of stats, plotting name length against frequency. It turned out that the VAST majority of people have names under 26 chars in length. But as always with the long tail, the number of users who had names of 30, 31, 32 - all the way up to 128 adds up to more than you might think. But still, its far far less than 1% of our userbase.
So, we picked 30 as it was enough above the limit where significant (>1%) number of users would have been affected, but low enough to allow our designers and site builders to work to a consistent max length. Its a nice, happy medium.
So that's why.
Why did we limit it at all? well, because it makes it really hard to build beautiful sites when our user's names can be anything from 3 to 128 characters. In this modern world, when we're trying to get consistency across the ´óÏó´«Ã½ website, we want people to be known consistently - which may mean not using your display name to show your affinity with something. In sites where there's a tradition of this, as we've explained elsewhere - we're working on other solutions to pave this particular cow path.
S
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Comment number 23.
At 3rd Dec 2009, cricket-Angel Tucker wrote:Sorry - in my post above, it should read I had to sign in to this blog this morning (after I had signed into the messageboards as per usual). I did that using the only ´óÏó´«Ã½ ID I have. It gave me a screen name of Researcher123456 or some such - a screen name I have not used or seen before anyway
Also, why under this new system do I have to sign in twice - once on the messageboards, once on the blogs?
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Comment number 24.
At 3rd Dec 2009, Marquee wrote:In Boilerplated's defence, I'd guess that most of the problems/confusion today have stemmed from this part...
We have also fixed a few bugs, which means that the name that you now choose to display in ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD should display correctly.
...rather than just the limiting of the displayed user names.
Still in comparison to the changes to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ international pages, the ongoing ´óÏó´«Ã½ HD picture quality issues - and the condescending and insulting way these have been handled - this seems to have been a remarkably well handled rollout...which isn't exactly a ringing endorsement :-)
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Comment number 25.
At 3rd Dec 2009, howabout wrote:Mine is a new account with less than thirty characters in the name - so far it comes out as a number all the time . . . . .
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Comment number 26.
At 3rd Dec 2009, Nick Reynolds wrote:Firstly apologies to BoilerPlated - if apologies are needed.
More importantly apologies to anyone who has experienced difficulties today.
Cricket-Angel - we are moving all the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s social media services on to ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD gradually rather than all at the same time. At the moment message boards are on the old system while blogs are on the new one. But we will be moving message boards over very soon which should help.
Simon has explained above why we are moving to 30 characters.
As I said in my post if your name is being displayed in a form you don't want go back into your ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD settings and change it.
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Comment number 27.
At 3rd Dec 2009, TV Licence fee payer against ´óÏó´«Ã½ censorship wrote:21. At 4:02pm on 03 Dec 2009, My Good Self wrote:
"In all fairness, according to Nick Reynolds it appears that that of those couple of comments that one of them at least consisted of a 'rant'."
You obviously have not bothered to read the comment that Nick was referring to, had I not - and tong in cheek - not called it a 'rant' myself I very much doubt that Nick would have used the word himself...
"I'm just baffled as to why someone would find long and unwiedly usernames such a major thing to rant about."
Unless one is trying to cite a author (and/or their comment), something that you have yet to master...
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Comment number 28.
At 3rd Dec 2009, TV Licence fee payer against ´óÏó´«Ã½ censorship wrote:25. At 4:37pm on 03 Dec 2009, U14242644 wrote:
"Mine is a new account with less than thirty characters in the name - so far it comes out as a number all the time . . . . ."
You need to set up a "screen name", go to the 'control panel', at the top right of the screen, click on the "Settings" link, then follow the instructions...
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Comment number 29.
At 3rd Dec 2009, TV Licence fee payer against ´óÏó´«Ã½ censorship wrote:26. At 5:21pm on 03 Dec 2009, Nick Reynolds wrote:
"Firstly apologies to BoilerPlated - if apologies are needed."
None needed Nick, it's just a pity (as I said further up) that some people need to find 'scape-goats'...
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Comment number 30.
At 3rd Dec 2009, Malyndi munching marzipan wrote:So - regarding names exceeding 30 characters that are still allowed, is that just down to 'bugs in the system'? (Sorry, Cricket, but you are now an anomaly :-D)
Also, I understand that the POV boards (amongst others, I am assuming) are soon to be 'migrated' to a 'new platform'. I don't pretend to know what I am talking about ;-), but would this mean the boards will take the format of the Strictly Come Dancing board, for instance? And when is this scheduled to take place for POV?
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Comment number 31.
At 3rd Dec 2009, BG59 wrote:Another Mustardlander posting here to check that this iD thing now works properly ....
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Comment number 32.
At 3rd Dec 2009, ex saga mix wrote:I have an account which I've used for 18 months and this morning my screen name changed to U + numbers.
I went to "settings" and reset the screen name to what I wanted - simple 7 letter word - and it updated for a few seconds only, then went back to U + numbers
Tried the above a few times - same result - U + numbers
Set up a NEW account (using different email) and chose a totally different screen name - again simple and short
STILL displayed as U + numbers (different numbers this time)
So god knows
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Comment number 33.
At 4th Dec 2009, My Good Self wrote:Boilerplated
I am not trying to label you out as a scapegoat.
Did you decide on the final number of characters available to use? Did you plan how the changes would be implemented? Did you make the decision to give ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online members no warning whatsoever of the impending change? Did you make such a horlicks implementing the changeover that people have been left very confused and unable to use their previous name like many have?
If the answer to all the above is yes then I will glady make you a scapegoat. If the answer is no then you are more egotistical than those who have long and unwieldy names for thinking you are being made a scapegoat.
You must really be revelling in your 15 minutes of fame so much that you think that people actually blame you for the mess. Well I don't and for you to pressume that I do through your own self obsessed interpretation says more about you than you care to acknowledge. I blame the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online staff for making the horlicks, not you.
I mentioned you because you were named and shamed by the Social Media Exectutive for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online as having a rant. Of course I know now that the word rant is actually a link to your rant and I can see the rant in its full glory. But I still maintain that the initial need to rant about long and unwieldy names was extremely pedantic.
Of course the ´óÏó´«Ã½ were probably going to make the changes anyway (another reason why I have to burst your bubble again and say you are not a scapegoat - I hope that doesn't hurt your ego) and whether you said it or not would not have made a blind bit of difference. But I am still confused as to the need for a user to bring it up in the first place. If a user had OCD issues, was on the autistic spectrum or was anally retentive I could understand. Do any of them apply to you? If they do then it would make much more sense to make the initial rant in the first place.
So to finish. I do not label you as a scapegoat. I do however think the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online team could have been more pro-active in explaining everything fully, more thorough plannning everything and more cautious implementing everything. But then again no one or no system is perfect. But to come up with the initial rant - that is laid at your door my friend, and not just by me but by the Social Media Executive for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online himself as well.
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Comment number 34.
At 4th Dec 2009, Nick Reynolds wrote:My Good Self - can you cool it please. Whatever the shortcomings of the communication around this my link to Boilerplated's comment was intended to be amusing. Let's not let this thread descend into a slanging match.
Comment 32 - thanks for this - I have forwarded on to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ iD team.
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Comment number 35.
At 4th Dec 2009, My Good Self wrote:Nick
Feel free to censor my opinion then if you think I need to 'cool it'.
It should also be noted that my initial comment was directed at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Online team. Boilerplate was the first to directly engage with me with derogatory comments. In all fairness you should refer the 'slanging match'comment to him too.
Thanks.
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Comment number 36.
At 4th Dec 2009, TV Licence fee payer against ´óÏó´«Ã½ censorship wrote:#33. At 08:54am on 04 Dec 2009, My Good Self ranted:
"Boilerplated
I am not trying to label you out as a scapegoat...//.."
[the rest of your egocentric rant cut]
Of course you're not, that is why you didn't post this then...
[quote]
"Also considering that there has been much better feedback presented to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ than something as silly as the length of names (seriously the person who gave that feedback must find their pole very uncomfortable - or maybe they like it that way)"
[unquote]
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Comment number 37.
At 4th Dec 2009, Nick Reynolds wrote:Bolierplated - can you cool it as well please.
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Comment number 38.
At 4th Dec 2009, Roll_On_2010 wrote:Nick my username has not changed, probably because I filled in the new ID when it was offered a week or so ago.
But can you offer any advice to those bloggers, for example on Nick Robinsons blog, who have had their username changed to a ‘Uxxxxxxxx’ number.
Is there any way to get the original name shown on the blog?
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Comment number 39.
At 4th Dec 2009, Nick Reynolds wrote:Roll_On_2010 - I'm being told this is a bug which we put a fix in for last night. But our technical teams are still working on this, and I will alert them again.
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Comment number 40.
At 4th Dec 2009, Roll_On_2010 wrote:#142 U14243515
Cid the was discussed in the last thread.
The following are two links to comments I put in the previous thread:
Link 1
3
Link 2
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Comment number 41.
At 4th Dec 2009, Roll_On_2010 wrote:40. Roll_On_2010
Whoops sorry wrong blog!
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Comment number 42.
At 5th Dec 2009, Nemanja Vidics Abdominal Scars wrote:My name is over 30 characters. I see no difference...
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Comment number 43.
At 6th Dec 2009, healthytoes wrote:I have had the bug(s)..... Spent two weeks, have gone through 3 names and one number. Didn't receive email I was supposed to, so cancelled my ´óÏó´«Ã½id and started again; then couldn't get my original username because it was already taken. Created new one but my real name appeared, nothing I did to settings made a difference; so sent an email to ´óÏó´«Ã½ and got two back giving me a number. Then I couldn't sign in. So deleted everything and started again, but could never finish the process because ......
Today, finally, success - I can post. I'm exhausted.
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Comment number 44.
At 24th Jan 2010, Ralph Howard wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 45.
At 27th Mar 2010, U14390976 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 46.
At 12th May 2010, U14460911 wrote:All this user's posts have been removed.Why?
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Comment number 47.
At 19th May 2010, rolexs wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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