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Username Changes

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Hi everyone,

We've recently had influx of users requesting a username change. We do not officially support username changes and at this point is on a case-by-case basis. You can email support@donutteam.com to request, however you will have to supply information as to why this is important to you. Without this, in most cases you will be denied.

We will be adding an option to the account settings sometime this year that allows users to change their username. We currently have this on our development server, however we initially designed the feature to only allow changing the capitalisation of each letter. Because of this, we're going to rework the feature.

Early version of the feature previously talked about.

Current intentions on the feature:
  • Allow changes of capitalisation all the time (i.e. changing my username from "jake" to "Jake") as it does not affect username availability.
  • Allow changes of entire usernames every 182 days to prevent spam and abuse of the system. (Every half year, you may change your username)
  • Make changed usernames redirect to the new profile. (i.e. if I change my username from "jake" to "aerhx", going to my current profile would redirect to my new profile; this prevents dead links) - This has the potential of greatly reducing the username pool if abused, so is another reason you may only change your username twice a year under the proposed system.
  • Allow staff to revoke your username change if it is deemed offensive, spam, violates trademarks or anything else that goes against our Rules & Guidelines and Terms of Service. This feature already exists, however you may not currently change your username back if we revoke your username. In most cases, we reserve this feature for accounts who have been suspended and have an abusive username. Example

In the meantime, you can still change your display name on the account settings page. Your display name will change everything except the username you sign in with and the link used to access your profile. (i.e. my display name is "Jake Andreøli" but my profile is donutteam.com/@jake)

  • Please be aware that display names and usernames are subject to our Rules & Guidelines as well as the Terms of Service.
  • Please also be aware that registering multiple accounts (alt accounts) is against our Terms of Service.

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We have a lot of projects going on involving the website and plans for the future. These are purely the current intentions we have to ensure we have the community's best interests at heart. We're opening up this dialogue as we feel this change is something that could cause adverse affects among some community members. We want to ensure that we do this right and with the community. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please let us know.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Jake & the Donut Team staff
[deleted user]
5 yrs ago (Statistics)
Don't really thought about changing the username, but it has some potential
I'll say this is a pretty neat idea and you shouldn't drop it
Now I can finally request my username to have a space (or dash) in it.

As for the cooldown after changing usernames, I find half a year after the first change is too long. Someone is going to change their mind about their new username one to two days later and then post some complaints about it. Perhaps make the first change have a 7-day cooldown, and then further changes have about a 90-day cooldown, but 180-ish days is definitely way too long to wait.
The cooldown changing based on the amount of requests one has already previously done is something we could consider. I like the idea.