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In lugnet.admin.general, "Greg Majewski" <citrusx__@yahoo.com> writes:
> If you look at this situation from how it exists already, you will find that
Oh, believe me, I *have* looked at it...! :-) Been seriously looking at
this on and off for years...
> 99% of the internet's Lego community are civilized adults, the rest being
> civilized teenagers or whatever, so you don't really have to worry about "gray
> areas," at least not how I look at it. Sure, some people out there may be loud
> and annoying, but they aren't offensive or vulgar.
The gray areas I'm thinking of aren't so much the offensive or vulgar things
(although I'm sure there are some things which are both offensive and gray,
i.e. mildly offensive), but more so the non-offensive childish and cutesy
things, which set a tone inconsistent with the more serious and adult nature
of things here. Some examples again of cutesy screen names:
acidburn, phyrefox, defcon5, neozero, immortal, genepool, pubert, etc.
Now those certainly aren't "gray" to me -- they're way out there in la-la
land in my book, as they have absolutely nothing to do with anyone's real
name. (Barf.) But starting from there and going more toward nicknames,
let's look at some actual gray examples:
We covered "moz" and "cogs" earlier, so forget those; I don't really think
those are too gray (anyone?) and would be perfectly happy seeing those
assigned to Chris Moseley and Aaron Coghill, for example. And except for
the letter change (s to z), Moz is just like Woz (Steve Wozniak's famous
nickname) as Moz is based quite directly on Chris Moseley's name.
Anyway, here are some examples that do seem gray to me and may need careful
attention...(these have all been disclosed publicly on LUGNET by their
owners):
"R2" <=> Rose Regner
"Ickna" <=> Nick Holdbrooks
"Misha" <=> Mike Stanley
"Binky" <=> Neil Ford
"topher" <=> Chris Adler
"Mookie" <=> Tamy Teed
"Zonker" <=> David K. Z. Harris
"Beaker" <=> James Baker
"Adamski" <=> Adam McDonagh
"dulcaoin" <=> Joshua Delahunty
"Ed Boxer" <=> Ed Jones
"Weird Richard" <=> Richard Mussler-Wright
Some of these are naturally more gray than others. Take Mike's case, for
example. He could probably give some good proof that his nickname is based
on his real name, and that it makes sense, and isn't childish, and isn't a
"handle" or a "screen name." If it's what people actually call him in
spoken real-life, and if, for him, it's an actual 'nother name, then that's
probably not too gray after all, compared to some of the others. Joshua's
handle is very interesting too, but he can talk about it if he wants. Some
of the others?-- well, for all we know, David Harris's second middle name
might actually be Zonker. And "Beaker" is an obvious bastardization of
Baker, and "topher" is an obvious bastardization of Christopher. Whether
any of the above would/could/should "pass" is open to debate.
Tamy's case is a particularly gray one...unless her middle name or something
like that starts with an M, or there is some other deep meaning in the name.
For example, I once worked with a guy named John Muchow. He's one of the
friendliest guys in the world, and has a great sense of humor, so he didn't
mind us making up an endearing nickname for him (which he also happened to
like and take as his own over time). The history of it: His last name is
pronounced MUHK-ow, but when he first started on the job, we didn't know
that; so we all assumed it was MOO-kow. That quickly somehow mutated into
"Mookie" and stuck for years. The funny thing is, in high school no one
ever called him Mookie because everyone already knew how to pronounce his
name, so it never led down that path.
Anyway, so that's an example of a nickname that derives from someone's real
name. We'd have to know more about Tamy's history to know whether her
"Mookie" handle derives from her real name or from something else. So that
makes that one a fairly gray area. That's another problem with nicknames of
that particular type, BTW -- they're always likely to be in use by several
different people simultaneously, sometimes even the opposite biological
gender.
Now here are some other examples -- things that _don't_ seem gray to me --
in terms of member-ID's and in the scheme describe in the previous post,
they all clearly fall on the "fail" side of things in my mind... (all of
these associations have also been disclosed publicly on LUGNET by their
owners):
"Rufus T. Falkenstein" <=> Dietmar Stüver
"Perhaps a Princess" <=> Sarah Heacock
"Full Metal Monty" <=> Greg Cont
"Lord Insanity" <=> Mike Petrucelli
"Mirror Spock" <=> Kai-Arne Reiter
"OptimusPrime" <=> Alex Sack
"Mike Fusion" <=> Michael Nickasch
"Green Alien" <=> Jorge Fernandez
"GitD_Ghost" <=> Frank Athens
"GearMonkey" <=> Robert Eddings
"hansolo843" <=> Danny Lynam
"legomenace" <=> Charles Spindell
"TooMuchDew" <=> William Toenjes
"The Undead" <=> Scott Javoroski
"NumberSix" <=> Colin Bell
"Kirk Unit" <=> Kirk Houser
"Carbon 60" <=> Simon Denscombe
"citrusx__" <=> Greg Majewski
"RoninSFX" <=> Peter Abrahamson
"Nephilim" <=> Jeff Thompson
"Dengar98" <=> Pearson Castner
"Lorbaat" <=> Eric Joslin
"HTMLPro" <=> Chris Alas
"Gemlord" <=> Chris Thompson
"MadMax" <=> Mark Rideout
"Baylit" <=> Jon Kozan
"Izzy98" <=> Israel Alanis
"ExitG" <=> Carrie Whitcher
"Codex" <=> Kevin Calman
"tanis" <=> Michael Cortez
"quozl" <=> Jonathan Nichol
"Eggy" <=> Tyler Harms
"Onyx" <=> Jeff Boen
"Wydd" <=> Dan Solum
"Vega" <=> Selvi Francesco
"Ice" <=> Mark Koeberl
"TFM" <=> Dean Husby
Those are all fun names, of course, and these people could all *certainly*
continue to use these "handles" as they currently do in the newsgroups --
we're not talking here about changing anything anything -- just about how to
move forward.
To create member-ID's with pure "handles" or "screen names" like that is to
start down the AOL path (see previous post). So this last group wouldn't
pass (not that it necessarily should -- handles are *far* more capricious
than real-life names).
If it turns out that people are going to be *really* upset that they can't
necessarily use their traditional favorite "handle" or "screen name" or
alias as their LUGNET member-ID, then using purely numbers as member-ID's is
probably the best all-around approach, since there's no way for anyone to
get upset at those (is there?). On the other hand, if a few people do get
really upset with the scheme outlined above, then that's probably OK if 98%
or 99% of everyone else is OK with it.
The whole thing is a compromise, after all.
BTW, sometimes people have last names that appear on the surface to be
made-up, but are actually their real-life name. Consider Tané Tachyon of
Tachyon Labs, for example... A "tachyon" particle is something made-up for
Star Trek, but Tachyon actually her real last name. Isn't that cool? :-)
--Todd
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