I just read where Gus and Christine, the founders of oriented.com, of which this board seems to be derived, used a ton of different usernames when they first got it going back in 1999 in order to make it seem like lots of people were actually using the board.
In the last four years over 2700 users registered names. However, it seems that less than 200 sign on each day, with only two or three dozen people at most signed on at any one time. A lot of people have come and gone over the years. A bunch of others probably registered a name, posted a few times and then dropped out. But I am guessing that there are probably quite a few folks like Gus and Christine that registered more than one username.
In order to get a little better idea of this phenomena, please honestly indicate in the survey how many usernames you have registered in total on Forumosa.
To make it more accurate please just answer the survey just one time! Don’t do it for every username that you have because that would skew the results.
Thank you for your participation in this survey
If you previously hadn't thought of having more than one username but would now like to add a new name, then get another email address handy and [url=http://forumosa.com/3/profile.php?mode=register&ruid=5199][b]Click here to Register a NEW Username.[/b][/url]
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Oops! I voted for only one, but then I remember that I also registered once as “Mrs. Hartzell” in order to say something rude about Richard. But I only posted once under her name.
Two, but I forgot my first password, so stuck with Amos. I’m curious to see what forumosa says here, as I have a sneaking suspician he is the one and only Perter Schwartz (Segue Oriented?? fame).
I’ve had multiple usernames since I first registered. It wasn’t malice aforethought. I just got bored with one anonymous persona and had fun adopting another. I didn’t realize at the time that there was a serious on-line etiquette prohibiting such playful anonymous shape-changing.
I’ve been DJ Spanky, iconoclast; Fire Chicken, out-of-work porn film actor seeking his luck in the Asian film industry; Ernie Tubbs, weapons of mass destruction expert and auto repair student at a local Taipei junior college.
For a long time I was actually registered under the username Guest. That was during my existentialist phase.
Now I’m stuck with Gavin Januarus, the name of the lead character in a SciFi/Fantasy novel I wrote. Too long and literary but Gus, the god of Forumosa, has decreed in all his wisdom that shape-changing is no longer permitted because it’s a threat to decency and public order.
Omni wrote [quote] I did consider creating another persona to use as an attack dog against a certain quarry, but just couldn’t be bothered in the end. [/quote] Good post mate
I started off as Tai Le Meiguoren and had another name as a guest when this site was still oriented.org. Fortunately I changed my alias to ImaniOU to match my (gasp!) tealit.com one before I would have had to pay to do so. Only one name…I have spent too damn long trying to get up to the number of posts that I have to just post under another name. I hope to hit 1000 before the end of 2003, but being out of the country (and continent) for a month and a half has hindered my progress quite a bit.
Are you addicted to forumosa.com when you decide to post on the site instead of work on a 2,500-word paper that’s due the next day?
Well, I wouldn’t say a TON. Half-a-dozen more likely, but we were trolling left and right (before we knew what trolling meant).
Things really started to get moving when Maoman, Hartzell, Sandman and Wolf appeared on the scene (I actually accused Christine of BEING Wolf one time, btw). I say things started to get rolling then because it was pretty clear Chris and I were starting to lose our grip on the Forums and had to get used to the idea that, well, people we’d never met before would have a larger, louder say on what’s what here. At the same time, this is when we realized that this “forum thing” could really ‘work’
Today, I register test aliases every now and then – but these are usually numbers and I typically remove them when I’m done testing.
There was a time when you could post with any name on each post. I think I used a couple of other handles. I had wanted to use Repo Man as an alternate, but he was banned before putting up a single post.
I believe that there are a number of alter-egos that play off each other online that the general posting public will never know about (the Mod Squad can compare IP addresses, however).
As an aside, I should mention that in the days of pen pals, I concluded that we are not the letters we write. While some people who post here may in fact be very much like what they write, I bet most are not. The forums would be quite different (and blander) if we all had to give our name, address and phone number here.
A question: Is having multiple handles here wrong? Cheating? Manipulative?
Four. " Jeepers_" was an account created to po"se as “jeepers” using the same avitar, it was part of a series of jokes on “jeepers”, but I confined it to one thread.
“Jake the Snake” forgot the password, but what a moron he was.
“Bassman” became Boss Hogg after a name change and an attitude change.
“Jacky Wu” a troll if ever I met one.
For the umpteenth time: Repo Man was not banned… Repo Man was NEVER ACTIVATED!
Now, for the record: it isn’t technically possible for us to ban usernames before they are activated. It also doesn’t really make any sense.
If you’d like, go ahead and activate Repo Man, and then I will duly ban it for you.
Now, if it were possible (and sensible) to ban usernames BEFORE they were activated, such a move would seem to require a level of prophecy or ESP beyond that of most members of our Forumosa team.
[color=red][Then again, we’ve probably banned SO MANY people who do not exist yet, and have yet to even plan to register, that it would be impossible to tell who will be who. OK, now I’m started to get confused. But no matter… it’s all part of a big shadowy conspiracy, if you ask me (and for my part, I will NOT tell you who really shot JFK, hmfph!][/color]
Uh, Mods, what say we move this puppy out of Open Forum and into either the Feedback Forum or Neighborwhood Watch?
[quote]I just noticed that matthewh is no longer around but he has been reincarnated at “Big Fluffy Mathew.” [/quote]Yeah… I thought it is more appropiate, more ‘me’, what do you think ? (I’m not asking you, Okami ) I’m still just plain ol’ Matthew to all my friends on Forumosa, so you can call me “Sir”
Good post mate
