Rare is just a word to describe usernames that are in high demand and are hard to get so a lot of people use the term “rare” to describe a user like that. Even though they are technically just as common as every user they still are considered rare for a reason.
Wether you want to admit it or not “rare” usernames are a thing and there’s people who collect them to show they joined early and were able to claim the user and everyone who’s mad about it should just deal with it.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t think it exists or don’t want to it still exists.
I’m not saying anyones better for having a rare username (you never said I did but I just want to clarify) I’m just saying it’s why this exists.
People just do it because it’s fun and it’s cool to have a user that a lot of people want.
Because since everyone is trying to grab them all up it creates a sense of scarcity and people do it because they think it’s cool to have (which isn’t 100% wrong)
Im talking about if you compared the percent of active users that have “rare” usernames to the inactive ones then you compare the percent of active “other” users to inactive ones.
they dont add slow mode just because not everyone agrees with the topic- that wouldnt make sense. they added it because the 5 minute slow mode wasnt stopping people from not considering their replies, but the ten minute one will. it wont be permanent- if a flame war happens in the y-taco, for example, and slow mode is added, theres no reason for the slow mode to be there forever.
Well, I think the whole argument of this topic is that:
You want a username,
But an older hopscotcher has that username but doesn’t code much.
While this can be annoying, it does teach you perseverance and acceptance, because, in the moment, you may be like, ‘why can’t I take that username from that other person?’. But there are always two sides of the story. The person may also want that username, and are still active, they might just be coding a big project or like to play other’s games more. Anyways, this forces you to choose a different username, one which you may grow to like in the future :))
I can understand feeling frustrated when a username is taken by accounts that seem to have been completely inactive for years. And I can definitely see the concern about people having their accounts deleted without notice, also.
Other examples
I think I’ve seen discussion for similar cases elsewhere — e.g. reading this reminds me of a feature that Discourse (this forum) has:
Delete accounts that have never participated, are trust level 0 and have not been seen in 2 years
Discourse now includes a new site setting called clean up inactive users after days this is set 730 days by default.
Once a day Discourse will find all user accounts that
Never posted anything on Discourse
If you posted something and then deleted it you will not be eligible for clean up.
Have not been seen for clean up inactive users after days
This change is in place so Discourse default protects end users and removes emails of completely unused accounts.
People shared concerns about this too.
But the last note on protecting users is valid. This is since Discourse stores verified emails. So deleting inactive accounts stops people from having unused accounts on sites which they’ve completely forgotten about. (Which can then be a risk in data breaches)
Possible idea for Hopscotch
It’s a bit different for Hopscotch, but perhaps something like this could be an option.
If:
the user has not made any drafts,
and has not logged into the account for 2+ years,
then the account could be deleted.
I’m not sure how many of the inactive accounts would have 0 drafts exactly, but it might be a starting point.
Benefits
This way people who might still be active, but haven’t published, will still have their accounts and their drafts.
And completely inactive accounts with no drafts will be cleared. So an email/password isn’t stored anymore (benefiting their online security) and the username is freed for others to use.
Hey, the slow mode has gone!
Anyway I don’t think we need this topic anymore, @SilverSong please close this
(I’m tagging silver because they were last active… that’s the right thing to do right?)
