Hello everyone,
We're looking at replacing our default Forum Name system. This will be applied to new forum accounts moving forward along with all existing forum accounts. So, if you (still) use the default forum name that was provided to you at the time of creating your account, your forum name will change. If you've ever changed your forum name at any time, this will not affect you and you will keep your present forum name.
If you currently use the default, and wish to get ahead of this and set a new forum name for yourself, we encourage you to do so! It was always meant to be temporary. Simply head to the My Account menu in the top corner of our website and select Forum. Then scroll down to find the Edit Forum Settings button.
If this change will affect you, and you do not wish to have your forum name changed, I will not be able to single out your name and prevent the change for you. However, you will be able to set it back to whatever you'd like in your Forum Settings after the change.
We are also looking at adding a step to encourage new members to set a forum name as they make their first post, but we do not plan to require it. Requiring it would create an additional barrier to new users and we wish our forum to be feel easily accessible.
The new default-name format has not yet been chosen, but it may look something like "Traveler-12345" or we may use a dictionary to randomly assign unique identifiers which could make for amusing names like "Traveler-Spongy.Koala". The reason for considering the latter is so that it's still easy to differentiate and refer to one another in a thread where multiple default names are in use. E.g. it'd be easy to say "Hey Koala, try staying in Riomaggiore instead of Vernazza" or whatever. Note that I'm not set on "Traveler" being the first part of the format yet either. It's early in the process and I'm just giving examples.
Our changes will not happen for a few weeks, and I'm bringing it up now so that our community has a chance to understand what's happening. About a 1/3 of all accounts here use the default. Most of those are inactive accounts at this point, though it will affect a lot of newer participants. Some confusion may ensue.
It is a necessary change at this point, and thankfully this won't affect most of our regular contributors. Let us know if you have any concerns or comments.