It requires premium membership You can only change your username every six months All links to your old name will redirect to the new one Old names cannot be retaken by anyone (including yourself! Once you change it is for good)
Though people who want to be taken seriously on dA (yet called themselves "lololBUTTS") will rejoice, I have concerns.... for one reason, it makes you very hard to find if people are still referring to you by your old name. For another, it will confuse the hell out of your watchers - and if they don't know who you are, they may remove you in their next +watch purge. And three... I worry people will feel less pressure to actually THINK ABOUT what they are calling themselves, because they can always change it. That and I worry they will change it for silly reasons.
These are the only reasons I think people should change them. Note, they are MY reasons, not dA guidleines: No one remembers how to spell it eg "Karfiliangon" It's full of numbers, eg "7JoeBloggs16533" You made it when young and naive (or tarded), eg XoXiLuvPuppiesXoX Maybe you sold your username rights for a millions bucks, lul I dunno
...and do NOT change them because you 'felt like a change' you are 'testing the feature' (remember you can't change it back, and SIX MOOOONTHS) you want to confuse/troll watchers
Of course, you're free to do what you want with your username. Just... use your head... I'll probably be changing my alternate's name at some point, *Karsciyin, because no one can spell it.
I think the key is the avatar. If people change their name, they need to keep their avatar, or else it's a dead-end.
I'm already so confused by all the username changes, but this is a feature requested for SOOOO long by many people, I do support it because I think it's a benefit. I read somewhere statistically that like 70% of deactivated accounts are because people wanted a different username.
I have been Mirz since 1998 on the internet. No sense in changing it now.
I know. When a friend changed, it alerted the message centre.
ALSO DISCOVERED: when I write :devb0r3d13: (friend's old usernmae) it becomes `BrokenTutorials <- you see the two words that appear there? I didn't use them anywhere. It auto-converts.
...are now [allowed].
Though people who want to be taken seriously on dA (yet called themselves "lololBUTTS") will rejoice, I have concerns.... for one reason, it makes you very hard to find if people are still referring to you by your old name. For another, it will confuse the hell out of your watchers - and if they don't know who you are, they may remove you in their next +watch purge. And three... I worry people will feel less pressure to actually THINK ABOUT what they are calling themselves, because they can always change it.
That and I worry they will change it for silly reasons.
These are the only reasons I think people should change them. Note, they are MY reasons, not dA guidleines:
...and do NOT change them because
Of course, you're free to do what you want with your username. Just... use your head... I'll probably be changing my alternate's name at some point, *Karsciyin, because no one can spell it.