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Whenever I see an online system with a single global namespace, I can't help but feel sorry for the next generation. Gmail? Sorry, every variant of your name i
by jayceedenton 5y ago
Whenever I see an online system with a single global namespace, I can't help but feel sorry for the next generation.
Gmail? Sorry, every variant of your name is taken. Twitter? Every witticism, every pop culture reference, every real name, all taken. Just add another number to the end, I guess. It must get you down when you feel like you're always part of the 3rd/4th/5th wave of everything.
How many people here have tried to get a Twitter account for their new company, only to find an existing account that tweeted some spam once eight years ago and has been dead ever since? For services that have global reach, the problem gets bad real quick.
We really should think hard about whether we can namespace the population in some way.
Contrary to the thrust of this article from Jon, I'd also like to see more aggressive cleanup for some services. If you have an S3 bucket and it has no activity for 15 years, you're just squatting and I think you should arguably be warned, and then finally have the name recycled. Same goes for Twitter accounts that have never posted, retweeted, liked a tweet, etc and not been logged into for over 10 years.
- callahad 5y agoDiscord and Blizzard games (maybe others?) let you choose your own username, but then assign a four digit disambiguation code to everyone, which seems like a decent compromise.
- Kipters 5y agoAlso Xbox Live now, older accounts got just the nickname, the new ones get the four digit code. Seems like the gaming world is the one really pushing for solving this problem.
- rakoo 5y agoThat's exactly why we should use domain names instead: having to pay prevents a whole class of people just registering for fun, and having them expire reduces the risk of squatting.