It would be nice if people used their actual name in their user information and/or their actual likeness in their avatar on Talk. With 1,200+ people it’s difficult to keep track of who’s who when we’re face to face, let alone alternate identities online. Chances are I’ve had face to face and engaging conversations with most people at the space but on Talk but I have no idea who you are. Several members have expressed the same sentiment to me. This is not a good thing in my opinion.
There seems to be a disconnect between Talk and the space that enables people to say things here that they probably wouldn’t in person at the space. I think more transparency into identities and ownership of actions online would help ease some of the tension and create a more friendly and helpful environment. I think there are a lot of things we can do to help make Talk a friendlier and more helpful place, more like the physical location of the Dallas Makerspace, and this is one step of many in that direction (a baby step).
Thanks to the folks who already operate online with transparency and ownership of their actions, it’s greatly appreciated. If you have a stalker or another unfortunate reason for anonymity online I’m sorry, that’s a difficult situation to be in and please disregard this thread. For everyone else, please consider updating your profile with a name and/or avatar with your likeness. Thanks!
When opening a request to have a TALK forum username changed, in addition to including your current and requested username; please select: “Website” as the service, “Change Request” as the Service Subcategory, “A person” as the Impact, and usually “low” as the priority for this type of request.
For clarification when I said name earlier I meant the name parameter in the user profile, not the username shown on all posts. When you click on most usernames it shows their actual name because they’ve filled out the name parameter in the user profile.
My apologies to those that got accustomed to the tachometer avatar. It’s a leftover from some 10+ years ago I sketched up as a play on the idleprocess handle I’ve used elsewhere. Not exactly representative since I’m not really a car guy.
