Originally Posted by
samlad
Do bear in mind a few points though...
1) The case would have to be very clear cut and the reason must be petty damn good; what's not to stop anybody claiming that they have a major concern just for the sake of changing their name?
2) If we did decide for a particular reason that we would allow this, surely a) someone would wonder why that person has has their name changed and would probably start a thread about it, inevitably exposing the person protected anyway; b) this would be apparent because we would have to ban the initial username because if we didn't, people would either pick up on the fact that the user has two accounts open. Even if that person promises to not post from the first account someone would notice a lack of activity anyway. If we did ban it, people would start throwing up 'why was he banned?' threads.
3) People would feel that E-I would have a certain obligation to protect the new identity, which of course we don't.
4) Simply saying that 'the wife found out' or something similar isn't a good enough reason to change a username; firstly, a poster should have the common sense to stay anonymous; it's the nature of the business and as the T's and C's state, we are not responsible for what third parties post. The people that have claimed that they have a security issue are still posting like wild-fire anyway, so I don't get that.
5) Not wanting to be on the top reviewer's list isn't a good enough reason to want to change username. We don't allow people to review under multiple ID's for obvious reasons.