h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is another important message from Nick Reynolds, BBC's Social Media Executive. Please take the time to read it as it may affect you. This time we have decided to keep this conversation thread open so please do direct all your comments here. Many thanks indeed:

"In my last announcement I introduced you to the BBC's new sign on system BBC iD. And I'm pleased that some of you have upgraded your accounts without mishap. I also perhaps rashly said that unforeseen events might happen and that I would tell you about them if they did.

So I'm now telling you about one change that is happening to BBC iD this week which will affect some of the h2g2 community.

From Thursday the number of characters allowed in a BBC iD display name will be limited to 30.

If you've already upgraded to BBC iD and have a name which is over 30 characters long, the next time you try to change it, you'll need to make sure it’s under 30 characters.

This change will only affect a small percentage of users. The vast majority of people of BBC Online have names which are comfortably under 30 characters. We're making this change to get better consistency in terms of look, feel and experience across the BBC's websites. People will still be able to change their display name when they want.

However I know that some people in h2g2 use very long names to tell others of their mood, status and history on the site. So we're working on a technical solution which will hopefully allow them to have a longer name when they are in h2g2 but a shorter one when they're on the rest of BBC Online. And we hope to introduce this before we move all of h2g2 over to the new system.

However if you have already moved your account over to BBC iD you will have to bring your name down to under thirty characters the next time you change your display name.

If you haven't upgraded your account yet, and it's vital to you to keep a long name I've got two suggestions.

1. Don't upgrade, stay on h2g2 and don't go on a BBC blog to leave a comment - as you'll be prompted to upgrade. Your account will still work on h2g2 until such time as we move h2g2 completely on to the new system and by then we hope to have a fix.

1. If you upgrade but leave the name field blank it will automatically pull in your name in h2g2 - whatever length it is. This is a temporary fix which we will reverse when we have found a better answer.

Of course if having a long name isn't that important, or you can find a creative way to express your status in under thirty characters, do please upgrade your current account to BBC iD.

My apologies for the inconvenience this will cause some of you. As an experiment we are going to leave comments open on this announcement and I will try and answer your questions, although as I’m very busy today I may not be able to talk until this evening."

- Nick Reynolds is Social Media Executive, BBC Online

Does that means I have to count as well as type?


ICY!!!

>>However if you have already moved your account over to BBC iD you will have to bring your name down to under thirty characters the next time you change your display name

[...]

However I know that some people in h2g2 use very long names to tell others of their mood, status and history on the site. So we're working on a technical solution which will hopefully allow them to have a longer name when they are in h2g2 but a shorter one when they're on the rest of BBC Online. And we hope to introduce this before we move all of h2g2 over to the new system.<<



Hi Nick.

So for those of us who already went and upgraded and want to retain our long names it's 30 characters for now but when the switch over happens some kind of fix will be engineered to allow us to append it with mood/status/history etc.
Don't be fooled - my current tag is shorter than usual and my 'standard name' is 21 characters at minimum.

Thanks for keeping us posted, Nick.

Whilst it would rarely affect me, it's lovely to konw that you're trying to take our quirks into account. Thankyou.

*is glad that her can't be bothered attitude has, in this instance, paid off*

I left school in 1966, I can write my name!

I must admit I'm rather encouraged by this.
The making of an exception and putting time and resource into allowing H2G2 users to continue something that is peculiar to their site shows that the BBC does value this site and doesn't want to upset the users.
OK, it probably isn't a hugely complicated fix to allow it, but it would be very easy not to do this.
So yes, very encouraging and thanks for info!

p.s. agrees with kelli

"If you've already upgraded to BBC iD and have a name which is over 30 characters long, the next time you try to change it, you'll need to make sure it’s under 30 characters.

This change will only affect a small percentage of users. "

Gee, thanks. The only reason I upgraded was so I could post a query on a Blog to ask about what was happening with the names. And now, next time some over-zealous Mod "resets" my name because they haven't read the house rules properly (it happens about every three months or so - I've even had my name reset by the Radio 3 Mods despite never posting on their board!) I'll no longer be able to put it back the way it should be. "Name Changes" are not always voluntary.

Can you provide any mechanism to "un-upgrade", please? It's only fair, as it was on your advice that it wouldn't cause any problems that I upgraded in the first place. Given the choice, I would stop using the rest of the BBC in order to maintain my h2g2 name attached to an account that still links to my ten years worth of Journals.

I'm not impressed.

Although my account upgrade seems to have worked, and my name is still the same (it looks more than 30, but I haven't counted!) I'm very glad that Nick and the Beeb care so much about hootoo, that they are already working on a solution to solve the long names.

I'm impressed. I think we are getting the best treatment possible, even if we are forced into the new system.

Thanks.

I've calmed down a little now, and I just wanted to also say that I'm glad you're looking into solving this, and also that you've decided to leave this announcement thread "open". Thanks.

*not hiving had any spare brain capacity to consider upgrading; now sits back and waits another number of wee whiles*

Thank you very much for this information. I am glad to hear that the status line that is used by many here on h2g2 has been taken into serious consideration.

Facebook uses a 'status update', but it is nowhere near as penetratingly simple as this extension to our nicknames/user names. In fact I had wondered whether their devs had pinched the idea from hootoo.

I suppose, as I have already updated, that I might lose this facility in the future, and will resign myself to thinking about adding a signature at the bottom of my posts, unless there can be a backward fix as someone has suggested?

Just wanted to stop by and give my thanks to Nick, Sam and Chris for giving our idiosyncrasies so much thought and consideration.

A big thank-you from me too for the consideration being given to h2g2. It's heartening to have that, and have this thread open, and the other positive things that have been happening lately

*agrees with kelli*

A new sign on system: - F77636?thread=7038665
The end of teletext :- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8154022.stm
A simple computer for the oldies :- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8352606.stm
Will the TV red button ever go here ? :- http://www.bbc.co.uk/

Thank you very much for the info and all your efforts.

The following made me wonder:

>>If you upgrade but leave the name field blank it will automatically pull in your name in h2g2 - whatever length it is. This is a temporary fix which we will reverse when we have found a better answer.<<

Now, I had already upgraded my account and found out that it wouldn't accept my name as it was (no apostrophe, for instance).

So when you said that all we had to do was to leave the name field blank, I went and removed the one I had entered when upgrading.

I'm delighted that this (temporary, as you said) fix works retrospectively, because when I checked, I was told I was signed in as me (ie my hootoo name, apostrophes and all).

This will,however, also affect protest by the Viewer Tag Annoyance League which sometimes uses long display names knowing that people putting things like Hello 'Viewer' in their pages resulting in
Hello, A Central US Researcher Shagbark member of ViTAL.\
Actually if this displays as A Central US Researcher Shagba
that would make the Viewer tag less workable (which was the aim in the first place)
A better solution would be to have a widget that Researchers could sign up for that would bypass the Viewer tag for researchers who objected to it.

Wait i'm confused (as always) I use a short display name on the rest of the beeb.

My name on hootoo is also less than that normally but occasionly feels like being longer.

I ahve upgraded but my h2g2 name is as it wa (which is all well and good)

can i still use over 30 letters when on hootoo at the moment?

Hope i still can after we change over.

I will be following

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Thanks to the big boys for looking out for us and treating us as a special case

I'm so pleased I've been too busy subbing and writing to upgrade yet () let me know when all the kinks are ironed and I'll toddle along

There's nothing to stop you registering your short name in the BBC id, then setting your nickname within h2g2 to as long as you like.