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

Oh and excellant service - 7 minutes according to hootoo.

I have a question.

Will the real names and emails be searchable.

By this I mean that if someone knows your real name and/or email address, could they then track down your h2g2 identity.

As far as I can tell this is not the case at the moment , but as search doesn't work properly here anyway that may be why.

I myself would prefer that they were not searchable, but this is how it works in other places so if we are to be updated to new fangled ways it may be the case in the future, and I would just like to know so appropriate choices can be made.

I have not heard anything along those lines, and personally I doubt they would implement something like that - BBC boards encourage anonymity.

That's definitely a question for TPTB, however - I don't know the answer.

Good explanation Entry, Vip, but you should include the link so that people can upgrade now if they want to. All they have to do is go to this and fill in their current details:

Click here to Upgrade Now

Thanks, Gnomon. Now added.

Sorry, Vip, the link I gave you was correct but due to a bug in h2g2 it doesn't work. Change the https to http and it should be OK.

Ah. Yes. I spotted the mis-type but not that. Now corrected (that sorts out my FAQ link at the bottom too).

The other thing you should say is that if you have more than one BBC account sharing the one e-mail address, you should separate them and give each a separate e-mail address _before_ you upgrade your accounts.

Some people have more than one account because they might have two people in the same family sharing e-mail but with separate BBC accounts, for example.

I changed my display name (adding another sentence)
Brunel, Classic Goo and Alabastar all start the page
Welcome Shagbark (click here if you are not shagbark)
But plain works differently
it says <> Those three dots were put there by the parser not by me.
so it is using the display name-truncating it to 20 digits and then adding the ellipsis to say that is not the full display name.

I just changed it in preferences
now it says
Welcome back, central United state... (Click here if this isn't you)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/plain/

Weird.

h2g2 - Creative Content Written By You
I didn't write that stuff

In Plain skin mine is truncated to 20 characters. In Brunel, logged in to me PS my name (that is nickname) is truncated to 25 My member name has never been affected. It is still turvy_the_cat.

My BBCiD is simply turvy.



t.

Mine gets truncated to just "~jwf~..." in Plain.
But it reads out the full slugline in plain pages with the Viewer Tag.


~jwf~

In all the skins except Plain, the name displayed to me is my login name, which is completely different to the name that I display to the rest of you folks.

For those of you who sign in under a name that's very similar to your display name that might explain the confusion (or not, of course!).

Plain uses my display name, and also truncates it to 20 characters (I don't know whether that's a new thing or whether we've only just noticed). Even if it is a bug it's unlikely to ever be fixed, as Plain has never been supported anyway.

Does that help?

for me Its just "Hello kipperonthefloor" "I'm not kipperonthefloor"

In which case I can guess that that's the name that you use to log in with when you're signing onto h2g2.

If what I've said correct then the system is working just fine.

Post: 82..

This might be possible via the "action network" pages via the single sign on process, as I remember when they changed over from Ican a lot of members real names where shown and in some cases email address's as well..The bug may have been fixed now, but cant say for certain

One of the other DNA sites, I think it may have been the Film Network, was set up to show your real name rather than your nickname on your Personal Space, which meant that anybody could match your U-number to your real name. Privacy-wise, it was a mess. I think the site has been closed now, but not before it was exposing everybody's personal details for a couple of years.

The problem seemed to be that people making "local" decisions for what would be shown ("All our users will have to show their real names") weren't taking into account the way DNA worked between sites. It was generally possible to find the real name of any random user just by editing their U-number into your own Personal Space's URL.