Apur-ee.313
net.games.trivia
utzoo!decvax!pur-ee!davy
Sun May  9 13:46:11 1982
What's my Line Results

Well, the results are in -- about a week and a half ago, I asked
people to send me mail describing the types of login names your
site uses, along with any standing rules you may have.  I didn't
get a lot of responses, but here's a summary of what I did get:

       cwruecmp        last names, although exceptions are allowed

       duke            user's choice - usually initials

       ima             first names, with initials to disambiguate if
                       necessary

       phs             "free-form".  Now split 50-50 between initials and
                       first names

       sii             initials, although if someone has a strong
                       preference, it would be honored

       tucc            user's choice - usually initials

       unc             two or three initials, and an occaisional
                       first name

       utzoo           user's choice, except that the name should identify
                       you in some way

       uwvax           student accounts:  last names with truncation
                                          or initials if needed
                       all other accounts: user's choice
                       common choices are last name or initials (faculty),
                       first name (secretaries & grad students), and special
                       names (warloc, oracle, etc.) (primarily undergrads)

       watmath         person's initials ollowed by their last name, truncation
                       after 12 characters.  If there is no middle initial, a
                       "." is used

       we13            3-character initials wherever possible.  In cases of
                       duplication, a new middle initial is chosen

Now, so as not to leave our site out, I'll tell you folks what we do.  In
general, as new students get accounts (about 500 every fall!) they are simply
given their user id's as a temporary login.  In this way, the accounts can
be given out in class, and the students can fill out an information form,
which is typed in later.  Gradually these logins are changed over to names,
usually the person's last name, with initials added for uniqueness.

The accounts which have been around for a while (i.e., before this method was
used) have somewhat random names, some are initials, some first names, some
nicknames.  If a person wishes his login changed, he simply has to ask, and
in most cases, he shall receive.  There has been a big flurry of login changing
recently, it seems a lot of people want two letter logins ("jb", "cb", "gb",
etc.).

We run about a dozen computers on the network, and the biggest problem is that
since they are all "hooked together", people must be unique net-wide.  We have
decided to do this by user id, i.e., no two accounts, regardles of machine,
may have the same uid.  This seems to work well, and I don't believe there have
been any major problems as of yet.

Well, thanks to those of you who sent in responses, and if any of you reading
this now have any interesting situations with logins to describe, send them
to me, and I'll digest them once again.

--Dave Curry
pur-ee!davy

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