Should askville retain a “history” of user IDs for a person here?
The account is still “connected” to the old name in a variety of ways. A user retains all her quest gold, for example. A new user might be ignored, but users with significant amounts of gold will still be fairly obvious even after they change their name. The same goes with their experience levels. This is public information that ties the old name to the new one. It’s even more obvious in discussion boards. A very common idiom on the discussion boards is to say: user name: > quoted text reply The user name is just text, and it remains in the discussion board even after the user changes the ID. Going back over a past discussion can be disorienting, because you’ll see a reference to a name that no longer exists. In other words, the history is out there. If somebody truly wants to turn over a new leaf, they should start a new account. (I know Askville doesn’t make that easy.) Or they should have a truly separate way of changing the “personality”, completely separate from the user’s levels
