This came to me after seeing someone in the same boat I'm often in. You get art, an image, a pet, a profile, whatever, and you credit the person. Yay! But, then, unfortunately, they change their name, or their account clears, and that name and credit is now attributed to someone else. This is no fault of either person, really. You can't check constantly to see if that's their name, and they can't inform every single person when they've changed. It's just a fact of Subeta life.

But. What if we could attribute credit to a person's userID instead of their userNAME? When we make kiss links it says [ kiss = Chelsea ], but what it's really doing is saying [ kiss = 282213 ]. The system doesn't refer to me by my name, it refers to me by my number and merely associates my name with said number. (I assume that's why credit gets wonky when names change; because the name has edited but the number is different!)

It would be a different work-around for code. It would be like the difference between [ item2 = Aeon ] and [ item = Aeon ]. So maybe [ user2 = Chelsea ] could reference my username, but actually pull up my user id? So what the user sees in the same, but when they change their name the credit also changes with it.

tl;dr a name change affects credit Subetawide, but with an additional coding aspect (which I think is possible!) we could null that effect.

please for the love of God tell me I'm making sense. /headdesk

[edit]

Also, in case you don't know the difference between the items, one puts the name at the end.

vs.

[item2=Aeon]

[edit]

Edit number two, because I realize I do this and a lot of people are kind of confused. You can link your trades, to where the "Make an offer on this lot" is linked to them, but what if we had a code that could say [ lot = 6208018 ] and it makes a clickable link that says Lot # 6208018 or something to that effect? CAN YOU TELL I LIKE THESE CODES?!

Please, the user ID in particular would be amazing.

I agree that this would save a lot of trouble and frustration. If someone has done something for me and I credit them, I want to continue to credit them forever, not just until they change their username and the link breaks. x:

Omfg changing all the scodes to user ID instead of username would be lovely. This is an A+++ suggestion. It needs to happen.

I was actually about to suggest this, however, a bit different. Instead of changing that code (which is useful and easy), I was thinking of a separate one altogether: [userid = #] That why, you can still use the [user = _] code, but you'll have the option of a 'permanent' link.

If I had to track down say, the ID number of people who randomly kissed me so I can kiss them back for the event, I won't. It's inconvenient. I don't care if it's a string of numbers that shows up under their username; I'd still have to track that down, so I don't want the do that. But for a link that I want to be there, permanently? This would be useful.

I'm not sure I'm following you, you'd still need to find the ID to use userid= surely? I would like it if there was a quicker way to get the ID though, I just take it from the HA URL, but it's a bit long winded in comparison to copy/pasting the UN.

If you're doing it to get a permanent link (art credit), it's useful to go through the extra effort to get the ID. If you want a casual link to do something that's not permanent (dancing, kissing, etc), it's a pain in the ass.

Oh yeah, of course, but for something short lived like that would an ID link be required? Only a small number of people are going to change their UN over the course of any one event, so their UN would suffice, if they change it and miss out on two or three kisses/dances/whatevers then... well they probably won't notice, it's a minimal loss. I don't think the OP is suggesting the ID tag replace the UN tag totally, just act as an alternate.

Yes, but what if someone's username is the user ID of someone else? Yeah, we don't really see anyone with number usernames right now, so the chances might not be too high, but the possibility is there. If we change this, we should incorporate the feature with trying to avoid complication like that down the line, if possible.

That's highly unlikely, I can imagine someone using their own ID as a UN, but the chances of coming up with the UN that just happens to be someone elses ID, or to purposefully do it... well what possible benefit is there? The tags would still be different, it'd be misleading until you click or hover then you could see which user it is, you can't send items via ID, so there's no chance of it being used to scam either. There really isn't any complication.

Even if I changed my UN to your ID, the resultant links would be different. User=Bard and UserID=73158 would either both show up as (with the ID one automatically updating to show the new UN if you changed it) or as and 73158, though setting it up to show the number itself seems clumsy to me, I'd much rather see UserID= automatically update to the newest name of the user associated with that ID. I'm fairly sure the IDs and the UNs aren't located in the same place, so linking with UserID would seek out the ID, not the UN, even if the UN and ID happen to be the same series of numbers. If you used user=73158 then 73158 would be the result, not an automatically updating name, but hovering would reveal a different user.

user=bard and userID=73158 would both hover to show

While user=73158 would show

I can't see it creating any more confusion than someone taking a UN that's also a pet name or item name, as the links source totally different information.

I think there is some confusion...? The OP mentioned using the [user = user name] code, whereas I suggested using [userid = #] to have a permanent link and have [user = user name] stay as is. The userID link would use the user ID, so yeah, it would automatically update, whereas [user = user name] would not.

The complication I mentioned would be if there was a user with my ID. I'm not looking at this as the potential for some kind of scam, but more of an unfortunate circumstance. If the [user = user name] code was updated to also simultaneously include the ID in it's code (without the separate code), the kissing/dancing/whatever link wouldn't work for one of us - I don't know which one of us would have priority, but this is something that I could see becoming an issue, which is why I am suggesting the us ID code and the user name code to be separate.

I'm tired since I woke up not too long ago, so I could be wrong, but I think your post is... arguing the same idea I have against me? I'm pretty sure we're thinking the same thing.

Yes, I think we are =P that's why I was confused, sorry my bad.

This was actually the case yeearrs ago, at the dawn of Subeta or w/e and before all of the additions to the bbcode. We used to link to people using the typical a href=, but instead of a username, we used our userIDs since that was the URL of our profiles.

The reason why I memorized my own userID (10417). I'm not sure how well it'll work with bbcode.

I'm not too certain how well it would link with bbcode either, but I'm sure it should be possible. If we can use kiss/flower/bite links to reference a person's code upon click then it shouldn't be that hard to reference it in general. So instead of linking to http://subeta.net/users/Chelsea for it would link to http://subeta.net/users/282213 or something thereof. Our pets have two ways of reaching their profile. Like for me, Peccant has http://subeta.net/pets/Peccant which would change with their name, but http://subeta.net/petinfo.php?petid=996565 which would not. So the reference capabilities are there, I'm sure. I'm just not entirely positive how easy or hard it would be to adjust that to bbcode.

I'm not overly keen on this, just because I think digging up someone's user ID is a pain in the ass and it's pretty easy to keep track of artists changing UNs just by going back through your own post history/inbox & finding your old posts/mails. A separate tag ([ userid= ] like suggested) might be okay though.

As for the trade lot link, this can be sort of remedied by right clicking 'view your lot' after you've set it up and selecting 'copy link address'. :x derp didn't read the op properly don't judge me it's early