

Ask HN: Should web services recycle usernames after 120 days of inactivity? - andrewhillman

If a user does not log into their account for 120 days why don&#x27;t providers strip the user of their handle and release it?<p>I&#x27;ve noticed many twitter (and other services) handles are claimed but not in use.<p>Is it time for major providers to implement a &#x27;use it or lose it&#x27; philosophy if a user doesn&#x27;t log in every 4 months!<p>Kudos to Github! A few months ago I noticed a handle was taken but not in use for couple of years (no repository). Within minutes of investigating, they assigned it to me. They get it!
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Anonymous823
If someone is looking for a specific name, it's typically because the name is
publicly displayed on the service. This presents a couple of major issues.

1\. Let's say someone wants your HN username, _andrewhillman_. You've been
inactive for a few months. What do we do with your old posts and comments?
Deleting all the data for inactive users seems like an awful approach. If we
keep the data, you lost your username, so what's displayed beside your
comments? Do we just replace your username with the word, _inactive_? What
about your profile? If I come across your old comments, enjoy them, and want
to see your profile, I obviously can't go to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=andrewhillman](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=andrewhillman)
any more, so where is your profile moved to?

2\. People expect their identity to remain consistent. What happens if you
take a season off HN since you're busy at school? Meanwhile, you have links to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=andrewhillman](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=andrewhillman)
on your linkedin profile, or your website, or maybe you have business cards or
flyers printed with that URL. Uh oh, you come back to HN, and that profile now
belongs to someone else. All those great contacts you recently made, and gave
business cards to, they're browsing the HN profile for someone else, believing
their opinions are your own.

Ok, now printing your HN profile URL is unlikely, but what about your Twitter?
Or Facebook? Or Gmail? This could be a disaster if you have hundreds of links
to your Twitter account in blog posts and comments around the internet, then
you decide to abandon Twitter. Someone else takes the account name, and has a
less than stellar reputation. Lots of communities will not allow you to edit
posts past a certain date, so you're out of luck, and all your old data is
asking people to follow you on Twitter, _andrewhillman_. Meanwhile, that
account now belongs to someone posting NSFW images.

As someone else said, it depends on the service. In some situations you might
be able to allow non-unique usernames, so you wouldn't have this problem to
begin with. Another solution could be unique usernames, but linking profiles
to IDs, instead of specific names. That way old links still function properly
and don't change with usernames. Of course, it makes for longer and ugly URLs.

120 days seems incredibly short though. I'd say 1 year minimum before
declaring an account inactive.

~~~
andrewhillman
I was referring to accounts that were active but clearly not being used.

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jasonkester
Hotmail used to do this (they might still). It was horrible.

About once a year or so, I'd log in to my creaky old hotmail account from the
90s to find that they'd deactivated my username for inactivity. It's still the
2nd contact for some old accounts, and the only way into MSDN, so that's not
cool. The only way to turn it back on is to upgrade to whatever their current
flavor of "pro" is, pay $10 for the month, then immediately cancel it.

They take the further step of completely wiping all your old email while
they're at it, so you come back to an empty inbox with no hope of finding that
old email you were hoping to fish out.

Rows in your database are free. Don't do this.

------
Mankhool
I kind of like this idea. I think it's terrible to have to succumb to a
username like mankhool48723 when you really want something, better. If you
were creating a new service today, how would you handle usernames, not about
just the use-it-or-lose-it issue, but about username creation and uniqueness?
Logan 6 identify please.

------
iamtechaddict
github does that ? a username is inactive for like 3 years but they won't give
me the handle.

~~~
andrewhillman
Yes. It was a while ago. I contacted support, made my request and minutes
later I received it. I was shocked but realised they get it!

~~~
iamtechaddict
Thanks dude changed mine too :)

