Denise O'Berry writes:

Chris —

I think keeping it the way it is would be the best way. Having several different authors with the same name could be an administrative nightmare.

Best regards,

Denise O’Berry

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Dina Giolitto writes:

Hmmm. Assign us all numbers in addition to our names?

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Chris Knight writes:

You already are assigned a number. :-)

We hide this number from your account as it’s not relevant to your use of your members only interface.

When you interact with us, your member ID (as we call it) is tagged to every transaction you do so that we can figure out how to help you faster.

The real problem is how to have two authors with the same name in our site when you view the expert author view of an author.

It’s the public view that we’re concerned with.

For now, it’s just going to be first come, first get the preferred author name. Duplicate authors will have to cough up a middle name or middle initial or change their author name around so that it’s unique.

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Dina writes:

I meant assign a public number. It’s pretty clear that we all have internal numbers, or this article machine of yours would not be able to function.

You asked for “help to solve the issue.” One solution to think about for the future might be to find a way that the system can detect a duped name and assign a number accordingly.

The advantage to such a thing would be that it’s a quick and easy fix.

But I will say that the existing situation is sort of neat-o, in that it forces an author to come up with a more interesting and/or memorable name for him or herself.

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Maverick writes:

I run into this problem all over the web when regisering a username. I realize a username isn’t the same issue, but my solution to the duplicate username problem is to add number after my name.

Example: Maverick (is already taken)
Maverick7 (I add 1 or 2 7’s)
When using my Pen Name I always include my middle name: Bob Dean Stanford. There are several Bob Stanfords but I’ve never come across another Bob Dean Stanford. Both these solutions seem to work well for me.

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