Change default username from "Unknown" to "User{number}"

Question

I just saw a user named: .yahoo.co.jpaqwsykcj3aulh3h1k0cy6nzs3isj

Could new users be named according to their user-number, or something other than "Unknown"? Perhaps User1234567 instead? It would be less awkward to address them in answers and comments.

Additionally, I often times have to check profiles to make sure users aren't abusing the system, since I find many of the same questions from "unknown (google)" from time to time. That, or I'll mistakenly think I've helped the user on a similar issue in the past, and assume the user has knowledge that he or she does not have.

Answer 1

I don't know if you guys fully understand the ramifications of this change.

Remember our friend ~quack?

Think about how his user "name" exists, and why. (Also consider how you won't be "addressing" users like this at all, really..)

In the meantime, I enabled this for Google and Yahoo only.

Answer 2

This makes sense; and it's easier to for people to tie it to a person later on, even if their name changes.

For instance, in comments:

User1010101: I don't know how to do this.
George: @User1010101: You do it this way.

Later on, even if User1010101 changes his name, I can still look at my old comment and trace who I was talking to to that UserID.

Even better, it'd be nice if we could (and there's a meta discussion out about this) just put {s:UserID} in a comment and have it render whatever name they're using currently. If their UserID was in a hover-tooltip, then it'd be easy to grab. There are some edge cases with this, but it'd at least get the hardcoded names out.

Unfortunately, yes, it would add some processing time and probably slow down the requests a little bit -- I don't know by how much though.

Answer 3

I agree

_{(can I have the bounty now?)}

Answer 4

I am still seeing that username yahoo-co-jpaqwsykcj3aulh3h1k0cy6nzs3isj

Is that really status-completed?