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If you look at the Users section of Stack Overflow, and search for a username that is used often, like 'Someone', you will see many people with the same username.

However, this raises confusion on who really did something on the network. It is easy to confuse one user with another if they have the same name and same low-reputation level.

So can users be prevented from signing up when they supply a username that is taken, and can they be asked to think of a new username?

I want something like this:username_taken

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A user's username isn't unique by design.

If there's an actual risk of impersonation (say if someone else called themselves Journeyman Geek, and had a dog as an avatar) flag it, explain what's going on, and someone will take a look and deal with it.

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