<p>I see lots of "user312" and such, they are similar and make things difficult. I think it would be nice if we encouraged these users to pick a more personal name.</p>

<p>We already have a bar that shows the first time, and Pascal suggested that we <a href="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/40560/suggest-userxyz-that-they-should-choose-a-real-name">repeat the reminder</a> when they get more reputation. </p>

<p>I think that a more stackoverflow-y way of handling this is to <strong>give reputation points to people the first time they change their username</strong>. If we want to be picky about it, we could restrict it to changes that don't match the user[0-9]* pattern. This sets the right incentives, in a way that I think will benefit everyone.</p>