Re: Email address vs Nickname?

Joe Noon
Sun, 13 Mar 2005 13:08:35 -0000

>>I''m putting together a rails sites with multiple users. I want
to be
>>able to refer to each user as:
>>
>>http://site.com/user/:username

You could use the primary key of the table:
http://site.com/user/1 ... http://site.com/user/2 and so on

> You need justification?  It is the right thing to do...
> email addresses change, so should be a seperate field.

Depending on your application, as long as they can update their email
address you should have no problem.  Everything associated with the user
should be to their primary key in the table and not to their
username/email/nickname etc.

It could raise a problem if people were changing usernames to hide their
identity, although there are some things that could be put in place:
username/email history, limit changes to once per week,month, 2 months
etc.  Although if all your data is live, they really wouldnt be hiding
themselves very well.

As you are, I am also opposed to making a user have a username.  Just
one more thing to remember.  Id like other peoples thoughts on this as
well.  Im all ears if someone thinks they have a good case that
usernames are _really_ necessary.