Re: Multiple identities

Posted by GregChapman on Dec 29, 2016; 1:00pm
URL: https://support.nabble.com/Multiple-identities-tp7597594p7597601.html

ptoye1 wrote

Something's definitely screwed up! I went to a forum, entered an email address and said that I'd lost the password. I got to the window to ask for a password reset, filled in the email address that I want for that forum and was told that there was an unregistered user with that address, and that I'd need to register. So I got to the registration page, filled in my name, email address and a new password, and was told that the name was already in use.

That makes it sound as if you have visited that forum more than once and used different addresses on different occasions. It also sounds as if you have registered one address but not the other and when you attempted to register the second address you entered the username already in use with the other registered address.

Assuming that is correct, I suggest you register the address you no longer wish to use with a username that you are prepared to abandon. Once you have this unwanted address associated with an unwanted username you can edit the profile of the wanted address to have your preferred username. To do that:

1. Login with the address you wish to keep

2. Click on your username. (This will open a menu)

3. On the menu, click on "Account Settings" (Your Account Setting screen appears)

4. On the Account Settings screen click on "Edit Personal Information" (Your User Profile screen appears)

5. On the User Profile Screen, Enter your preferred username in the appropriate field and click the "Save Changes" button

You are then taken to your "Posts in xxxxx" screen, where you should be able to confirm the username change has taken effect and navigate onwards as you choose.

I can only assume that Nabble already knows me from another forum and won't let me share the name.

That won't be the case. Each Nabble forum has completely independent user data.

Most likely, the forum you describe allows unregistered users to post. In such cases you when posting you would  be prompted for an email address and be obliged to complete a Captcha. Perhaps, you used the address that you now wish to abandon. Forums set like that place cookies on your computer which will populate the user fields as you attempt to post again, so while those fields can be over-written it is designed encourage people to use the same id when posting further messages to that forum.

I suspect it is such a cookie that gives you the impression you are "known by Nabble". It's not that you are in some company-wide database, it simply that any Nabble forum will use a cookie to recognise that you have visited before. You'd find, if you used a different computer, you'd get the unrecognised/new user response as the cookie would not be present.

It seems that the only way I can belong to 3 forums (fora?) is to have 3 different user names - which I've already done for this forum.

That is not so. Nabble's requirements are that on any one forum any address is unique and that any username is unique. There is no sharing of user id data across forums.

If you have used two addresses on a single forum then you simply need to change the username associated with the address you wish to abandon to something that you do not intend to use again and change the username of the one you intend to use in future as desired, using the process outlined above.