Is Being Able To Change Your Name Via Other Parts of the Site Intended?

Question

I've posted a handful of questions on the PokeBase and a question on the Meta before, but I've never posted on the Battle Subway section. Due to this, if I select Battle Subway and then my profile, I can then change my name. From what I can see, I could post a 100 questions and comments on PokeBase and the Meta, but if I don't post on the Battle Subway, I can change my username even when there's not a name-changing season in progress.

I literally just used this to add an "n" into my name (username used to be Unkown Letter Q).

Is this intended? Or am I missing something? Thanks :)

Comments

You can change your name on parts of the site where you haven't posted, as you've discovered.
However it's not to be abused or spammed, there were issues in the past where users who have not posted on parts changed their names and caused some confusion.
That's all I know about the matter.

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It was intended so that newer users can change their names a few times when they join. A lot of people can't decide on a name they want when they first join a site, so PM made it so users without post (usually very new users) could try a few names.

Whether or not being able to change per section was intentional or not - I don't know. Probably not, but it's possible. No one quite knows PM's way of thinking.

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Idk, but I just did

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I wish I had known this before I started posting useless comments on the RMT a few years ago :'D

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I'm pretty sure that this is unintended, as there are quite a few posts that suggest that it is unintended. (But from what I can tell, do not directly say that it is unintended.) Two of these are linked below.
http://pokemondb.net/pokebase/meta/30113/you-know-how-users-posts-change-their-name-suggest-change-that
http://pokemondb.net/pokebase/meta/36563/trolls-are-abusing-the-early-name-change

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Here is another good page that directly addresses this: http://pokemondb.net/pokebase/meta/58544/users-are-abusing-the-name-change-rule
Everything I posted there still applies now. Anyone found to abuse this feature will receive a ban.

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Is it abusing to change your name once? I was just getting really sick of serperiorisawesome.

Answer 1

Yeah it's basically a "design flaw" in the system. The 3 Pokebase sections are separate "apps" so although they share the users, all the settings, points etc are separate.

If you don't have any posts yet you can change your username any number of times, and it only counts the posts on the section you're on. I'll look at fixing that eventually.