Some housekeeping requests

Question

(This is addressed to Pokemaster, in case that wasn't clear.)

1. Remove the ability to change your username if your account has no posts. The feature is used by people to change their username by swapping to a section they haven't used before and changing their account settings. This workaround recently became common knowledge in the userbase, so it's a matter of time before somebody uses it to stuff us around.

2. Make it so that converting your answer to a comment does not remove the down-votes received on that answer. I was under the impression this already happened, but I learned recently that in at least in one person's case (for which I can send you details privately), it didn't occur.

Please respond to this post even if it's just to say you can't do these things (or will do them later).

Comments

Mmm cant you do this?

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Isn't this some sort of statement?

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This is for Pokemaster. I don't have control over how the platform works.

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Of course

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I agree that those two things should be fixed:
> If a user was going to get banned, they could go to a section they haven't posted before and could change their name as an attempt to avoid the ban.
> If an answer was really bad, they could just convert the answer into a comment so they can get rid of the downvotes.

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you can't convert your own answer into a comment

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You can convert your own answer into a comment.

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I know exactly which user and situations you're referring to, and i hope these things get fixed as well, although i like being able to change my username freely (not that i do, but yknow)

Answer 1

1. I'll check into this. TBH I never quite understood the reasoning for the Q2A software allowing to change usernames before making a post. It's on my (very long) to-do list to add the option in Q2A to prevent that. But I may be able to set something up quickly in the meantime.

2. I'm pretty sure that downvotes are still kept attached to posts in the database, but only downvotes on answers are counted in the points calculations. There is an option for comment voting, and you can gain/lose points for it, so I could probably fix it. Send me the details of which user it was and I'll test it out.

The issue with the latter however, is that I'm also considering adding comment voting for reals, with no points awarded. So converting would recover points again.

Comments

Awesome, thanks for updating us. I'll send you an email with the info I've got.
Maybe the solution to comment voting is to make it so people can only up-vote comments -- that way you can leave comment down-votes on -10 and the converting trick won't work. Not sure how much people value the ability to down-vote comments; personally I think it's enough to just have up-votes, especially considering that would limit visual clutter.