In any case, I wrote the following post because I thought, if anyone else wasn't happy with this particular development, maybe seeing some of the potential benefits of it might make them feel a little better. I suppose I thought that since my own user-name situation may be a little more unique than some people's (for reasons I won't go into here), maybe I could see potential benefits that someone with a more "straightforward" (or narrower) approach to their user name may not immediately see.
So, from HP's forum (my "user content only" (or else, maybe, "Lisa's" user content, being used with permission by "WordCravter09" - or else just "mine" as "I'm one person/author who owns everything I write unless/until some other TOS say otherwise". (Note: See? This is one reason why there's something to be said for writing under one's own\, real, name. :/ ).........
"....I just noticed that yesterday, so I went checking some other people's profiles and saw some (not all) had the same thing. My situation is kind of strange because I selected my own subdomain "name" when subdomains were new - so I have two versions of a pen/user name - and then my real name. Anyway, I just figured it was part of the thing that we've been told about how HP will be making author's names more prominent than they had been. (Then I thought it might be a glitch of some kind too). Of the sampling of people's profiles that I checked, I can't see any particular thing they seem to have in common (old Hubbers, maybe less active Hubbers, type of Hubs, etc.
Anyway, in my case (with the pen name, which is this one) it's fine. There was the pen name and then the pen-name as my once "real") name (for the purposes of online writing at the time), and then there's the pen-name-derived user name; so nothing looks weird. I have an account (not much in it) that's a user name that doesn't sound like anyone's "real" name (like the pen name does). That one has the the change too, and that essentially makes the user name fade into the background and makes the almost empty profile be under my real real name.
Anyway, I like the change (if it's an intended change rather than a temporary glitch). I know people operate differently on here for their own reasons; but I think (again, if it's an intended change) having the non-person-sounding user name (for lack of a better way to describe it) de-emphasized on HP profiles allows people to associate their non-HP user/screen names on other sites with their HP profiles; while giving HP a more professional look.
Neither of my accounts on here is very active these days (for my own reasons), but my pen-name account (this one) still works well with any left-over stuff I have out there online; and my previously no-person's-name account (now real-name account) is under my real name (which I couldn't do before because we weren't able to change HP user names, my other account is five years old; and at that time, I selected a user name that I thought was related to writing (and you can imagine how many "available" writing-related names there were at the time
).Anyway (and for good or bad), I've got any names I've ever used lumped together in my Google profile (which, for anyone who doesn't already know this) can be set on "private" if someone prefers that. So, the "legitimate" person who has legitimate reasons for wanting more than one HP account doesn't have to make a big, public, deal out of his "fifty zillion" different-niche, HP, user names. Also, though, the person with a "weird" user name on here can still encourage/send traffic from other sites where he uses that name (and still have it show up on here to "confirm" that it's actually them).
In any case, (and for my own, selfish, reasons but also because I think if a site wants to be seen as "reasonably legitimate", for lack of a more appropriate choice of words), I'm pleased to have that non-person user name on my other account de-emphasized. For now, I've got both accounts pretty much emptied out (or as emptied out as "certain ones" can be, given their history and the thing about not wanting to delete some things for some reasons), at least until I clean them up before doing much of anything else with either of them."
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