[qwery_hi]

Re: the new forum software, instead of having the forum users find out they can't login since there was a username clash, isn't it better if BBO finds out from the data a tentative list of usernames that it thinks will clash (same id different IPs) and then proactively send an email to the forum user to determine if he is active and/or if he is the same user?

[Rain]

This is quite more involved than it sounds, I think.

We may have checked once in the beginning before we decided the people affected is few enough that we can proceed this way without hurting anyone, can't remember exactly.

We also think it's possible to resolve this username ownership issue for most (maybe all) forumers by a few methods. So overall, prefer to spend time that would have to go towards figuring out how best to identify the very few conflicted names, somewhere else where it will do more good.