The discussion is about keeping track of username changes on a medical website. BCHK suggests the system should automatically record these changes, displaying them on the user’s profile, but not visible to search engines. codinghorror and cpradio recommend using the Staff Notes plugin to capture these changes, given their rarity. BCHK appreciates the suggestion, and Mittineague notes that some posts may still contain the original username due to quotes, mentions, or links, but a search for the original name can help identify them.
We get quite a few users who want to change their names - over time. It would be nice if the system automatically kept track of these name changes so that we can remember who that person was before. It might even be something that is shown on the user’s profile so that everyone can see it - though not by default (and not revealed to google / search engine bots).
The name changes are typically because people make a mistake, or realize later that they’d like something different (e.g. from their other screen names that they might use around the web - we’re a medical site, so people realize after that its probably a good idea to have a different screen name that isn’t trackable back to other sites.
Given the rarity of name changes (you can only change your name as a new user for a few days, and even then only if you haven’t posted much as I recall) best to capture this in the Staff Notes plugin, if you feel it is necessary. It seems very site specific to me.