Thread: Short Survey - Patterns in UserIDs (need help)

There is one problem with your survey that you might not have thought of. Many people use more that one "Nick" or "username" for several reasons.
First, they may have join a chat group and gotten at odds with some of the other members. They may have "left the group" but, later decided to return but, wishing for a new start, choose a new name.
There are cases where a person might join a group that deals with some subject that the user does not want to be public knowledge such as cooking or coin collecting. They do not want others to bother them for favors, so they use an "annonimus" name in that group only.
There are other reasons such as these and, here you will create a cross reference that, if others got access to, they could recognize the one they are chatting with as the one they had a fight with before.
When I got jumped by some on other boards and left them, I do not want to be accousted here by those that would recognize my old name.....

think of the chances of abuse here.........

I had serious concerns too when they asked for the actual usernames. Questons I have are Why? What is the purpose of the study? What hypothesis is being testsed or what do they hope to find from looking for a pattern? and if a pattern does exist what purpose does it serve in knowing this? Could the analysis be accomplished without asking for the actual userids? Instead ask how many different ids are used, how many are the same etc... without revealing the ids themselvs? I refused to complete the survey as I will not categorize my userids all in one repository.