What happened to Sparhawk?

[BubberMiley]

Reading through an old thread, I noticed some quotes from the poster Sparhawk that were no longer in the original thread. This piqued my curiosity and, looking further, noticed that Sparhawk is no more. Not banned, not dormant. Gone.

This interests me. How does one go about becoming disappeared?

[Charles Anthony]

Reading through an old thread, I noticed some quotes from the poster Sparhawk that were no longer in the original thread.

If he wants to tell you, he will tell you. However, if you just follow the links of that poster, it should be plain to see. Get familiar with the board's Search function. In fact, there is a Member Name History pop-up function somewhere.

My guess is that he got married and Sparhawk was his maiden name.

How does one go about becoming disappeared?

All he did was change it. There is an option in the My Controls function that allows you to change you name however, if somebody quoted you in the past, the

[quote name='OLD_NAME']

remains. That is why you will see Sparhawk (or who knows whoelse?) identified in previous threads.

I noticed this aspect of the coding long ago and it poses a problem with changing one's name. I have often wondered why the INVISION Power Board software did not use a direct link to a member's registration in the database. The designers likely just overlooked this feature. If it is ever corrected in future upgrades of the software, the old quotations will likely still maintain the old names. The name='BubberMiley' is just plain text unlike the post='140646' switch in the quotation code which will always link to the same post even if the post is edited in the future.

In hindsight, it would be better for the software to give each member a unique identifier number that could not change. That way, the quotation would refer to memberIDnumber='666' for example. That memberIDnumber would always refer to the same registration regardless of whether the memberIDname='Angel' for example. This is how the signatures are referenced. If you change your signature, your old posts will NOT contain your old signature anymore but would display your new one. It would have been wise to reference the member names in the same way.

This makes me think of an other wishful feature. If the QUOTE function could also contain an external hyperlink instead of only internal links to other posts. For example:

[quote url='http://www.EXAMPLE.com/']

That way, if an article is quoted in a post, a separate line would be un-necessary to include the link. Illustration:

[quote name='NationalEnquirer' url='http://www.nationalenquirer.com/' date='Oct 7 2006, 07:00 AM']

[geoffrey]

I don't think you can just change your username in control panel Charles. I think something had to happen further up the chain of command.

I can't find anyplace to change it anyways, maybe I'm just blind.

[KrustyKidd]

Only Admin can do it from the Admin CP.

[BubberMiley]

Ah, yes. Sparhawk's posts aren't gone. They just have a less violent name attached to them. One that brings to mind my sweatshirt from Mark's Work Wearhouse.