Dan York
Have we forgotten about "fully-qualified names"? A positive side of our move to centralized walled gardens was the "flat namespace" there. On birdsite, I am "danyork" and THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE. And so everyone can reference me as "@danyork". Ditto on Facebook (dyork), Google+ (+DanYork) and so on. But this was a big change from email when we had to know someone's full address (or XMPP and jids). Now Mastodon brings this back. The price of DEcentralization. I am fine with it, personally.
Apr 10, 2017 at 11:44amAmaroq
Show threadScottMortimerApr 10, 2017

@danyork

I actually like it better this way as it means the possibility of different personas on different instances for different purposes.

Show threadDan YorkApr 10, 2017
@ScottMortimer Agreed, but it is hard for some people who became active online in the world of centralization to understand. They just want to use the short and simple name.
Show threadAswath RaoApr 10, 2017

@danyork indeed, it is twitter.com/danyork. It is like UK not printing their name in their stamps?

On a related note, when mastodon becomes successful and people migrate from one instance to another, their naming convention will come to bite. I just want to put it here for future reference.

Show threadBryan PersonApr 12, 2017
@danyork Personally, "@danyork" looks odd to me ... but the message IS getting through, right? :)
Show threadDan YorkApr 12, 2017
@BryanPerson @danyork Yep, I see it! Good to see you here.