As much as I'm glad to have something to do with the money I am putting into the site, I'm also not looking forward to name changes. That's gonna be used decently maliciously by folks. Get a bad rep? Well nothing a couple name changes won't fix. Eventually people will lose track of who's who; a nightmare for any sort of accountability or even just to innocently keep track of artists we enjoy...

At least for now it's just a nickname thing. I could handle it if this was all that was planned...

For technical reasons, people can't change their account names or user URLs, so I don't really think scamming will be an issue, like on some other sites. After all, there's nothing to stop people from registering new accounts if they want to avoid accountability.

It's just really annoying to keep track of who is who when it comes to searching or browsing.

Inkbunny does it reasonably well, by showing a list of previous names on the user's front page. DA goes way overboard, by sending a zillion notifications when, for example, an artist changes their banner color or profile layout... or they sneeze. DA sucks, as it takes forever to clear out junk notifications.

You're right about that. :)

To be fair, I am gonna leave a journal if they don't add that. Because I've wanted to change mine since 2010 xD

Agree totally. I know several on Twitter who change their display name regularly "BeCaUsE It'S FuN LOL!" The only way I can keep track is from their icon/avatar. Hopefully the people here aren't as chaotic? I donno.

I've spent years on a site that allows name changes, and I have no idea who the hell three quarters of my friends list there is anymore. Names serve a purpose, and that purpose is not 'cool posing'.

When LiveJournal rolled out name changes, they charged a fee for each time people wanted to use it. That seems like an easy way to prevent all but the most dedicated people from changing them every time they turn around, but fair to anyone who just wants to scrub their cringy old nickname off the site, or trans users who want to un-deadname themselves. I don't know why other sites don't do this. I don't know why other sites don't do a lot of things LiveJournal did, honestly.

Paywalling content is fair. Paywalling account management is never fair.

This is exactly why I shut down a $#!+-ton of notifications on DA a few years ago. Now I'd have to poke around to remember how I did it.