[BBLISA] Enterprise user account naming standards?

[Adam S. Moskowitz]

Bruce Davis <ayden at mixolydian.org> asks:

> What user account naming standard do you use?

I don't. Specifically, I let users pick their own usernames. In the case
of a merge and conflicts, well, either ask the users which of them is
willing to change, or flip a coin, or tell both users they have to
change.

> How do you make sure each user name is unique?

A simple awk script does the checking -- but there is *NO* scheme short
of computing a guaranteed-unique hash based on stuff like name, employee
number, SSN, etc. that will not eventually result in conflicts. Trust
me, you don't want to go this route, or you wind up with usernames like
"m7bx40c9".

> How well does your user account naming standard scale?

My scheme scales about as well as any other scheme, that is, there will
be clashes and you will have to resolve them.

For more on this topic, see my article in ;login: from a few years ago:

    http://menlo.com/folks/adamm/login/usernames.pdf

AdamM