Advice: Should artists be able to start over with new pseudonyms in review communities?

[bornesb.livejournal.com]

Hi all,

I run a review community on a standalone website and FurAffinity. I am a little unsure on how to handle artist/maker pseudonyms.

When a maker goes by many different names, currently I pick what I believe the "most popular" one is and put all reviews under that name, with a little subtext that says "this maker has also gone by the names B, C, and D."
However, when viewing a list of all makers that have reviews, only the first name shows in the list. You have to know the most popular name, then click it, then see what the pseudonyms have been for that listed name (as well as populate the list of reviews associated with every name for that maker).

The "problem" arises when a maker with negative reviews switches accounts and decides to "start over." Should I update the old name, since the new name is the only active one now? Should I make an entirely "new person" and allow the maker an actual fresh start, not linking the new name to the past name?

I want to represent both sides of the issue fairly. I want people reading reviews to be informed, but I also don't want to needlessly mar a maker's reputation if they are genuinely trying to get a new start. I'm open to some insight.

Thank you.

EDIT:

I decided to make a 'new person' in the list of makers for the new name. Then when someone clicks that name, it just duplicates the page content of the old name so the viewer knows all the different names are actually the same person. I didn't modify the reviews themselves, only the categorization. I also decided it'd be a case-by-case basis thing. There's no way to really keep up with all these names. The only reason I knew about one of them was because a past reviewer informed me.

Anyway, thank you for the help.

Comments

[oceandezignz.livejournal.com]

I understand where you're coming from, worry not. Honestly if there was not both a character limit AND a limit on how many tags a community can possess, I'm sure we'd have a couple of tags that would be near endless with how so many people account hop to avoid their antics.

But its true after a certain point you have to break up the identities. So in your case you might have to do something like group together the top three to five known aliases (and I mean they're know via popularity and/or amount of clients on said alias), and then slap a 'previously known as' on there as well.

All in all, this just solidifies that its damn annoying when you have account hoppers! Makes you pull your hair out. :