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the_robots

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What's the stance on similar geocaching.com usernames? We signed by as the_robots and then a few weeks later, another cacher in our same city, who went to a cache after we'd been to it, started calling themselves THE ROBOTS.

 

As you can imagine, this is very awkward, it'd be fine if we were on opposite sides of the planet, perhaps, yet it's very annoying when we're both in the same city.

 

How do we resolve issues like this one?

 

Cheers!

 

the_robots

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What's the stance on similar geocaching.com usernames? We signed by as the_robots and then a few weeks later, another cacher in our same city, who went to a cache after we'd been to it, started calling themselves THE ROBOTS.

 

As you can imagine, this is very awkward, it'd be fine if we were on opposite sides of the planet, perhaps, yet it's very annoying when we're both in the same city.

 

How do we resolve issues like this one?

 

Cheers!

 

the_robots

 

I would imagine the gc.com algorithm just looks for a "different" name and the underscore makes them different.

 

Have you tried contacting them and asking them to change their name?

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I just had a look back at the cache in question "Work and Play"...

 

How odd.

 

I agree with Tequila: try emailing them through their profile and point out that although the two account names are slightly different it could prove a bit confusing for local cachers to have two teams with such similar names and would they consider changing theirs (as you created your account first)?

 

If there's no positive response then I can only suggest that you change your account name - It would be annoying, but it can be done:

 

How do I change my User name?

 

MrsB ;)

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The world is big, there are millions of Robots be glad that you don't have to append some silly sequence of numbers to it. But I would be concerned if they were local and it were possible to confuse you with them, are they a sock puppet account to try to make you appear to be doing things wrong?

 

At least one bit of obscurification has been disallowed for a long time now, it used to be that you could append a space or perhaps multiple spaces after a user name, and it would exactly appear to be the same as the completely different person with that username with no trailing space(s).

Edited by trainlove
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If it really bothers you then I would change your username to something else, I think it would be a bit presumptious to ask somebody else to change thier user id. Imagine how you would respond to such an email request??

 

Yes, but this one is rather creepy and bizarre. They DNF a cache, and 10 days later the next log is from someone who says it's their first find with an extremely similar user name. I'd probably change mine to something else, although I see you have the whole "robot family" thing in your profile.

 

You sure this isn't someone you know goofing on you? ;)

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How do we resolve issues like this one?

If you believe that someone is doing this to cause confusion, remember that the site's Terms of Use forbid anyone to

Impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity.

 

Your first port of call could be to send a polite e-mail to the other Robots, explaining that there seems to be this crazy coincidence ;) and maybe one of you should change, and since your account was created first perhaps it should be them. If they are genuine then they might refuse, which is their right, but they should at least reply. If they are "stalking" you then you will probably get no reply. In that case, write to contact@Groundspeak.com and explain the situation. If they determine that the situation merits it, Groundspeak may ban the impersonating account and possibly suspend the people who created it. This happened recently near me, albeit with an even closer copy of the account name than your experience.

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What's the stance on similar geocaching.com usernames? We signed by as the_robots and then a few weeks later, another cacher in our same city, who went to a cache after we'd been to it, started calling themselves THE ROBOTS.

 

As you can imagine, this is very awkward, it'd be fine if we were on opposite sides of the planet, perhaps, yet it's very annoying when we're both in the same city.

 

How do we resolve issues like this one?

 

Cheers!

 

the_robots

 

If you Google my real name you will find about 280,000 others in this country. Give or take a few. I share the name of a Football Coach (who hogs all the headlines) and a former Ex Governers Press Secretary who used to hog all the other headlines. It was all very rude.

 

Locally there is a guy who dares call himself "The Other Knight" again nothing but rude, but I like the guys sence of humor so I got over it.

 

That's pretty much your option. If you like your name, you may just want to get over it. Give them 6 months and the odds are that you or they will burn out on caching and just go away and the other will be left as the sole Robot Survivor.

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That's pretty much your option. If you like your name, you may just want to get over it. Give them 6 months and the odds are that you or they will burn out on caching and just go away and the other will be left as the sole Robot Survivor.

 

Hey, Great! I was looking for a new name! Hello Sole Robot Survivor ;)

 

Jim

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How do we resolve issues like this one?

If you believe that someone is doing this to cause confusion, remember that the site's Terms of Use forbid anyone to

Impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity.

 

Your first port of call could be to send a polite e-mail to the other Robots, explaining that there seems to be this crazy coincidence ;) and maybe one of you should change, and since your account was created first perhaps it should be them. If they are genuine then they might refuse, which is their right, but they should at least reply. If they are "stalking" you then you will probably get no reply. In that case, write to contact@Groundspeak.com and explain the situation. If they determine that the situation merits it, Groundspeak may ban the impersonating account and possibly suspend the people who created it. This happened recently near me, albeit with an even closer copy of the account name than your experience.

 

Thanks for checking in, from a moderator/reviewer standpoint. I don't know about "an even closer copy" though. Usernames are not case sensitive when logging in. I know this, I have one that's displayed with three capitals, but logging in as thewhiteurkel works just fine, and always has. So what we have here is the same exact username, less an underscore character. As I said before, the_robots, I hope it's just a friend of yours trying to by funny. :blink:

Edited by TheWhiteUrkel
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Thanks everyone for your responses, it's great to see such a helpful community. :)

 

We did indeed email them, and they said they'd change it, and then 7 weeks later, they are still using it, and still claiming finds with the account.

 

I appreciate that people have similar names, etc however in this instance, we're in the same city, using the same username, albeit with a underscore being the point of difference, and we created our account first...

 

Cheers

 

the_robots (the originals, at that :)).

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I don't know about "an even closer copy" though. Usernames are not case sensitive when logging in. I know this, I have one that's displayed with three capitals, but logging in as thewhiteurkel works just fine, and always has. So what we have here is the same exact username, less an underscore character.

It's true that case doesn't matter when logging in, but I don't think the OP's complaint was about that;

 

In the case I referred to, it was the equivalent of "the_robots" being cloned to "the_robot­š". In fact it was even worse than that, because the original account was missing an accent which should have been there (a lot of French people have learned to remove accents from things like usernames because of bad experiences). The "clone" account creator had added this accent and thus actually appeared to be a better spelling, from the point of view of a native speaker.

 

In any case, near-duplicate usernames are bound to occur with well over a million accounts; the issue is about the intent. Perhaps the clone "THE ROBOTS" is a small kid who thinks it sounded cool but has little imagination. From what we've heard, I'd guess that the jury is still out in this case.

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It's also possible to do nothing. If both accounts retain the same name, and both remain active, the local community will figure it out.

 

In Tallahassee Florida there are a couple of cachers using, respectively,

Tallahassee-Lassie and Tallahassee Lassie.

 

Tallahassee-Lassie is generally known as "dash". It's become a pleasant local joke, though I understand that there may have been some initial friction from "not dash" over "dash". You could try just letting it ride. Internet users will see that they're two different names.

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How about changing to "The Cachers formerly known as the_robots"?

 

Seriously, it is sometimes hard for users to think of a unique username and they were probably thrilled when they found THE ROBOTS had not been claimed. I think you've done all you can within the polite confines of our community, let it ride.

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There's another person that lives in the same town as I do that has the same real name. We were on vacation once and I got a call (we forward our calls to our cell) from the police saying they'd just picked up our dog, who was found running loose in a different town.

 

I was perplexed and turned around to see my lab riding happily in the back of my Jeep. Turns out the dog belonged to the "other" Mark.

 

If it really bothers you, I'd suggest changing it with GC, but I wouldn't worry about it too much. People you know will know the difference.

Edited by Skippermark
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It's also possible to do nothing. If both accounts retain the same name, and both remain active, the local community will figure it out.

 

In Tallahassee Florida there are a couple of cachers using, respectively,

Tallahassee-Lassie and Tallahassee Lassie.

 

Tallahassee-Lassie is generally known as "dash". It's become a pleasant local joke, though I understand that there may have been some initial friction from "not dash" over "dash". You could try just letting it ride. Internet users will see that they're two different names.

 

OK, I can see two chicks from Tallahassee, Florida each wanting to be "Tallahassee Lassie". ;) I cannot see, however, two people from the same City in Australia wanting to be "The Robots". The whole thing is just waaaaaaaaay too strange, if you ask me. I'd report it to geocaching.com as riviouveur suggested, and see what they say. Just my opinion, and I see I'm somewhat in the minority here. :D

Edited by TheWhiteUrkel
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Is there a place to find a complete list of user names, so that a person could at least try to avoid a name that is so similar to one already in use?

Near the top of each forum page, top right side, see 'Members' - there's a search facility - you can have fun browsing all possibilities.

That, I believe, will only show users who have ever visited these forums. The best tool on gc.com is Find a user. - though sometimes this won't even show all the possibilities.

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I don't know if it's coincidence... seems rather peculiar if it is... but my brother years ago registered the name PurpleMonkeyDishwasher. About a year ago, some completely unrelated person registered 1purplemonkeydishwasher1, who lives in the SAME CITY! I've never met the second one, although I hope he (or she) sometime comes out to an event cache so I can meet 'em.

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I don't know if it's coincidence... seems rather peculiar if it is... but my brother years ago registered the name PurpleMonkeyDishwasher. About a year ago, some completely unrelated person registered 1purplemonkeydishwasher1, who lives in the SAME CITY! I've never met the second one, although I hope he (or she) sometime comes out to an event cache so I can meet 'em.

 

My initial reaction to that was, "WOW!", but that's just because I had never heard of the phrase, "PurpleMonkeyDishwasher" before. Apparently I'm the only one that hadn't, though... a Google search for it yields over 10 pages of hits!!

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purplemonkeydishwasher are words that are added when bart whispers an insult to a teacher and the message is passed from person to person(like a game of telephone) between the striking teachers of a local school and the school's principal skinner. It's a pretty funny simpsons joke and I'd imagine lots of people would pick that if they were fishing for some random words.

 

The Robots tho. That's wierd. Maybe there's a band.

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There's another person that lives in the same town as I do that has the same real name. We were on vacation once and I got a call (we forward our calls to our cell) from the police saying they'd just picked up our dog, who was found running loose in a different town.

 

I was perplexed and turned around to see my lab riding happily in the back of my Jeep. Turns out the dog belonged to the "other" Mark.

 

If it really bothers you, I'd suggest changing it with GC, but I wouldn't worry about it too much. People you know will know the difference.

 

My husband lost touch with a friend and we'd been trying to reconnect with him and his wife for years. Every year we'd send a Christmas card to them in Key West (we found their address on the internet). Then they got in touch with us... and we found out they live in Ft. Lauderdale. We weren't sure whether to keep sending cards to the people who we'd never met. It didn't seem right to just stop after so many years!

 

But usernames are different than real names. We expect that there are people in the world with the same names, even locally. I changed how I spell my first name from "Ellie" to "Elle" because "Ellie Weems" is a significant and talented African-American southern photographer who passed away quite some time ago. There's just no way that I want to distract from his footprint when people are researching him. So I go by "Elle Weems". You google that and you get me.

 

But there's just a similiarity that's too much between the_robots and THE ROBOTS. If Groundspeak is willing, I do agree with everyone's recommendation to change your username to something else. THE ORIGINAL ROBOTS, the_robot_family, the_robot_team, the robot team, The Robot Team, The Real Robots, etc etc etc. Or you can go the route of seeing them banned or forced to change via Groundspeak policy and have that big fight. Honesty, I'd rather come up with a new gimmick altogether. Nothing to do with Robots. Who cares if you were first? The only thing that matters is who's the bigger person.

 

The username on your find logs will change. The only thing you have to manually do is change the ownership of any cache hides you have (and any text where you've written "the_robots"). When I had my username changed, it couldn't have been easier. Groundspeak Customer Service was quick, attentive and detail-oriented. And I had it changed because of my own stupidity, not someone else's.

 

Good luck with whatever you decide!

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To break the tension, how about a _robot vs. ROBOT cache, like this? <_<

 

That is cool! Great idea. I've always thought about a cache where you have to dig through my finds, or other people's finds. I see both the Lassie's have found it, and appear to have become geo-friends.

 

I know "the_robots" (aka the original robots) better get moving, because the newer THE ROBOTS are finding caches every day, and leaving a much larger footprint in the area. :)

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To break the tension, how about a _robot vs. ROBOT cache, like this? :yikes:

 

That is cool! Great idea. I've always thought about a cache where you have to dig through my finds, or other people's finds. I see both the Lassie's have found it, and appear to have become geo-friends.

 

I know "the_robots" (aka the original robots) better get moving, because the newer THE ROBOTS are finding caches every day, and leaving a much larger footprint in the area. :(

 

N WAYS TO BORE ROBOTS, YAWN!!

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To break the tension, how about a _robot vs. ROBOT cache, like this? :)

 

That is cool! Great idea. I've always thought about a cache where you have to dig through my finds, or other people's finds. I see both the Lassie's have found it, and appear to have become geo-friends.

 

I know "the_robots" (aka the original robots) better get moving, because the newer THE ROBOTS are finding caches every day, and leaving a much larger footprint in the area. :laughing:

 

N WAYS TO BORE ROBOTS, YAWN!!

 

I forgot all about this one! Thanks for bumping though, it looks like we have a solution. The phony robots have changed their username to Indiana Geones :blink:

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To break the tension, how about a _robot vs. ROBOT cache, like this? :)

 

That is cool! Great idea. I've always thought about a cache where you have to dig through my finds, or other people's finds. I see both the Lassie's have found it, and appear to have become geo-friends.

 

I know "the_robots" (aka the original robots) better get moving, because the newer THE ROBOTS are finding caches every day, and leaving a much larger footprint in the area. :laughing:

 

N WAYS TO BORE ROBOTS, YAWN!!

 

I forgot all about this one! Thanks for bumping though, it looks like we have a solution. The phony robots have changed their username to Indiana Geones :blink:

 

Their profile says, "WE ARE A FAMILY OF GEOCACHES AND WE LOVE IT SOOOOOOO MUCH" and I got the cutest picture in my head of a family of cache containers. All the baby nanos... Papa and Mama Ammo Cans...

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be guardrails...

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