A couple years ago, I learned about a novel way of handling the concept of “identity” and presenting it to your users, and the more I think about it, the more it seems like Obviously The Right Way To Do It.

On most sites, you register with a username (or real name, or email, or whatever) and password; and when you interact with other users, their usernames are displayed to you as the handle you should refer to them by.

This has problems! Anybody in the world can register with the username “RichardStallman”. Or “RichardStaIlman”. Or “petrov_day_admin_account”. Or, if we’re talking about registering a domain name instead of a username, “bankofarnerica.com”. Or, for email, “larry.page@gmail.com”. Presenting some Internet rando’s chosen identifier to you and suggesting that that’s the mental handle you should use for them is crazy!

What if, instead, the site let you choose how to view other users’ names? When you first interact with a new person, their name shows up as an unmemorable red blob; then, if you think they’re worth remembering, you can assign them a name of your choice. This encourages you to have the appropriate default level of trust for the people you interact with, i.e. zero.

Here’s a demo, mocking up the Lena of IRC conversations.