Consider Changing Your Forum Username to Your Real Name

I'd add that as a person who has done recruiting for EA orgs, I like to try to hire from talented-seeming EA forum posters and it is a lot easier to try to recruit someone when their full name is accessible from their username or bio.

I think you mean "your first name" or something like that, rather than necessarily "your full name"? 

My suggested default would be to write your full real name in your bio, fill in other info about you in your bio, and make your Forum name sufficiently related to your real name that people who at one point learned the connection will easily remember it. (As I've done.) 

If one does that, then also making one's Forum name their full real name seems to add little value and presumably adds some risk to their 'real life' reputation if they want to later pursue a policy/political career or something, since a lot of discussion on the Forum would look pretty weird to a lot of people. (Though I'm not sure how large that risk really is, or how much of it occurs anyway just via the sort of approach I've taken where my name is in my bio.)

Hugely seconded. When I was signing up for an account, I considered going anonymous (what if I want to discuss controversial things!), but I figured the upside career & social potential of using my real name outweighed the downside risk that cancel culture might someday come for Effective Altruism. Since then, my decision has been totally vindicated -- numerous people have reached out to me for conversations about EA stuff, or even ask if I'd like to apply for a job at their EA org. I feel like this would have happened less if I wasn't using my real name, since people wouldn't be able to take the intermediate getting-to-know-me step of googling for my linkedin, visiting https://jacksonw.xyz/, or etc. That intermediate step of internet research probably makes people more comfortable reaching out and making a connection.

Nah, I wanna be able to speak freely without it affecting my job. 

I changed my display name as a result of this post, thanks!

Thanks for the post! We do encourage people to use their real names as their usernames.

Our current policy is that each user can change their own username once^[1] - you can do this by going to the Edit Account page and updating your "Display Name".

After that, further changes to your username need to be done by moderators. Please contact us to ask to change your username. :)

1. ^{^}

   Unfortunately we had a bug that took this one chance away for many users. This should be fixed for new accounts going forward, but if you don't see this option in your Edit Account page, then please reach out to us and we will change your username for you.

On the bio point, see also You Should Write a Forum Bio

I changed my username following the advice of Edo Arad. Trust him, he's the founder of Naming What We Can!

I’ve reversed an earlier decision and have settled on using my real name. Wish me luck!

I'm sure you've all seen the EA hub post that was put up about a month ago.  But it's worth re-stating that it's hard to find someone specific in EA sometimes. 

I sometimes use the forum when I'm trying to get in contact with people, primarily by searching their name! 

I'd add that having people use their real names adds to the forum looking like a platform for professional discussion, and adds transparency - both of which are important because of the impact and reach we wish to eventually achieve as a movement.

While pseudonyms have some use cases - the main one I can think of, is when one may fear retaliation for reporting bad behaviour of another EA or organisation - they should indeed be otherwise extremely discouraged.

Edit: ok, this paragraph was in hindsight somewhat exaggerated, and I can think of a few use cases that may be more common. But I still think anyone using a pseudonym should at least have a good reason in mind.

I also thought this was impossible, so ended up creating a new account with my name as my username. In fact even now I can't see how to do it, I don't see an option in either my profile or account settings?