The following rant is the result of spending a couple of hours trying to find a way to recover the username for my old account. Enjoy:

I am really annoyed at this website. Do you know why?

Because there is no way to recover a forgotten username. None.

Most sites have this. It's pretty simple, you type in your email address and it sends you the username registered with that address, really simple right?

So why don't you have this?

It's probably been almost a year since I was here last. I've been too busy to play sims, and during this time I've forgotten my username. I suspect this is a common occurrence.

I looked and looked but found no way to recover it. There is just "recover password" which would have worked if I could type in the email. But no, that requires the username too.

And what's more, there is no way to contact any staff whatsoever outside of the forum. And guess what? I suppose this will be a surprise. To post on the forum you need to be logged in!

Isn't that great? Ever heard of email? It would have been nice if there was a support address somewhere. I could have shot of an email and asked about my username and been done with it.
But no. The only way to talk to you people is in this forum.

So what do I do? I use the only option available to me. I register a new account (this one, in case you didn't figure that out) despite this being against the rules. But what can I do when there is no other way of contacting you? At least no way that I'm able to find.

I really didn't need to write this. I could have just used this new account to download things and you would have been none the wiser.

But I kinda felt like it was necessary to inform you of this big hole in your system that could be preventing some people from using it.

You're welcome.

Last edited by Forecaster : 26th May 2012 at 10:42 PM.

This site does have a recover username, here's the link just put in the email address you used when you made your account and it sends an email to you giving you an option to change your password and it also tells you what your username is.

Last edited by JustAnotherSimsFan : 26th May 2012 at 07:12 PM.

Alternatively, let us know the email address you used and we can tell you the username. You won't get in trouble for having multiple accounts if you're not using both at once, or deliberately trying to evade a ban/be a dick/something of that kind.

If this function exists why isn't there a link to it anywhere?

The most obvious place imaginable would be in the login box on the front page!

Or at the very least on the failed login page.

I can't find a link to this recovery page anywhere.

And my point about email support still stands. If you can't log in for some reason you can't post on the forum. And apparently that's the only way to contact anyone here.

Unfortunately, we don't have the spare time to sort through the endless drifts of meaningless emails we used to get - hundreds per week - to sniff out the handful which actually needed a response. Since we couldn't reliably respond to emails, we removed the address, so that users wouldn't end up waiting weeks and not getting a response. The process of registering to post a question such as this takes less than five minutes and ensures that the question gets a suitable response, so all in all, it is the most efficient option.

We will consider adding an email-only option to the current password reset system, despite your attitude in this thread.

"Despite my attitude"

My current "attitude" is the result of this ordeal.

Are you saying it's not a valid question to ask why an important function is missing?

And you don't need to add anything. You apparently already have it, but for some reason it's inaccessible unless you get the url from someone it seems (or the link is just really hard to find).

It works great too. I used it to recover the username of the other account.

I'm just really frustrated that I had to go through all of this and make another account just to find out the username of my old account.

I can understand that you don't have an email anymore if you used to get a lot of junk through it.

Perhaps whiterider is referring to the axiom: "you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar"?

And perhaps Mootilda is right.

Vinegar: Your op.
Honey: I'm having trouble recovering my old username. It's been a while since I've logged on here and I can't remember it. Is there any way someone could help me out? I can't seem to find a "recover username" link anywhere. Thanks!

Short, sweet, to the point.

What does that mean? I don't get it.

Also, I haven't blamed anyone. Especially not whiterider. Nor have I attacked anyone.

But I am annoyed about the fact that this feature that is present in most websites you can register an account with is missing here.

It even turns out that it exists, but there are no links to it where you'd expect there to be. I find this very puzzling...

Someone has to be responsible for that... I wouldn't know who, but someone.

By op, I mean your first post.

Nobody has said that you attacked anyone at all. It might not sound like it to you, but your first post is a bit "vinegary". I can understand being frustrated- but there are times it's better to step back and think before you press "post reply". There's a bit of attitude in your post and it shows.

Since I've never forgotten my username or password here I had no idea it's so hard to recover your username. I can see why it might be "hidden". MTS is a big site. At the moment it looks like there's over 2,600 registered users online. That's only a fraction of registered users and if just 10% needed a recovery email sent every day, that's a lot of emails. Actually, I'm surprised your old account wasn't purged. Inactive accounts are purged after 6 months. (I think?)

Only if there are no posts on the old account.

Ah. And I'm perfectly aware my post reflect my feelings about this matter. And they're directed at whoever decided to leave out the link to the username recovery page.

Password and username recoveries are handled by the server completely automatically. So there is no reason to leave out this function, as opposed to removing the support address which actually requires human interaction. That one I can understand.
I wouldn't like being bombarded by hundreds of emails from my websites either.

I do have to agree that this is the only site I visit that doesn't have a handy "forgot your username/password? Click here" link. It's always automated so it doesn't involve sending emails to people. If you forget everything but your own email it rests your password to something else and you just copy paste it in and then reset it yourself after you have looged in. I really do think this is a feature someone here should look into. Even a hint link would be good. Some places when you register they give you an area to put in a hint such as 'name of your first pet' and once you answer your password showes up. I am someone who forgets passwords, but luckily here I used one of my more frequent ones so after the third try I got it right. (currently away for the weekend and on my husbands lap top)

I don't think that the point is whether you are upset or not. The important thing is that people will be more likely to help you if you are nice and courteous. If you start by ranting at someone, their natural instinct will be to become defensive. When someone is defensive, they will not be inclined to be generous. Therefore, ranting defeats your purpose, which is to convince people to help you.

Huh. My instinct is to give them a wedgie and throw them in a pit of eels. Not sure if I should try that defensive thing. There are no eels involved, right?

We'll look into the lack of the recover username - I'm thinking there must be some technical reason for it having been removed, or perhaps it was removed as an accident as part of a redesign and we forgot to put it back.

Please try to remember that we are human beings here, and as others have said, there's no need to be so confrontational about a small issue. We don't like to make life harder for our users, so pointing out something like this is welcome.

The link to the lostpw page was replaced a number of years back becuase, at one point, the vast majority of the emails that got sent out never reached their destinations. So in order to prevent the function from not working at all, I replaced it with an automated password recovery system which does actually give you the link to the forgot login page as part of the process if the username can't be found.

Even if you get the stuff wrong, the default page is to send you to the lostpw email recovery page anyway, but you can retrieve your old login using your email + birthday anyway.

What happened that you couldn't retrieve it via the automated system? Admittedly, it's designed specifically for recovering passwords, so maybe it's a case of you didn't try it becuase you didn't think it would help?

Maybe it would be more helpful to change the name of the link to "Recover Password or username" so that people who forgot the username would have more of an indication that it will help.

D, I think the issue is that the first screen of the password recovery asks for username. It's not necessarily apparent that you can bypass that step by filling in a junk username.

white: Right, I noticed that too. I added a link to allow for quick recovery of usernames.

I tried guessing my username in the password recovery box a couple of times.

All it did was tell me there was no user by that name. I didn't get the option to proceed or go on to recovering it as far as I could tell.

But regardless of that I see you added a link to the username recovery page, so all is well now! ^^

I have not visited the site for a long time. I also had trouble logging in so I re-registered. I used the same information and e-mail that I used before so please do not ban me for duplicate accounts. Please just delete the previous account if it still exists.

I hope this is not just another troublesome posting of drivel. Just trying to follow the rules.

Sorry again.