@WingbeatPony
People can have as many profiles as they want.
That is how it has been since the rules were created.
None of the profiles that were freed up because of the new feature (and thus are currently in the 2 week cool down) have been claimed by others, as far as I know.
However, there have been some “parked” names that were freed up and have been claimed by people who changed their profile name using the new feature, so those are now being “reused”.
Also, we’ve been doing this by hand as long as I’ve been a volunteer, but usually only when there were extraordinary circumstances. Doing it by hand is just too much work, and introduces too much risk. The new feature brilliantly avoids those problems and makes it something we can hand to users to do for themselves, if they would like.
So, yes - there are re-used names on the site today, and lots of people who have more than one profile, and none of those profiles are linked to each other in any way normal users can see - unless the person who owns those profiles chooses to link them via their “About Me” or some other means.
And - this is very important for me - as long as people don’t abuse having multiple profiles (including being able to use the site as a “Background Pony”) we don’t publicly link people’s BP posts or their various alts together.
In another way of saying that, as long as people don’t break our rules, we don’t “out” people as having more than one profile, link their profiles in any way that can be publicly seen, or expose their posts or votes on one image or thread as having been created by the same person on another image or thread.
And I don’t think we should ever start doing that.
The idea of publicly linking people’s profiles all together, or somehow pointing out which profile belongs to which “unique individual” on the site, is rather unseemly to me. And pointless - especially given you can post as BP with the click of a button, or just create another profile if you would like.
If people want to have alternative profiles, or post as BPs, or reuse profiles that are no longer in use, as long as they aren’t breaking the rules I don’t see a problem.
This isn’t a “Unique Identity Platform”, and it’s never pretended to be one.