A Grand Unified Account

[coolotter88 2]

I have an idea, a suggestion to the Simtropolis-Sporeum community.

Recently, Google liked google accounts to youtube accounts, (makes sense, why keep more than one account around?). I was just wondering if it was possible that Sporeum and Simtropolis accounts got linked. Something like, if you log into ST, you can navigate to Sporeum and remain logged in.

[TV-VCR 14]

Even though both sites are by the same person, they are different sites for different games. Linking them would be rather silly (it could also pose problems such as with security).

[Zelgadis 638]

Moving to ST related.

ISF

[coolotter88 2]

The 2 sites are under the same umbrella, Youtube and Google are totally unrelated too, even more so than the difference between SC4 and Spore.

[un1 40]

It wouldn't be so unrealated,

There both Maxis games and Dirk made both sites.

Also,

Maxis does this sort of thing with all of there sites. I regestered on SC4.com and I'm able to use SC3000's sites.

-un1

[Duke87 1,070]

While both are based on the same forum software, they are modded differently. The most obvious difference is that Sporeum has its evo system while here we have the "ranks". And that's a matter of incompatibility which would not be easily fixed.

But besides which, this is the kind of thing that could have easily been done if it was done from the getgo, but now that they exist as two separate entities not designed to merge together, merging them would be a tall order.

Many of us have accounts at both places. If the sites merge, what happens to all the statistics like join date, post count, etc.? In theory you could just add the post counts together and use whichever join date is older, but managing the accounts themselves is a bigger problem. Some people use different passwords from here to there. How do you choose which one to keep? Some people also use different usernames. Which username is kept? And while you can match accounts pretty well by matching IP addresses, it's not a flawless method. Sometimes the same person can post from multiple IP addresses (I know, for nstance, that mine changes when I'm at shool compared to when I'm at home). Sometimes multiple people can post from the same IP address. If anyone else at Manhattan college made an account and posted with it there, they would have the same IP address as I do when posting there since it's all one big network. And you miht think it was me, but it wasn't. And there are a few thousand students there, so it's not statistically improbabile enough to write off the possibility of. Other colleges and universities which are larger would have it even more ikely.

I'll certainly agree with you that it would be nice. But the fact of the matter is it just ain't happenning.

[Rymac91 15]

Essentially what you're thinking of is a system where both sides use the same account data over both sites...

If it was in the google setup, it'd cause quite a few problems because the sites are independent to the point where certain parts of the user accounts would be compromised(such as post count, user level, user type, etc.). In which it wouldn't work...

However, if it was done in the yahoo setup, it would be simpler as it would make registering easier on ethier site if you registered to the other. So for example, lets say you are on ST and want to become a member on sporeum, you would go to sporeum, and click the register account link, then enter your ST username and password and click register, and it'll use your information(such as email, real name, age, etc.) from your ST account to fill in the blanks on your Sporeum account. The systems would still be independent but they would share data when necessary...

...though regardless, it seems somewhat pointless to me to do anything to a system that works as is...

[Hamish 1,369]

Its a good idea, but do you really need it???

Trying to get it to work would take a long time, and it would just be easier to tell new members to register on both sites, like we do now.

[coolotter88 2]

yeah, I got my account setups mixed up, what I really had in mind was rymac's yahoo idea.