One of the problems of users holding several accounts is that lots of the 'good' names are being used up... and often wasted, as the account is closed.
It appears that closed account names aren't recycled.
I'd suggest that, with a limit of 400 games being available per player in the database, it might be possible after an account has been closed for, say, a year, to recycle the name without causing any confusion.
I think, once the account is closed it should be immediately recycled
It's not that easy. If it were, it'd have been implemented.
I'll let someone more technical explain it, but essentially, once you've taken a name, there's so much tied up with that name, you can't simply recycle it, I think it'd require an entire overhaul of the naming system, etc.
Almost everybody implements a recycling policy of some sort:
- Yahoo! recycling policy states that all Yahoo! IDs or email addresses that have been inactive within the last year will be recycled.
- Windows Live Hotmail account will be marked as inactive if you do not access it for more than 270 days. It may be permanently deleted if it remains inactive for an additional 90 days.
- Gmail: If you delete Gmail from your Google Account, then you will no longer be able to send, receive, or access email from your account using Gmail. You’ll also be unable to reuse your Gmail username in the future.
To the best of my knowledge, it'd require completely re-writing the backend part of lichess. So it's not a priority.
