Axel-
Nobody has to be asked individually about anything. If
you don't speak
up in a debate, your opinion doesn't count.
Isn't it interesting that when there is a vote, people always try to get
everyone's attention by putting a notice on talk pages, the Village Pump,
mailing lists etc. (cf. the recent "years in titles" vote) -- and when
there's a "consensus" discussion they always try to avoid drawing too much
attention to it, knowing intuitively that the more people there are
participating, the less likely the discussion will ever get anywhere?
There are people who deliberately use the nickname feature to display
their name in the charset of their mother tongue, or for a number of
personal reasons. These people obviously like the feature, and most of
them are probably not on this list. Hiding this discussion from them and
then suddenly disabling or changing the feature is exactly the kind of
undemocratic back room decision that alienates users in communities. I for
one intend to make users who change their nicknames aware of this
discussion.
Regards,
Erik