I can only thank those members that are happy enough to make their thoughts known on subjects like these. To be honest (read into the following whatever you will) the changing of Peter's username to "****" didn't sit comfortably with me but having recently removed the swear filter (bar one word) I wanted to test the waters to see what the community feeling was like. The outlook is positive.

I changed his username without consulting any staff (not that that's any different from normal; but seeing what the staff thought about "****" would be something I'd do), though when they saw the change and we had a chat the majority responded along the lines of "it's his name and it'll only hurt his professionalism" (not a direct quote). There were some delicately raised voices with doubts (one at the time and slightly more so more recently). Since the staff had no major concern (maybe it was just following the leader, though I'd like to hope it wasn't) everything was fine to see if the community had a problem with it.

We've received a number of reports along the lines of "look at his username!" and posts (e.g. in this thread) came dribbling along eventually (interestingly it took a while for anything to be said) and the experiment is starting to reap rewards. So thank you for giving me a little hope in what's left of the community.

P.S. I still don't believe that a single person's username has quite such an impact on the site as a whole as perhaps some people might like to think.