A few days ago I replied to topic https://www.gamedev.net/forums/topic/707188-looking-for-curve-fitting-algorithm-for-my-requirements/5427857/ by user “Iron-Warrior” (note the hyphen), joined in 2015, reputation 172.
When today I followed the link on the topic page to visit their profile https://www.gamedev.net/iron-warrior I got the profile of user “IronWarrior” (no hyphen), joined in 2007 and inactive since 2008, reputation 144, clearly someone else.
The same profile opens for the more reasonable URL https://www.gamedev.net/ironwarrior/ and I am unaware of any way to see Iron-Warrior's profile.
Why are usernames altered? Are …