After so many complaints about two or more people having the same nickname, the only alternative was to publish real names instead.
There's no way to properly enforce uniqueness for user names or nicknames. The problem is that the user database is shared across Practical Caravan, Practical Motorhome, Autosport, What Car and other websites managed by Haymarket publishing; it has half a million names is in it. Inevitably there will be duplication.
As there have been more complaints about changing to real names than there were about duplicate nicknames, we have now reverted to the way things were!
Obviously there was no way details like addresses would be published - Haymarket Publishing forums comply with the Data Protection Act.