That certainly would have been nice to know a long time ago, and would have probably cut down a lot of the animosity if people thought of the account as Team_-1_Representative or something.
It was assumed otherwise due to:
Not being stated (or if it was one time, it isn’t generally repeated or emphasized).
The posts will spontaneously be in negative_1’s poetic format for a short while.
The possible assumption that as admins have IP logs, they wouldn’t have raised any fuss if it was all from one person.
If Team_Five_Guys ends up registering, I hope we can let them slide in exchange for some good coupons.
In hindsight I agree with you. But it is really only an issue because certain people made it such an issue - bringing it up over and over again, year after year. If they had just moved on, would anybody really care?
I almost added to my post that the IP logs should support this, but I’m not so sure that they will: while ISPs will occasionally change the IP address on your connection, it remains static most of the time, but people don’t. They can now log in from anywhere using their phone, often on Wifi at a coffee shop or anywhere they happen to be, so there are probably multiple IP addresses associated with everybody’s account by now.
Edit: Also, I am constantly connecting to my company’s Virtual Private Networks, which changes my IP. We have offices in England, California, Virginia, Pennsylvania… So I may connect to this site from an IP in London at 10 am and one in California at 11 am, all without leaving my office. So, IP Addresses prove nothing either way.