[John James Jacoby]

In places where something is entered into the users_meta table, it might be a good idea to prefix ‘bb_’ in front of your added values.

Honestly I’m surprised there isn’t a strict standard about something like this. WordPress modifications are the same way, often times emitting the ‘wp_’ which in my mind feels like it could cause some complications in the future.

Also, I noticed that there’s even places where both WordPress and bbPress don’t follow this in the core as well. I realize that it was never the intent to allow plugin access to those areas, but now that the proper hooks are in place and things are sharing that same space, it seems like the logical thing to do.

[Ben L.]

Or, even better, use the database prefix.