The discussion revolves around the use of non-alphanumeric characters in usernames on the Discourse platform. Canapin initiated the conversation, expressing surprise at seeing a username with Cyrillic characters (Илья_Комаров) and finding it detrimental to communication. Gerhard responded, stating that Unicode characters in usernames have been allowed since 2019 and disabling it now would cause issues for existing users. Jagster shared their experience as a user and admin, highlighting the difficulty in searching for users with non-English characters. Canapin and supermathie further discussed the technical aspects and nuances of non-alphanumeric characters in usernames, with supermathie pointing out that the username in question does use alphanumeric characters, just not from the English alphabet.
Hello, fellow Discoursers, I hope you’re enjoying a great day/night!
I was surprised to see a username here that doesn’t use any alphanumeric character (Илья_Комаров). I don’t recall seeing one before
I don’t know if non-alphanumeric characters are allowed here for a long time. But I find it a bit strange to allow them on this forum which is an English-spoken platform.
It’s slightly detrimental to communication since I can’t mention[1] or write (or even pronounce) this user’s username without having to rely on copy-pasting.
Usernames should always be easy to @mention.
I think full names are the right place to make use of non-alphanumeric characters
The full name doesn’t have any non-alphanumeric character as well ↩︎
There are some. Not a lot, but I’ve seen a few sign-ups each month that use Unicode characters since we introduced Unicode usernames and group names in 2019.
It was enabled for testing and dogfooding, and I guess we can’t disable it anymore unless we rename all users who have Unicode characters in their username. Otherwise, those users would be broken.
From a technical standpoint, they are… you just aren’t used to typing those letters.
I can read and pronounce that name, but I have no skills to write it on iPad.
As a user it doesn’t matter (for me), because I don’t mention anyone. But as an admin I don’t know how I would search a user with cyrillic or any others characters.
I was working in a cybercafé a long time ago. One day, a client, clearly puzzled after struggling with his computer, came to me and asked, “Where’s the ‘n’ key on your keyboards? There’s no key ‘n’?” I pointed to the “n” key on his keyboard and said, “The ‘n’ is here.” He thanked me and returned to his writing.
