We had someone register with a reserved username, getting around the restriction by the simple expedient of adding “1” to the end. I can’t tell if the system will accept a wildcard entry to prevent this, i.e., by declaring reservedusername* in the list. I’m a little hesitant to use the “just try i…

[image] DrBB: I can’t tell if the system will accept a wildcard entry to prevent this, i.e., by declaring reservedusername* It will, we mention it in the description below the setting Usernames for which signup is not allowed. Wildcard symbol * can be used to match any character zero or mo…

[image] awesomerobot: It will, we mention it in the description below the setting –Ha! I should look more closely at what’s in front of me. Thanks!

But people will be able to register reserved_username. Maybe it’s an idea to look at the Levenshtein distance instead of using a wildcard?

[image] RGJ: Maybe it’s an idea to look at the Levenshtein distance instead of using a wildcard? This might be more effort than it’s worth… It would catch reserved_username1 but it probably wouldn’t catch official_reserved_username, right? this is the type of thing that a motivated person wou…

We only found the one instance when we searched our user names, so yeah, I don’t think it calls for anything too elaborate.

[image] awesomerobot: this is the type of thing that a motivated person would always find a way around. Exactly, so why support wildcards then? :thinking:

Isn’t that just reason to separately block reserved and username?

Reserved usernames: wildcard?

Product Support

DrBB (William Bennett) March 7, 2019, 9:04pm 5

Yow, that would probably be a lot more bulletproof, but I’m not sure it’s worth that degree of effort. Out of curiosity, would you use a reg ex test of some kind? Can you do that in the Discourse admin?

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Reserved usernames: wildcard?

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