SaRuMaN,

UM curently allows the user to register with a username anywhere between 0-26 characters and allows practically every special character other than [ ] | ; , $. As a result, we see several usernames which are totally incomprehensible. Now a username need not make sense to everybody but at least, if it has anything to do with english then it could be easier for most users to relate to and respond. If the characters are from another language then it becomes practically impossible for a fellow member to remember and differentiate that user from other users with names in a similar language. A lot of special characters even on display anywhere on the forum, gives it a less structured look. Currently some usernames on UM are totally in arabic, and all sorts of combinations of special characters. I even noticed users with characters from the non-permissible list.

Would it not be a good idea if we could cut down the allowable special character list to a minimum and just allow characters in english, numbers and underscores in usernames?

Thanks,
BC

Er ... personally .... I think its their problem! (Refering to the users with "funny" names).
Dont you think?
If it makes them happy then why not?

~*~

No, I'm not speaking about funny usernames. Have you checked out some of the usernames in Arabic and such? If there are about 10 or 15 of them, how would you clearly know which is which? Username restrictions exist on almost every forum. Even on yahoo, gmail and such only a few special characters are allowed. They exist considering readability and uniformity factors.

I can't say users registering with unusual characters in their usernames has ever been a problem. Imposing such a restriction would probably be more trouble than it's worth as the registerable username restriction system is not particularly sophisticated on Invision board.

If you are basing this on a look through the first couple of pages on the member list sorted alphabetically then you need to remember that these few dozen accounts represent years worth of people intentionally registering indistinguishable usernames either for devilment or to post spam on the board, and most of those accounts are disabled. Out of those that are left, the majority have never been used to post.

I'll be going over and removing some of these accounts consisting of weird characters, next to none of them actually belong to legitimate active members anyway.

I messed my name up...it suppose to be punk_aginst_anarchy. how do i fix it?

Fixed.