New members with spaces in usernames

[ProviaFan]

Look for "Dave Perry" in this thread for an example. I've seen others also, all of them having joined within the past week.

So do we now get to have spaces in our usernames, or is this just a little bug from the transition to ASP.NET?

 

[Schadenfroh]

i just see a single space, that not supposed to be?

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
i just see a single space, that not supposed to be?

They haven't been allowing new members to join with "special characters" in their usernames at least since I joined, and recently, as I'm sure you're well aware, they've also been slowly forcing the existing user base that have spaces in their u/n's to remove said special characters - at least if they want to be able to update their profiles.

 

[tm37]

Yeah I could not use a space when I joined either.

ANd I really wanted to be tm 37

 

[SinfulWeeper]

If spaces were available when I joined... SinfulWeeper would never be :roll:

But now it is too late to change now that I have a lot of Heatware Evals

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: ProviaFan

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
i just see a single space, that not supposed to be?

They haven't been allowing new members to join with "special characters" in their usernames at least since I joined, and recently, as I'm sure you're well aware, they've also been slowly forcing the existing user base that have spaces in their u/n's to remove said special characters - at least if they want to be able to update their profiles.

Yeah. I would have liked to be "Virtual Larry" (with the space), when I signed up with AT, but it wasn't allowed at the time. Now, it appears that it would be?

As far as the "security issues" that Jason Clark elaborated, with username spoofing based on spaces, isn't that just really an issue, with either leading or trailing spaces? Although, I could see being confused, by someone that had the same username, with one space in the middle, vs. one that did not. As a matter of fact, if new users are being allowed to create accounts like that, then that is a security risk right there, they could dupe most of the concatenated multi-term usernames of some of the older members, and potentially "spoof" them.

I think that the eventual solution, would have to be - allow spaces in the middle, for convenience, but not leading nor trailing whitespace, *but*, when creating usernames, for duplicate-comparison purposes, remove all whitespace. So basically, effectively, no usernames could have whitespace, for identity purposes, but would be allowed to have inner whitespace, for display purposes.

So "VirtualLarry" and "Virtual Larry" would be considered the same username, for comparison-matching purposes, but the first would be the internal "identity" username, and the second would be the "display" username.

The same scheme could be applied for any non-alphanumeric "illegal" character, like "_", "'", etc.

Does that sound like a reasonable and fair solution?

 

[JustinSampson]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: ProviaFan

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
i just see a single space, that not supposed to be?

They haven't been allowing new members to join with "special characters" in their usernames at least since I joined, and recently, as I'm sure you're well aware, they've also been slowly forcing the existing user base that have spaces in their u/n's to remove said special characters - at least if they want to be able to update their profiles.

Yeah. I would have liked to be "Virtual Larry" (with the space), when I signed up with AT, but it wasn't allowed at the time. Now, it appears that it would be?

As far as the "security issues" that Jason Clark elaborated, with username spoofing based on spaces, isn't that just really an issue, with either leading or trailing spaces? Although, I could see being confused, by someone that had the same username, with one space in the middle, vs. one that did not. As a matter of fact, if new users are being allowed to create accounts like that, then that is a security risk right there, they could dupe most of the concatenated multi-term usernames of some of the older members, and potentially "spoof" them.

I think that the eventual solution, would have to be - allow spaces in the middle, for convenience, but not leading nor trailing whitespace, *but*, when creating usernames, for duplicate-comparison purposes, remove all whitespace. So basically, effectively, no usernames could have whitespace, for identity purposes, but would be allowed to have inner whitespace, for display purposes.

So "VirtualLarry" and "Virtual Larry" would be considered the same username, for comparison-matching purposes, but the first would be the internal "identity" username, and the second would be the "display" username.

The same scheme could be applied for any non-alphanumeric "illegal" character, like "_", "'", etc.

Does that sound like a reasonable and fair solution?

Well that would make sense. But since it makes sense, it'll never happen.

 

[Jason Clark]

Its funny how you guys presume things

Spaces are allowed in the new version, just betwen letters not at the begining or end of a word.

L8r.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Jason Clark
Its funny how you guys presume things

Spaces are allowed in the new version, just betwen letters not at the begining or end of a word.

L8r.

Oh, so does this mean that we could have our username changed to have a space in the middle?

<-- ponders the idea but decides it's best to wait a while since I just asked the mods to change my name not long ago.

Edit: that sucks... I intended to leave Jason's message marked as the answer, but accidentally left the "this post has been answered" button checked. Any way to undo this? (or you can just re-mark yours as the answer if you wish, Jason)

 

[klah]

So this means I can finally have the proper space in my name?

 

[Kyteland]

Cant I have my name changed to "_ k _ y _ t _ e _ l _ a _ n _ d _" then? :laugh:

Just kidding, those special characters would drive me nuts!