mirror of
https://github.com/wezm/wezm.net.git
synced 2024-11-14 19:38:00 +00:00
57 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
57 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
+++
|
|
title = "ASCII-centric Usernames"
|
|
date = 2022-01-27T18:38:25+10:00
|
|
|
|
[extra]
|
|
updated = 2022-01-27T21:07:32+10:00
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
I'm working on a web-based side project in my spare time. The great thing about
|
|
side projects is you get to make all the choices and question the common
|
|
wisdom. Recently I've been building out the sign-up flow and I started thinking
|
|
about usernames—specifically the characters that they may be comprised of.
|
|
|
|
<!-- more -->
|
|
|
|
I poked around a few sites to see what they did: Twitter, GitHub, Discourse
|
|
all restrict your username to a mostly ASCII alphanumeric character set, perhaps
|
|
with `-`, `_`, and `.` thrown in.
|
|
|
|
It struck me that this is fine for me, an English speaker, but must suck for
|
|
folks that can't have a username in their own language. It is however not
|
|
without precedent. The Internet's origins in the US linger on with similar
|
|
restrictions on e-mail and DNS ([Punycode] is but a workaround) for example.
|
|
Some further thinking and research led to some possible reasons for this:
|
|
|
|
1. There's the obvious precedent set by e-mail and other systems: that's how
|
|
we've always done it so it just continues.
|
|
1. Some languages require a dedicated [input system][ime] in order to type
|
|
naturally. That means it would be difficult for people without familiarity
|
|
with that system to be able to type the username such as might be necessary
|
|
when @ mentioning someone.
|
|
1. Similar to above, most keyboards have some way to type the English alphabet.
|
|
1. ASCII alpha-numeric characters are able to be in URLs without [percent-encoding].
|
|
|
|
That last one is the most compelling reason I saw. For an application that has
|
|
user profile pages where the username goes in the URL it seems advantageous for
|
|
that to be able to happen directly without encoding.
|
|
|
|
Now this is all very biased by my monolingual, English speaking, Western viewpoint.
|
|
Perhaps it is more common to permit native language usernames in applications that
|
|
target non-English markets?
|
|
|
|
I did find a couple of examples that were more permissive with usernames.
|
|
Discord happily let me set my username to "🦊 こんにちは". Slack rejected the
|
|
emoji with a cute message, "Of course you want a name with an emoji. Sadly, it
|
|
is not to be. Try letters?", but was otherwise happy with "こんにちは". In both
|
|
cases @ mentioning the user appears to require typing their name, although you
|
|
could also find them in the people directory first.
|
|
|
|
Notably Discord and Slack don't have public profile pages (that would need a
|
|
URL). I'd be curious if there were systems out there with public profile pages
|
|
where the usernames are permissive and the name is in the URL (and not the
|
|
account id number for example).
|
|
|
|
[Punycode]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode
|
|
[percent-encoding]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent-encoding
|
|
[ime]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_method
|