Why do we have username rules?

Question

Why to restrict allowed usernames by different rules? For example why can't user have "@123 qw" username? Is there any techical difficulties or it's just about community rules?

Also is it ok to have national characters in the username? If I use "UTF-8" encoding for my website it should work just well in all browsers.

I don't want to sound rude, but why the upvotes? Is this a programming question? What's with the "php", "js" and "mysql" tags? I don't see anything related to those here.. — Damien Pirsy, Apr 09 '12 at 07:35
I agree the tags don't have much to do with anything, but it's an interesting question. Maybe it's just cargo cult we can do away with? — deceze, Apr 09 '12 at 07:39
I'm not saying it's not interesting, au contraire; I was just curious (I haven't cast a downvote, in fact) about the different treatment compared to similar, non-programming questions (tags are unrelated, no code, no reasearch behind, etc.); looks like beeing closed in a blink depends also on other factors — Damien Pirsy, Apr 09 '12 at 07:45
Is there any reason why non-uniform non-whitelisted usernames should be used? I think it is down to your design choice. However, the white listing of uniform usernames has worked so far. If you have any reasons why it wouldn't work for you, just list them! — Shef, Apr 09 '12 at 07:58
Tags may not be precise, but it's definitely worth a thought for every web-developer as most websites include authorization feature :-) — Denis Kulagin, Apr 09 '12 at 08:24

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 09 '12 at 07:38

2

I believe I can give you more than one reason but the first that comes off my head is this one.

http://www.example.com/profile/%64123%20qw

edited Apr 09 '12 at 07:38

Shef

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answered Apr 09 '12 at 07:37

jmic

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So? Most browsers will prettify this in the address bar, and who really cares about the URL these days (except for programmers)? – deceze Apr 09 '12 at 07:38
So what? Are you telling me there are no URLs with "international characters" out there or that all of them are doing badly in search engines? Oh please. See [http://www.google.com/search?q=amazon.co.jp%20ニンテンドー](http://www.google.com/search?q=amazon.co.jp%20ニンテンドー) for just one example. – deceze Apr 09 '12 at 07:40
Do you really imagine a world where for example the domain names can be UTF encoded strings? That would be certainly a mess IMHO. Spaniard here and I don't want the "ñ" anywhere near the address bar. When you type `http://www.españa.com` in your browser you get redirected to `http://www.xn--espaa-rta.com/`. – jmic Apr 09 '12 at 07:45
Well yes, IDNs work that way. Your browser could make this prettier, but **it works**. And that's the point. – deceze Apr 09 '12 at 07:47
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Who cares about SEO for a user profile page? – Jordan Apr 09 '12 at 07:48
Not me but I just don't see it makes sense at all having URLs like `http://www.example.com/profile/ニンテンドー`. Don't ask me why. – jmic Apr 09 '12 at 07:53
That's not really an answer then, is it? Just a personal opinion. Believe it or not but not everyone on this planet is fluent using the latin alphabet, or at least not as fluent as some other native writing. Do you require everybody to generate romanized slugs for blog posts that have not a single latin character in them, for instance? – deceze Apr 09 '12 at 07:55
Actually yes, I do. So this `¿por qué estáis así de callados?` becomes `por-que-estais-asi-de-callados`. It is about international standardization. – jmic Apr 09 '12 at 08:05
So what does `日本語でブログ作ったぞー` become? Even if you could reliably automatically translate that into `nihongo-de-burogu-tsukuttazo` (which is a pretty hard problem), it would not do as well SEO-wise as `example.com/post/日本語でブログ作ったぞー`. – deceze Apr 09 '12 at 08:08
Listen, I see your point but I just don't see it happening. In a world where the mainstream trend is to stop remembering URLs and google everything what sense does it make to obfuscate URLs more and more? I may be wrong of course but I don't think average Joe gave a damn about that. – jmic Apr 09 '12 at 08:15
Why, exactly. Your answer was that URLs are ugly if they contain int'l characters (at least I *think* that's your answer?), and now you're saying the URL doesn't matter at all. And there are good reasons to put arbitrary text in arbitrary languages into the URL, because it's not always possible to create romanized versions of something you want to have in the URL. – deceze Apr 09 '12 at 08:17
What I said is that URLs don't matter to mainstream users. Last post here. I just don't want to live in a world where "[ZA̡͊͠͝LGΌ ISͮ̂҉̯͈͕̹̘̱ TO͇̹̺ͅƝ̴ȳ̳ TH̘Ë͖́̉ ͠P̯͍̭O̚N̐Y̡ H̸̡̪̯ͨ͊̽̅̾̎Ȩ̬̩̾͛ͪ̈́̀́͘ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬC̷̙̲̝͖ͭ̏ͥͮ͟Oͮ͏̮̪̝͍M̲̖͊̒ͪͩͬ̚̚͜Ȇ̴̟̟͙̞ͩ͌͝S̨̥̫͎̭ͯ̿̔̀ͅ](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/340494)" could be part of an URI. – jmic Apr 09 '12 at 08:25
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I belive it's already a faulty strategy to include something user-generated into URL. It's simpler to use ID's in URL and not to worry about special characters. – Denis Kulagin Apr 09 '12 at 08:27

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 09 '12 at 08:17

Username within a system is most of the time for the consumption of HUMANS therefore, from usability point of view it should be READABLE

And yes you can use your national characters in username and make sure you understand character encoding , storage and retrieval. You system/application should be ready to consume the selected encoding at every level e.g client-side, server-side and at database end and tools you use to manipulate with each tier e.g IDEs etc ..

So from my point of view you need some extra knowledge and efforts to handle such a system without killing Usability

Why do we have username rules?

2 Answers2