OSM user names shortened for discourse?

TomH · 2022-03-18T11:31:03.780Z

While the database does contain all lengths between 3 and 255 there is no length over 128 with more than 10 users.

There are around 5000 active accounts over 60 characters though, around 1650 over 80 characters, and around 75000 that are only 3 characters. Many of the very long ones may be spam.

nukeador · 2022-03-18T11:34:37.426Z

Should we play safe and see if there is more demand to increase the length limit here before taking any decisions that might affect the DB or API?

amapanda_ᚐᚋᚐᚅᚇᚐ · 2022-03-18T11:52:42.000Z

I tried that and it didn’t change anything.

I don’t mind if my username is user1. ᴵᵐ ⁿᵘᵐᵇᵉʳ ᵒⁿᵉ

It is good for us on the forum to explore what is and isn’t possible with this software, so we can explain it to others.

nukeador · 2022-03-18T11:56:43.857Z

Probably the reason is that Discourse detects that your osm username is a combination of unicode characters and defaults to a safe name instead

_i · 2022-03-18T17:30:48.840Z

Hmm another thing seems to be the normalization of the OSM user names. My nick !i! becomes _i1 and the label shows it in the right way. Not nessesary a big issue, but to mention (and it’s autocomplete) rely on the (slightly wrong) discourse nickname.

nukeador · 2022-03-18T18:29:06.260Z

That seems related with no special characters as part of the nickname.

I keep surprising myself about how osm.org is so permissive with nicknames and that hasn’t resulted in major issues with the DB, APIs or external apps

gendy54 · 2022-03-18T20:42:55.965Z

it must be said that Amanda’s username is… special

mmd · 2022-03-20T18:22:36.002Z

nukeador:

That seems related with no special characters as part of the nickname.

Hmm, that’s not ideal for a global audience. Imagine your Chinese user name ends up as “user2”: https://community.openstreetmap.org/u/user2/summary

Detailed validation logic

nukeador · 2022-03-21T11:08:24.158Z

It seems there are a few options for whitelisting some unicode characters and a warning about not going too broad:

Discourse Meta – 14 May 19

Unicode usernames and group names

Lifting the restrictions on allowed characters in usernames is one of the oldest feature requests. Starting with Discourse 2.3.0.beta9 it’s finally possible to use Unicode characters within usernames and group names. New Site Settings There are...

Reading time: 3 mins 🕑 Likes: 124 ❤

Map_HeRo · 2022-04-06T17:56:42.353Z

Is the problem with user names longer than 20 characters solved in meantime or will OSM names longer than that still be cut down to 20 when registrating here?

nukeador · 2022-04-06T17:58:50.297Z

@Firefishy what’s your recommendation here?

Map_HeRo · 2022-04-15T10:42:20.599Z

@Firefishy
Any news regarding this issue …??.. sorry to bother you but I believe it would be helpful if every interested user would be able to register with their OSM name and not only those with names shorter than 20 characters and not containing certain unicode.

trial · 2022-04-24T19:28:37.217Z

You aren’t fluent in Ogham script, really?

Firefishy · 2022-04-27T15:44:50.844Z

I am unsure what the solution is. The restriction are built into discourse and are unlikely to be easy to override.

_i · 2022-04-27T16:00:43.000Z

Not sure if it’s to much attention, but could we inform affected users before they signup to avoid confusion or shitstorm?

mmd · 2022-04-27T18:39:42.554Z

We can change those default values in the settings. This includes extending the range of permitted unicode chars:

dc2

Map_HeRo · 2022-04-27T18:41:12.253Z

Thanks for your feedback. I am not sure about the possible maxlength, ist it 20 characters (which appears to be the default) or 60 as mentioned by nukeador in #5?

If there is no way to establish a more flexible name handling, I would support the suggestion of _i1 to inform affected OSM users if that would be possible …

Firefishy · 2022-04-28T08:48:59.068Z

I have now increased max length from 20 → 40 and enabled Unicode. Unicode usernames were not allowed before.

Screenshot 2022-04-28 at 09.48.001338×316 75.5 KB

nukeador · 2022-04-28T09:15:37.515Z

Did you enable any unicode? There were some recommendations about being careful about it from discourse devs.

OSM user names shortened for discourse? 🐞 This forum issues and requests

It seems there are a few options for whitelisting some unicode characters and a warning about not going too broad:

dieterdreist · 2022-04-28T09:19:15.488Z

With a diverse community like ours, where the members are from all over the world, writing in many different scripts, I would expect usernames to contain lots of different characters, whitelisting does not seem feasible