OSM user names shortened for discourse?

_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

Firefishy · 2022-04-28T10:19:09.032Z

The users’ username is set from their OSM login. We are very flexible on what we allow on OSM.org, so likely best being as flexible here to now cause any disruption for users.

Firefishy · 2022-04-28T10:19:44.580Z

Now also allowed min characters to 1. Username is set from osm.org, so will be overridden from whatever is allowed there.

nukeador · 2022-04-28T11:57:47.107Z

Noted, just making sure we were OK with potential homograph attacks on usernames as a result of allowing any unicode char.

It also breaks the internal letter avatar system as far as I read.

SomeoneElse · 2022-04-28T12:29:16.166Z

nukeador:

potential homograph attacks on usernames as a result of allowing any unicode char.

Yes - those are a thing already (sometimes not even needing unicode). https://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/4730 is a block on one such. As Firefishy says it I don’t think that it makes a lot of sense to have this site more strict than osm.org where users come from.