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Comments on Should multiple whitespace characters in a row be permitted in usernames?

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Should multiple whitespace characters in a row be permitted in usernames?

+8
−0

I was confused by the unusual layout of text below a post in the question list:

Post showing a large offset between "posted by" and "last activity" sections

Note the long gap after "posted 3y ago by".

Viewing the individual question page shows the underlying cause:

Username with a long string of whitespace in the middle

The username is two dots separated by a long string of whitespace.

Should multiple whitespace characters in a row be permitted in usernames?

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In general we shouldn't allow user names that game the system or exploit loopholes with no real advantage to the user, and at the expense and annoyance of all the other users.

The two dots with a long string of spaces between is just one example. It's hard to know what next "clever" hack someone will come up with. Those in charge should have the power to make judgement calls and disallow such user names.

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Yeah, this shouldn’t really have been tagged «discussion», but «bug» or «feature request». Some things should simply be up to the developers to fix based on intuition and common sense, and not need a discussion on Meta beforehand. But that said, it doesn’t really harm us that it’s brought up. Nice to know there was such an exploit in the first place.