Going forward, usernames will be required to be Latin-alphabetic alphanumeric (including dashes and underscores). To allow the same level of expression, however, display names are being added, which have very few limits. If you do not set a display name, your username will be shown instead. Note that even with a display name set, your username is not considered private.
Our current, lenient policy regarding usernames allows users to register using emoji and various ligatures and diacritics in their username. These have multiple ways of being constructed, which can lead to the same visual glyph being represented by different bytes. This can become a problem when trying to log in again, and it also makes it harder for me to look up things based on username.
If your username currently does not fit the new requirements, there is no requirement to change it as of now. I do, however, highly recommend that you do change it, since it can only lead to trouble.
In addition, to help make it easier to spot when a username or display name is invalid, forms that register or change those fields have been updated to display realtime validation information. I would like to extend this to all forms on Heliosphere, but it is a challenging and time-consuming process, so don't expect that soon.
Thanks for all your understanding, and have a great day! c:
Our current, lenient policy regarding usernames allows users to register using emoji and various ligatures and diacritics in their username. These have multiple ways of being constructed, which can lead to the same visual glyph being represented by different bytes. This can become a problem when trying to log in again, and it also makes it harder for me to look up things based on username.
If your username currently does not fit the new requirements, there is no requirement to change it as of now. I do, however, highly recommend that you do change it, since it can only lead to trouble.
In addition, to help make it easier to spot when a username or display name is invalid, forms that register or change those fields have been updated to display realtime validation information. I would like to extend this to all forms on Heliosphere, but it is a challenging and time-consuming process, so don't expect that soon.
Thanks for all your understanding, and have a great day! c: