Blocking special characters in memberlist

[Random Username]

Would it cause any problems if I list each special character I don't want used in the memberlist in the reserved names list?

Thank you!

[Kindred]

I don't think that will work....   the "reserved names" are entire strings, not individual characters...

[Random Username]

Hey, it works. Don't know if it causes problems but, yea, I blocked everything but letters, numbers and underscores and edited register.template.php to inform them of the limitation.

[Arantor]

You can't possibly have added *all* of them to the list, they wouldn't all fit. Everything but letters, numbers and underscores is a list of approximately 149,000 entries which wouldn't in the settings table.

In any case, are you trying to restrict from *username* or *display name* as these are two different things, checked in different places and with different restrictions...

[Speed King]

Better solution is to set member registration to "Admin approval". Then you can reject all members with special characters in their names.

[Random Username]

Hey, lol, this works perfectly. I'm not sure what you're talking about with 149,000 entries. This is what I have in there. Works like a charm!

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"Match whole name only. If unchecked, search within names." is unchecked.
"Match case. If unchecked, search will be case insensitive." is unchecked.

[Kindred]

that's because you are using incorrect terms...    and your "block" only blocks the use of standard ASCII non-alpha-numeric characters

[Random Username]

I apologize for that. I just mean that it's doing what I want it to which is block any use of those characters. I mean, I know there are more possibilities but that should cover the situation mostly.

[Arantor]

But there are so many characters that are far more aggravating. Like every single emoji for example.

😀😁😂🤣😃😄😅😆❤🎵🎄💕🎂🎉⚽⚾🥎🏀🏐🏈🏉🎱🎳🥌⛳⛸🎣♠♣♥♦

Just as a sample of things that people could put that aren't covered... all typeable on your average mobile device or even on a Windows laptop (Windows + fullstop key)

And that's before we talk about people with accented letters in their username, or anyone who doesn't happen to use the American standard alphabet.

In any case, this is a technical fix to a social problem and users who would discover this rule probably wouldn't be good users in any case - most of the time they'll either not discover it, or discover it and go on to be a troublemaker in which case you've actually achieved nothing in practice.

[Random Username]

But it's not aggravation really that concerns me. I'm a libertarian so am extremely tolerant. It's the rigging of the memberlist that I don't want because my site is heavily customized and using the memberlist in a fairly important way. It wouldn't be that big a deal but I prefer to make the attempt.

Possibly some of my members will make efforts to violate the prohibition on the registration page but I can deal with that small number if I wish to more easily than the larger number I would have if I didn't tell them they couldn't do it and didn't block most likely attempts. I don't view it as a social problem. Just a technical one. If it doesn't end up with people using characters to be first in the list, then I could give a crap. Even then, maybe I still don't. Not sure yet really.

[Arantor]

But it is a social one. People in general will conform to the rules laid out - because that's what people do by default. That's what I've seen over the last 20+ years of foruming, by default they'll just follow the rules and have conformist usernames because that's just how people are.

Even your own stated reason: rigging the memberlist, is a social problem, that there is some perceived or actual advantage to doing so.

But I'm still honestly expecting more people to game the system and add in emoji because that's *honestly what more and more people are doing to flout a system* than any amount of general symbol use, and that's been true since SMF started supporting emojis in 2.0.10.

[Kindred]

I'm a libertarian so am extremely tolerant.

ROTFL.... oh, dear gods, that was a true belly buster.

But anyway...  rigging the member list how?
I used to have an account ][|\/|[]
I used that account on a dozen usenet sites before the internet.
How is that username rigging anything?

What, result exactly do you think your ban prevents/accomplishes?

[Random Username]

Hey, you guys are free to think what you want. I was just letting people know what seems to work for me for now. Certainly isn't worth arguing about. Maybe you are right. Not sure. But I like different viewpoints.

[Diego Andrés]

Another solution for your 'problem' would be to change the default sorting method of the memberlist.