Display unregistered and renamed-without-redirect usernames as struck through

[pauamma]

Title:
Display unregistered and renamed-without-redirect usernames as struck through

Area:
site-specific markup, renaming, registration, usability

Summary:
<user name="thisusernamedoesntexist"> is displayed with no strike through when the username was never registered, or was renamed to something else without redirection. This makes it harder to spot typos, and may have minor privacy consequences in the latter case. It should be made consistent with the way usernames of deleted accounts display.

Description:
Drawback: This would introduce an incompatible change for people who relied on the current behavior to display made-up generic usernames without having to register them or find ones already registered for that purpose, like "exampleuser". Finding one suitable for that purpose - eg, not that of an actual site user or community which might feel singled out - would become harder, and maybe even impossible without actually registering it, for languages other than English.

Poll #13088 Display unregistered and renamed-without-redirect usernames as struck through

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 50

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
2 (4.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
18 (36.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
16 (32.0%)

(I have no opinion)
11 (22.0%)

(Other: please comment)
3 (6.0%)

Comments

[ratcreature]

I would find this more confusing than the current behavior. For me the strike through means specifically that an account once existed and now doesn't anymore, not just that it doesn't exist.

[subluxate]

That's my thought, as well.

[pauamma]

What other method (if any) would you suggest for indicating unregistered usernames?

[cesy]

Could we do something different to indicate never registered, possibly italic or possibly a colour change in site scheme, and it could be changed in styles if people wanted?

For renamed without redirection, strikethrough makes sense, though - presumably that means it needs purging before it can be reused. And then a username that's actually been purged after having been deleted presumably goes back to italic/grey instead of strikethrough, since it's then been cleaned up, right?

[pauamma]

Another way of rendering it would work for me. (And as you mentioned, people who don't want it indicated at all could apply CSS to make it look like any other username.)

[zing_och]

This is my favorite of the suggestions on here.

[msilverstar]

I like italic a whole lot.

[nafs]

+1

[kerravonsen]

+1

[sophie]

Maybe displaying it at 33% opacity would be a good idea (plus appropriate alt text, of course). Sort of like this:

sophie = regular user

sophie = deleted user

sophie = user that never existed

(apologies for the lack of alt text in this comment)

[thomasneo]

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to have auto strike-throughs -- or any other auto formatting -- on people's journal entries...

Imagine re-reading your old entries like this...

Yesterday, Mary and I went to John's house to teach him how to bake a cake. Mary brought her grandma's secret lemon and lime flavoring oil, and John was like so pleased about it...

I would rather have no formatting at all just to make for easier reading. :<

[denise]

i'm not following you? that would only happen if somebody had formatted that text with "Yesterday, <user name=mary> and I went to <user name=john>'s house...", and then those would lead to mary and john. what the suggestion is discussing is the difference between username (valid account, exists), unregisteredname (valid account name, but unregistered at the time i'm typing this), and [Bad username or unknown identity: totallyinvalidusernamebecausetherearetoomanyletters]. (which i believe already throughs a "bad username" error, but i'm not 100% sure.)

[pseudomonas]

The strikethrough behaviour already creates a mismatch between DW accounts and those on other systems with a DW/LJ codebase (whereby deleted accounts on other sites are not marked as such on DW posts). This would extend it.

[andrewducker]

How about a different icon?

[amadi]

This would create an interesting issue with styles that replace the system user head with another icon already.

[melannen]

I like changing the userhead - you can already tell if you've mistyped a community or system account name (like dw_sugestions) because the userhead comes up as a user rather than community or system account, so there's some kind of automatic check in place; changing the fallback icon to one that means "no account" seems doable.

(styles that change the system userhead would just have another userhead icon to change - there are many different ones already; I'm not sure why another would cause that much difficulty?)

[msilverstar]

I like this one too, maybe a question mark?

[axiom_of_stripe]

I like this idea.

[ninetydegrees]

I agree that the current system is confusing but I'm not sure strikethrough is the answer. Changing the userhead might be a first step but it's not enough. I'm all out of ideas unfortunately.

[pauamma]

Perhaps apply a specific class to it so people can style it however they think best?

[susanreads]

Something would be useful to spot typos, but not strikethrough, I think, especially for never-registered. Ideas I like above are adding a CSS class so people can style it as required, and changing the user-head - kyrielle's suggestion of a question mark sounds suitable.

[msilverstar]

I think there are two use cases somewhat in conflict on these unused accounts:

1) typos: where flagging account status is really darn useful

2) everything else (RPGs? examples?)

Given that account creation is free, I think solving for the first is more important than the second.

[kaberett]

(Thank you SO MUCH for the way you filled in the "area" field.)


-- & now I have read the discussion: generally in favour, with one of the suggested alternatives (i.e. italics vs strike-through, or custom user-head); just having normal rather than bold typeface is not always going to be visible (i.e. weird shit happens with rendering of bolding at some magnifications with some fonts). I have no strong feeling about which suggested alternative, but would prefer one of them to the suggestion-as-made.

[pauamma]

Why, because I put "usability" in it? (And if you look closely, you'll notice I voted for "implemented with changes" myself. I usually end up doing that on my suggestions because while I make a point to provide a candidate spec/design to get the discussion going, it usually has ample room for improvement.)

[ciaan]

Another vote that renamed-without-redirect be treated like deleted accounts and struck through, but unregistered accounts should definitely NOT be treated like deleted accounts.