a request for Adobe and Jive

[Bob_Peters]

Long user names such as the one shown below create havoc with the display of a page.  Take a look at the Lightroom forum to see what I mean.

So, my request:  Enforce the use of shorter user names or truncate the name when displayed on a forum page.

And the name is (nothing personal intended):

[email address deleted by host]

[mytaxsite]

I had a quick look at the Forum you are referring to but all I can see is that the name is displayed in a specified column which has a fixed size so it appears normal in Firefox 4.  I can post the screenshots if you want to see what I mean.  It could be that I don't understand what you are complaining about so I'll wait for others to comment further on this matter.

[pwillener]

I don't have FF4, but in FF3.6 it looks terrible, especially if the long username appears in both the Author and the Last Post column.  As a result, the Subject column is compressed into multiple lines of almost only one word each.

I agree with the OP's request to cut off long user names in the topic lists.

[mytaxsite]

I agree with the OP's request to cut off long user names in the topic lists.

Perhaps this may not be technologically feasible because a name is a name and you can't just trim it down  to make it completely unrecognizable.  the solution could be to limit all usernames to a maximum of 10 characters (and perhaps a minimum of 6).  Alternatively, that particular column should be reconfigured so that a name that exceeds a certain number of characters should be wrapped.  Perhaps this is already in place because all I see in FF4 is according to this picture:

[Guest]

This topic was discussed over a year ago, and there was no concessus at that time what a title lenght should be.  Some titles explained the whole question and took up more than 5 lines.

[mytaxsite]

Curt,

Bob is talking about Usernames (not subject Titles) and that is why I said it could be something between 6 and 10 characters.  The only problem I can see with this restriction is foreign names especially in the Middle East where names could contain almost complete alphabet!  How do we enforce this?

Titles is a different thing altogether because some people would put their question in the title rather than in the big white space as it is the case in some Microsoft newsgroups and forums.

hth

[Claudio González]

DWILCOX01 wrote:

Curt,

Bob is talking about Usernames (not subject Titles) and that is why I said it could be something between 6 and 10 characters.  The only problem I can see with this restriction is foreign names especially in the Middle East where names could contain almost complete alphabet!  How do we enforce this?

Titles is a different thing altogether because some people would put their question in the title rather than in the big white space as it is the case in some Microsoft newsgroups and forums.

hth

I have always used as my username my real name, 16 characters long and  including an accented vowel that doesn't exist in the English alphabet,  and it doesn't disturb the page setup. I am not willing to have it mutilated, or to change it.

And it was you who introduced the titles subject, and I understand Curt was answering you...

[mytaxsite]

Claudio González wrote:

And it was you who introduced the titles subject, and I understand Curt was answering you...

Please could you quote me where did I introduce the titles subject in my messages.

Thanks.

[Claudio González]

Sorry. I seem to have misread this message because the picture shows a wrapped title but not a wrapped name. Perhaps the same thing happened to Curt...

DWILCOX01 wrote:

I agree with the OP's request to cut off long user names in the topic lists.

Perhaps this may not be technologically feasible because a name is a name and you can't just trim it down  to make it completely unrecognizable.  the solution could be to limit all usernames to a maximum of 10 characters (and perhaps a minimum of 6).  Alternatively, that particular column should be reconfigured so that a name that exceeds a certain number of characters should be wrapped.  Perhaps this is already in place because all I see in FF4 is according to this picture:

[pwillener]

DWILCOX01 wrote:

I agree with the OP's request to cut off long user names in the topic lists.

Perhaps this may not be technologically feasible because a name is a name and you can't just trim it down  to make it completely unrecognizable.  the solution could be to limit all usernames to a maximum of 10 characters (and perhaps a minimum of 6).  Alternatively, that particular column should be reconfigured so that a name that exceeds a certain number of characters should be wrapped.  Perhaps this is already in place because all I see in FF4 is according to this picture:

I think it should be very easy to just truncate a long user name (without any spaces in it) to 12 or 16 characters. The user should still be recognizable by the first 12 or 16 characters (lee@LEETHOMP).

Also, the problem is really with the forum topic listings, not the topic display itself.

[Claudio González]

I think I must repeat what I said above:

I have always used as my username my real name, 16 characters long and  including an accented vowel that doesn't exist in the English alphabet, and it doesn't disturb the page setup. I am not willing to have it mutilated, or to change it.

[mytaxsite]

I think I must repeat what I said above:

For you there is always an exception. You have been around longer than

anybody.

Also, the new rules should apply to new registrants.

hth

[Claudio González]

I am not asking for an exception. There are many usernames longer than 10 characters around that don't conflict with the page setup. Also, I remember several shorter than 6 characters.

[Noel Carboni]

I agree with Claudio.  Anything that encourages short "handles" instead of real names is certainly not the direction you want to go.  Some people (none here implied) seem to think that hiding behind anonymity allows them to act like children.  We don't need more of that.

But how big a problem is it, really, that the username is truncated in displays?  The first thing that came to my mind was "I wish this was the biggest problem this forum had."

-Noel

[pwillener]

All that was suggested by the OP, and I support it, is that long user names (longer than say 20 characters) are truncated in the Author and Last Post areas of the topic listings.

It should still be possible to sign-up with real user names, and really long user names (as some people having difficulties finding a user name that is not already in use, with currently 700,000+ active users).

Making this change is certainly much easier than changing the sign-up procedure.

But on the other hand, everybody knows that such requests will anyway never happen...