Talk:Single User Login finalisation announcement/Archives/2014-10

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Rename format

I am very glad that this plan is on the move again! It is annoying to have to log out and log on when switching between languages (because my main user name is still reserved for other people at some places).

There may still be room for detail criticism. Last year, User Wnt criticized the format for the renamed users. See the archive page. The tilde is an awkward choice, some people may have difficulties with typing this. For example, when followed by an n or a vowel, the tilde is places above the character (ñ, ã, õ) instead of before it, on many computers. Also the suffixes are rather long. Therefore I support Wnt's proposal to use a hyphen instead, I think there will be little cases where this would result in a new conflict. Also for Wikipedia names, the suffix could be shortened to -en or -enw or -enwp instead of ~enwiki, which is not very informative anyway, aren't all WikiMedia sites wikis? Bever (talk) 03:43, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I can confirm the ~ problem. Swedish keyboards do not contain any ~ key, only a "dead_tilde" key which produces a ~ symbol if you press the dead_tilde key followed by a space. On the other hand, if you press "dead_tilde" followed by "a", "n" or "o", the ~ ends up on top of the letter. If the dead_tilde is followed by some other key, the behaviour is different depending on which operating system you use. For example, "dead_tilde" followed by another "dead_tilde" produces one ~ under Linux but two ~~ under Windows. --Stefan2 (talk) 15:31, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
The tilde is also not printed on Italian keyboards, though it's usually available with appropriate combinations. I got the impression that the username format was chosen under the assumption nobody would actually need to type the new usernames, given a) possibility to log in with old username and password, b) easy renames to usernames of one's own choice. However, I agree the assumption is a rather "risky" one. --Nemo 17:47, 5 October 2014 (UTC)