[Foundation-l] please remove my moderating bits

[Neil Harris]

geni wrote:
> On 10/25/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> En:wp has a policy as of this year
>> not to allow usernames with non-latin character sets. I have no idea
>> where that came from, but it is a shame.
>>     
>
>
> I don't follow username policy but it is likely to do with issues
> related to certain cyrillic characters (ie they look like latin
> characters).
>
>   
That problem's now fixed.

The visual resemblances of Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters are 
taken into account by the software when comparing new usernames against 
already-registered usernames.

In addition, mixing script systems within a single username is now 
forbidden.

However, the remaining problem, which is that most Latin-script readers 
can't easily discern the differences between names in radically 
different writing systems (and indeed, in many cases, that such names 
cannot be displayed at all in their browsers) is still a major issue, 
and one that will need addressing when single-sign-in is fully implemented.

One possibility is the automatic transliteration of names when used in 
wikis whose "home script" is different; another is allowing users to 
create their own disambiguating pseudonyms for use on wikis with 
different default writing systems, so that their names might, for 
example, be represented as "???? (Xiao Zhou)", where "????" stands for 
Unicoded Chinese characters which are not readable by most westerners.

Any such disambiguating pseudonyms would, of course, also need to be 
unique within the same namespace as ordinary usernames.

-- Neil