@Gargron moving Mastodon to (old) Discord-style usernames when
/s
@Gargron honest question:
what happens if someone tries to register as a new user? Won't they be able to register the new username, skipping the line?
EDIT: nevermind, just tried and got an username with discriminator
This migration is said to be performed on those who signed up earlier first. I assume that once every last user gets their fixed username (if name is occupied, they get one with numeric suffix), new registrations can take the name without additional popup.
It's still shitty how they've handled existing users...
@Gargron At first I thought it was lame but when I read their argumentation it makes sense.
It would be easier for people and their irl friends or acquaintances to remember the username if it doesn't have error-prone numbers attached to it.
Personally I think it's good to be accommodating to new users rather than overly loyal to older ones out of fear of backlash. At the end of the day, it's a minor inconvenience for us, but a better system for newcomers.
@Mephisto Discord could still do better than that. Let's say, this redtapping of "#" in username is arbitrary - it was essential before as part of user tag and still is now to avoid username claims. Now they make claiming unique username mandatory, except that pound symbol evaporates without clear reason.
Other than that, I think it's long overdue of an attempt to make claim system a-la-Instagram. I never needed discriminators to determine if I'm chatting with the right person nor did I need it to make my username claim without collision - first of all, mine is not so popular, but unique, so I can do it without trouble. Discriminators??? There was no need to reinvent the wheel in the first place - the way we've always done in the Internet - just append whatever on your nickname and it will become unique. Wow, what is this magic!?
@Gargron Yeah it sucks. The announcement post explaining why they did this was basically:
"We noticed that [X] is a problem. So we're introducing this new system that only makes said problem worse!"
repeated for
"having only 10000 unique IDs per name" (now only 1),
"other scripts were limited" (now only lowercase alphanum),
"some people liked to change their name often" (now your last name#id is stored on your profile, maybe forever), and probably more I can't remember.
If it ain't broke!
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