Clarify English Character Names Only rule

[Warphammer]

Adds explicitly to the "English" Realm rule that usernames should be (at least for the first name) use English/Latin characters.

[makyo]

So if Laz were to expand eir name to Lazăr, that would be against the rules?

[Warphammer]

Oooh, this is a good corner case. Let's see if we should change it a little bit more.

The intent here is that if a user (formerly also moderators, but moderators now have a way to deal with this a little better using character IDs) needs to report another user, they should be able to do so without learning how to mess about with IMEs, etc. The prototype case for this rule is a mobile user (especially) having to report someone with a name entirely in Katakana.

We have historically enforced this rule for a name entirely composed of non-Latin characters. It originally arose out of a case with someone having a name entirely composed in Furthark runes. Under how this rule is typically enforced, Lazăr would not be a problem because tab completion (at least on desktop) takes care of it in two ways. la should get you the name completed. Also the parsing library for input->user mapping abstracts diacritics so a user could 'report lazar balan' and that would work. (I just tested this on the test instance with Ifrït's name to make sure I remembered right.)

[makyo]

Is it the type of thing where one could allow greater than just 'English' characters? I think that is sort of the sticking point for me, since this boils down to a matter of terminology. If diacritics are abstracted out by the UI, that really helps; just need to find a way to surface that one need not be restricted to English-speaking countries' naming conventions, since that term is already in the reader's head with the rule about this being an English-speaking venue.

[Warphammer]

I agree. Can you take a look at my new wording? Not sure it's final but it's closer.

[makyo]

Looks good to me~ :+1:

[tashiefo]

This might be a nerd-only problem, but you might want to be careful of the terminology; "username" might be taken to be what Mucklet calls the "account name" at the login page, rather than the character's name.

[tashiefo]

Okay. I rarely interact with github, but I see the term's just in the commit message, not the text itself. I am satisfied. Just ignore me.

[Warphammer]

Yeah, I should've used character name for the title as well. Fixed the PR title!

And we seem to be converging on this wording. Thanks for the input, everyone.

[inrush-overload]

Well, there goes my idea for F̴̛̟̽̈́̏̌̃́r̶̲̖̤͉͚͓̥̗̄͋̌́̎̕ä̶̢̝̞̬̠̫̻̥͎́̀̀ņ̷̢̛͈̫̘̪͕̱̥͙͚̭̿̿̈̂̔͌́̋̇̂̕k̸̢̢̗̟͉̟͚͍̫͍̲̠̣̦̳̗̋̎͗̕͝ẇ̸̢̨̨̜͎̹͕̜̗̮͉͖́͌̋̎̀̆͊͜ͅä̸̡̡͍̱̙̩̠̗͎̲̯͆̈͐̊͘̕r̶̛̺̎͊́͌́̏̾͒̉̔̕͠͠d̸̨̦͇̿̿͑̐́̕ the aboleth.

[Warphammer]

I think... if I remember right, the thing that parses character names is or was supposed to filter Zalgo, so. :)

[ItsAKelmi]

Doesn't the new addition of diacritics actually completely quash the original intention of the rule clarification, being that it needs to be typable on a (presumably) traditional 102-key QWERTY layout? I'm fairly certain most of the common European diacritics for example don't exist on those keyboards at all.

If those diacritics are allowed as an exception, then this ruling becomes majorly hypocritical at face value.

[makyo]

I think what @Warphammer was mentioning about the diacritics not being used in the input to name mapping addresses that, though, right? If you type report Lazar balan and that sends a report about Lazăr Bălan, that accomplishes the twin goals of allowing characters to have names that reflect their identity as allowing characters to be addressed within the app.

[ItsAKelmi]

Ah, that does make sense. Though then that begs the question of wouldn't it be enough for the rule to require the first letter to be typable for effective autocompletion... in lieu of a more effective technological solution that is. For example, with the current player count at least, it would be totally possible to generate a session-stable 3 letter id for every awake character that could be used as an alias whenever a name includes exotic symbols. This could be done entirely on the client side too... Of course, that might not help with offline reporting, potentially.

[anisus]

Ah, I missed merging this. Will include it now in the coming hotfix release.