🆕📝 Every Service Should Allow Domains as Handles

@jarrod I love this idea as well, and am truly surprised other services haven’t adopted it already. The only downside IMO is the visual perspective of having longer domain-based usernames displaying. To me it feels distracting and not as clean as just the username or nickname itself, though perhaps it’s just because I’m not used to it?

@pimoore True, but it seems like usernames dissolve into ever longer ones with numbers and underscores anyway, so at least I could memorize my friend’s weird url once and then struggle on every network.

@jarrod That’s a very good point, especially on bigger networks where so many usernames are already taken and people resorted to hacks like these. I’d be curious to hear Manton’s take on this. // @manton

@pimoore UUiDs.

@Archimage Interesting, without understanding the underlying specifics how would you link that to a visually friendly username?

@pimoore just append it to the username. The UUID should be unique without one. CompuServe used 70037,1407 as the identifier for Archimage, me. Log in with the UUID, display the username. Map it internally. Not a huge problem.

@pimoore a simple solution to a one-to-many problem. Not every Archimage is 70037,1405, but only one 70037,1405 is Archimage. If you want both to be unique just concatenate the two. Then it’s 1-to-1.

@Archimage How would that work visually though if two people were using the same username portion? You’d still need a way to distinguish between them would you not?

@pimoore display the ID along with the name. That’s what CompuServe did.

Archimage (70037,1405) reporting, posting and replies would require both.

@pimoore having a user-searchable user directory would help.

@pimoore @jarrod I'm 100% for domain names as usernames. We already support following domain names (for example, @ma.tt or @nytimes.com) and plan to eventually integrate it better with the normal Micro.blog usernames.

@pimoore it’s like a phone number. You still need a phone number to call someone. Even if you don’t remember it.

@pimoore new problems aren’t new ;) just ask someone old enough.

@manton @jarrod @Archimage That’s great news, and will go a long way to addressing this issue with something people already own that’s unique to themselves.

@pimoore I still remember my UID

@pimoore that just bypasses the problem. That assumes unique usernames on the domain. It’s not unique in the fediverse. The domain name just makes it user friendlier. A user should have a UUID across the fediverse which would essentially reserve the username now and in the future. Otherwise archimage@x.z may not be the same person as archimage@writing.exchange. @manton

@Archimage @manton Ah that makes sense, I understand what you mean now. I’d just find it visually horrible to have a UUID as part of the username, as opposed to something like a domain name. Whether there’s a happy medium between the two I’m not sure, but it’s an interesting conversation so thanks for sharing your thoughts! 👍🏻

@pimoore It doesn’t have to be part of the user-visible username. It can be stored internally in the DB to de-duplicate users with the same user name on the domain/instance. As I said, you would need it to post/reply/and report to, so displaying it UNDER the user name would work.

@jarrod if you want, a user could assign an alias to a user name, that maps to a user-UID combo. It’s more work for the devs, but not burdensome. @manton

@manton Awesome sauce! That’s great to hear. Thanks!