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I originally had "yx" as display name (when Stack Overflow still allowed 2 character display names). I did not change it, but I now see my display name contains a dot. Why was this change made?

Even Jeff said I could retain it; yet, somehow it was changed without my knowledge.

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    Perhaps its a particular time of the month?
    – Rosinante
    Sep 14, 2011 at 19:36
  • I don't see any record of a name change in your history, so I'm guessing it was done automatically. Maybe when you associated accounts?
    – Bill the Lizard
    Sep 14, 2011 at 19:43
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    I noticed that TM (the guy who posted that question you linked) also has a period added to his name. Looks like a policy change?
    – Jeff Mercado
    Sep 14, 2011 at 19:52
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    Most likely the grace period is over and there was job to make all display names three characters at least, filling the gaps with dots.
    – Shadow The Spring Wizard
    Sep 14, 2011 at 20:08
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    It appears that this has been done to everyone with short names as well regardless of recent activity.
    – Jeff Mercado
    Sep 14, 2011 at 20:13
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    @Rosinante Yes, but if it's XY it can't have a '.' (That's an XY chromosome joke, BTW).
    – Jay Riggs
    Sep 14, 2011 at 20:17
  • I want my user name to include descriptions of violent acts upon people who include tags in their titles, laced liberally with curse words such as "F" and "S" and "MF." Unfortunately, I can't have that either.
    – user1228
    Sep 14, 2011 at 20:39
  • I want a period and a unicorn in my user name
    – Dr. belisarius
    Sep 15, 2011 at 1:47
  • @belisarius: you could rename yourself to belisarius.廌. At least according to the Unicode database that's valid.
    – Joachim Sauer
    Sep 15, 2011 at 6:38

1 Answer 1

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It's been over a year since we had that grandfather period; users have had plenty of time to adjust.

We're now normalizing all display names to be a minimum of 3 characters, so we don't have to keep special cases in our code.

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    nooo, I'm no longer a special case :P
    – z -
    Sep 15, 2011 at 2:02
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    Give those poor souls a "Grandfather" badge, so that they feel special again ;-)
    – Joachim Sauer
    Sep 15, 2011 at 6:35
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    do I win a prize for doing this myself?
    – jk.
    Sep 15, 2011 at 11:02

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