Allow more character types in user display names

Question

Per ChrisF's answer, I am specifically requesting that parentheses (), brackets [], and braces {} be added to the white list of allowed characters for Display Names.

These are easily accessible from your standard keyboard, can't otherwise be used for nefarious purposes, and certainly are more innocuous than many of the Unicode characters that are allowed.

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I thought of a really rather clever¹ display name for my Stack Exchange account(s) and tried to change it. But I couldn't. Instead, I was offered this error:

• Display Name can only contain letters, digits, spaces, apostrophes or hyphens and must start with a letter or digit

Well, phooey.

Why such a restriction? I could see preventing, say, emoji, but I was prevented from adding parentheses. Parentheses seem fairly innocuous.

Can this please be changed?

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¹ Well, I certainly thought so. Others would disagree, I'm sure.

Answer 1

The restrictions are in place to prevent users doing things like adding diamonds to their names to impersonate moderators.

So rather than have a list of disallowed characters that must be constantly maintained it's easier to keep a list of known safe characters.

If there's a character (or two) not on the list you really think would be useful then make the case for them to be added to the whitelist.

Answer 2

WWWWWWWoW PROGRAMMER WoWWWWWWW

Isn't as annoying, nor stands out as much as

[][][][][][A More Elegant Tool][][][][][][]

or

{{{{{{{{{{ COBOLGUY7 }}}}}}}}}}}

So unless there's a compelling reason why allowing parenthesis improves the stack exchange experience for a majority of users, then I'd argue against it.

Answer 3

One reason to keep the allowed character list as "safe" as possible is @mention in comments.

@πδγα is not easy to type for everyone, and something like @💩🖕🐻 even less so.

Even adding just parens or braces may be problematic, as it makes things more difficult for the markdown parser.