Until yesterday my display name was 2 characters. This ended when I started wondering about some issues with comments and notifications, went to meta, and found out that
there is an important feature which only works if the display name is at least three character long.
Methinks, I should not have discovered this accidentally. I should have been warned, maybe even prevented from creating a display name that turns off some of the site's features. Kindly consider implementing this.
We no longer allow names of 2 characters.
3 characters is the minimum name length, and this is enforced.
However, users who have an existing 2 character name may retain it, but will be unable to copy their profile from site to site until they make their username at least 3 characters.
Update: as of 14 September 2011, previously existing shorter display names have been padded with dots.
Yes, very true..One should be warned when he/she entered a user name with 2 or 1 character. But to restrict the length of user name is not at all necessary. Warning feature should be there.
I think that's perfectly reasonable. And we don't want a username of A on here. Every other website in the world has minimum lengths on usernames, so why not SO?
