1009571 - Fail nicely when user creates duplicate username

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 1018321

(Mozilla QA Graveyard :: One and Done, defect, P2)

Description

[Rebecca Billings [:rbillings]]

Profile pages are now being created based on username. If a new user tries to enter a duplicate username, an error should appear stating that the username is taken and to try again.

Comment 1

[Rebecca Billings [:rbillings]]

We moved to a model with unique user IDs attached to the user's email address- the profile display name has no need to be unique.

Comment 2

[Bob Silverberg [:bsilverberg]]

We were discussing this in our One and Done dev meeting today, and we think that we should move to a model where the URL is more friendly and incorporates the user's name, or something close to that.

While it's true that some sites, like SUMO (I believe) use a userid instead of a username in the URL, most modern sites do not do that (e.g., Mozillians, Github, and see also [1]). This will not be a technically difficult solution so it's probably worth doing.

One issue we'll have with this is that Profile Name might be URL-unfriendly (e.g., a space or special character in the Profile Name), so it probably makes sense to have the UserName used for the URL stored separately. Maja suggested today that we could use the Username field in UserAuth, which is currently populated with Gobbledygook when a user first signs in.

Perhaps we could change the sign in method to pre-populate that field from the user's email address (with special characters and the domain removed), and also allow the user to update that field themselves, but limit what's allowed when updating it so it remains URL-friendly.

What does everyone think about this? 

[1] http://www.spoj.com/users/pankaj_007/

Comment 3

[Rebecca Billings [:rbillings]]

I'm not averse to having a profile friendly link, however we will need to add text stating that users will not be able to edit their profile url during account creation. We might consider removing the ability to edit username also- as editing the profile url is not an option [correct me if I'm wrong] and changing the display name without changing the url sounds weird. We'll also need to implement duplicate checking.

Comment 4

[Bob Silverberg [:bsilverberg]]

I feel like this is now a duplicate of bug 1018321, so I'm going to mark it as such. We shouldn't be trying to have the same conversation in two places. If you disagree that this is a dup please feel free to reopen it.