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Underscore help please

As some of you may have already figured out, I am a bit daft when it comes to computers,lol. I try not to spend to much time on them but anyway......

I am experiencing an UNDERSCORE  problem. I need the EASY explanation how to do an @mention with a username that has an underscore in it. It never works for me and frankly I wish they were not even permitted for a username.

Anyone out there who can help me????

I would be forever grateful.

Missy_   

Tags (1)
44 Replies
Roller831
Member

I have to click on their username and then open a new browser window to open up their profile page.  Then, I copy and paste the web address and it will link.  I cannot get an underscore user name to link by typing @ and then the username in.

oh, well, some days it's hit and miss.  I'm sure someone will be along during the thread and highlight whoever's name or @ them

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Giulia
Member

"Any chance you can record a video from your phone of you on your home computer trying to copy and paste the link?"  Are you kidding me, Mark???  Is this what we need to be doing to AT mention someone????   Is there no way to universally - what's the word?? Globally?  just change all underscores to something else that can be recognized by the JIVE platform??  Don't answer.  Obviously NOT.  But then what's the work-around?'

When I can't @ mention someone because of the underscore in their on-line name, I search for them, find they're page and copy and paste from there directly from the direct link to their page.  It takes an extra step or two.  Or three or four.  It's aggravating as hell.  If you think that your "at mention" is important enough - you'll spend the time.  Just saying.  

"  I think any active member that has an underscore in their username should have it removed, and then be notified"  Well YEAH!  But then our poor solo Company Manger would have to be up all night long, more than he already is...  But why the underscore can't be modified across the board to something else... but then that's what keeps our company manger awake I night. I'm guessing.  There just is no global way to do it on this platform.  It has to be on an individual basis.  And that SUCKS!

I'm telling you, just find the person any way you can (sometimes it just shows up as a blog they've created) but get to their actual page and copy and paste the link from there.  

I'll shut up now.  Because obviously I'm in "pissy mode!"  lol

Giulia

I wish it were that simple.

All usernames must be unique. If simply swapped out an underscore for a hyphen it could create duplicates. There are close to 800K members. A small number of people have underscores in their usernames and even smaller number of people on the community have underscores in their username. Few of which are active. This is why I'm fixing them on a case by case basis, but the person has to raise their hand and request it. Also changing something drastically requires drastic testing and could introduce a new issue that could be worse. 

A little history...

We came from Ning and then went to elgg and then went to Jive. You probably didn't noticed (Cause we worked really hard) to ensure that all the old links didn't break and redirected to the right thing.  I'm sure there were some we missed but we had some of our nerdiest developers work tirelessly to make sure all of our bases were covered. There are millions of redirects.  Though you see one fairly seamless system there is a lot of things behind the scenes that make the magic work.  Your login logs you into multiple different places, one of them is the community. So if you update the username for the community, because it is a unique identifier, it has to be updated in all other places within our systems. Plus all links for that given person need to be updated as well so you don't get broken links for that person.

For example kristen-9.7.15‌ updated her username.  On Elgg the link to her profile was https://community.becomeanex.org/pg/profile/bex_user_465057. Then on Jive it was https://excommunity.becomeanex.org/people/kristen_9.7.15 and now it is https://excommunity.becomeanex.org/people/kristen-9.7.15. No matter what link you click on it should go to her profile. And if you click on any of those links it should go to her profile. This all compounds exponentially if you have lots of content on the site. I've found some steps that work but it takes me quite a few steps and I have to be methodical about it to fix it.  

Believe me, I've gotten in pissy, snarky mode about why it hasn't been fixed yet. Yeah even I can get that way on occasion.  I know it is annoying but I've considered the alternatives and the approach I'm taking is the best, all things considered.

Mark
EX Community Manager

EX Community Admin Team
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Giulia
Member

PS - the suggestion to put in underscores (to begin with) when the transfer to the new platform was made, was not a good one!  MOO!

Giulia wrote:

PS - the suggestion to put in underscores (to begin with) when the transfer to the new platform was made, was not a good one!  MOO!

The bug was discovered in late December 2016, after the username updates were complete (Mid December 2016). Technically(according to documentation) it should have worked without issue. Had we updated the usernames to remove the underscores we would not have had the community live by late January 2017.  Sadly it was unavoidable.
Mark
EX Community Manager

EX Community Admin Team
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would it be possible to just change the ACTIVE ones on this site and perhaps set up registration so the new members cannot use an underscore in their username?

Mandolinrain wrote:

would it be possible to just change the ACTIVE ones on this site and perhaps set up registration so the new members cannot use an underscore in their username?

Yes but only a one by one basis.  I can't blanket change them. Furthermore, I won't change anyone's username without their permission unless it is inappropriate, according to our community guidelines. Defining who is active, locating them and then changing them one by one would take a considerable amount of time.  If there were X number of users x 9-10 mins each this would pile up quite quickly. If there is anyone who you're struggling with. Point them to me. I'll work with them to get it updated.

Because we have over 800K members registered with EX and because usernames have to be unique, we need the underscore to ensure that there are enough available options for usernames to be created with ease.  Not all symbols are easy to search with.  In fact some help with search but would hinder locating people if used in usernames. This is why we eliminated some symbols prior to moving over as the profiles would have been extremely hard to locate. Like A-Z and 0-9, period, underscore and hyphen do not affect search results so they are considered acceptable characters for usernames.

Mark
EX Community Manager

EX Community Admin Team
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I appreciate all you do , thanks Mark

Giulia
Member

If you get anything from what I've said, it's that I understand that you are doing and have done the best that you can  with changes in platform, bugs, and given the limitations of such...  I "get" that it's not simple and that you have so busted your butt (which thankfully you never smoked) to help us.  We just sit here thinking, well everything should work fine, the way it always has.  We don't grasp the enormity of platform changes, code writing, links that connect our past with our future on sites...  Differences in browsers, etc.  We just sit here thinking "well, it just should be easy."   And that's actually rather understandable since it's always been made easy for us most of the time with the myriad changes that occur with all our internet connections and those connections with each other.  We expect our email to react the same on Chrome as on Firefox as on IE.  The fact that when one browser changes it's "way," others have to adapt and also change theirs.  But then, I don't really know what I'm talking about.  I'm just guessing. 

But for those of us who actually don't just take it for granted, who have a weeeeeeeee bit understanding as to the amount of code that has to be generated across each platform, browser....  it's stunning that there can be any compatibility at all.  I think.

"Millions of redirects"  We haven't a clue as to what the coding involved with that is. I certainly don't.  But I do  have a simple understanding of the difficulty of bridging different platforms, browsers, and attempting to make EVERYBODY HAPPY all the time.  Not possible.  You know what?  I'm just really grateful that the blogs I wrote back in May of 2008 have been pulled forward here from that beautiful Ning platform and are still a part of my history on this site.  Because without the history of each of us here - well - it just makes a richer brew for our support offerings.