Ask HN: So why is it that usernames are always 5 characters or more? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: So why is it that usernames are always 5 characters or more?

2 pointsiamjonlee5 comments

I've never really understood why usernames are always 5 characters or more. Why not 3 or 4? Is it because it's more relevant to searches in a user database? What's the reasoning?

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I've been thinking about this for my site and I've decided to set a minimum number of characters for a username so that it stands out as being a username rather than a random set of characters.

I think if you allow 3 character username people are more likely to use things like 'asd' and 'qaz'. Then on a site such as HN where you have comments labeled by username it can become confusing if all comments are labeled with garbage. Whereas if you set a minimum of 5 characters then people are more likely to user human readable words rather than garbage.

That's true, but at the same time it would make a world of difference depending on your service. I asked the question because our app Persona is like an about me Page, in pictures. Most of the requests I'm getting is because people like Paul or Bob, Tim etc want to have their personalized URL linked with our app. Imagine if you were a Paul and you were sending your friends a link: http://www.prsna.me/paul . The appeal there for a less than 5 character username would then be justified as I see it.

But that only helps the first person called John or Paul who signs up with you. I guess you have to weigh up helping the odd few first people who join your site, or disallowing names that don't look like usernames.

I think that is because that under 5 chars, there is not that many usernames.

It would also be odd with a username on only 1 char?

I think there would be a lot of personalized usernames, which is what I'm going for. Imagine having having a personalized link like domain.com/jon or domain.com/tim. There's definitely a lot of demand for such personalized usernames.

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