Username changes

I find it really jarring seeing people @ me as @lyrecalliope rather than @captaincalliope (my handle across the web including twitter). I know changing my handle would break previous @mentions to me.. but well.. yeah. First world namespacing problems.

Alternatively, this feature suggestion might make this less of an issue for me: https://www.loomio.org/d/pUv8R0Mn/small-improvements-to-mentions

I agree. I think small changes here could improve the user experience a lot.

Totally agree with this.

@jameskiesel and @lyrecalliope is this potentially a feature you two might want to work together on building? Sorry I know suggesting a change does not mean you want to be the one to implement it, but I thought I'd put the idea out there since you're both devs.

Hehe. Unfortunately, I'm not a dev myself.. just dev literate. Otherwise, I'd totally have forked Loomio's code base by now! I can however contribute to UI/UX discussions.

I agree too on this.

@lyrecalliope D: I'm happy to change your username as a quick fix. We would love to improve feature set and it's definitely going to happen, but we are at full capacity at the moment.
Anyway let me know if you're keen

echoing everything @lyrecalliope says - i'm @sdboyer everywhere, and i'd like consistency.

i can't promise any sort of timeline, but i could try to dig in on this as my other time permits.

seems to me that, given the mention-breaking issue, it's probably best to only allow a one-time change of the username once the account is created, but to allow a choice of username at initial account creation? that approach seems reasonable from both a long-term and a solves-the-immediate-problem perspective.

@samboyer A downside of allowing changing the username at account creation is that it is one extra thing for every single new user to think about.

@samboyer speaking as a code virgin here, but what about treating the @mention link as a variable which changes if the username is changed?

@matthewbartlett what about a link on the account creation form saying something like 'extra options' which can be clicked to open up another part of the form with options like choose username desired by more fussy users?

@matthewbartlett - sure, but it's easy to make the field autopopulate using the same mechanism as is used right now to select the username (but on the client side).

@strypey - i don't yet know how Rails handles things, so that might be feasible, but the general pattern i'm accustomed to recognizes that everything's quite a lot simpler user input is captured exactly, without mutations; any such changes (like the linkification we see now) are applied as filters when the content is rendered for consumption.

again, that may or may not be Rails' view - i'll figure that out once i start digging in. which is still likely to be at least a week, i'm pretty swamped atm :(

Yea.. our mentioning is really bad. It absolutely should have a database level reference to the user but it does not. Once we have that then we can stop using @ and usernames altogether, instead just displaying the users current name with a nice digital reference to the user.

It sucks and I'm savouring when I can get around to replacing the current system.. and throw in emoji's at the same time,

@mixirving A username change would be greatly appreciated. :)

here you go @captaincalliope