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by RadiozRadioz 1138 days ago
I disagree that discriminators fix the rare username problem. The way I see it, they just move the problem.

Using discriminators to stop people fighting over "Mike" just makes them fight over "Mike#0001" instead. Discriminators do not fix the problem. Granted you now have "Mike#1337" and "Mike#0420" to contend with, but how is that any different to "Mike1337" or "Mike420"?

If there's scarcity of anything, people will fight over it. No matter how unappealing you make it. You could go all-out and turn the usernames into UUIDs, but then people would fight over the ones ending in lots of zeros.

I don't think preventing username squatting is a valid reason to keep discriminators. Even if it were a valid reason, it's hardly an important one. The issue is innocuous at most, and the only people who care are the ones assigning artificial value to these "rare" usernames in the first place.