Problem with my account name

[+ECplus3]

Hey there,

 

I created my account a while ago as 'chuckt9881'. More recently, I asked the Groundspeak staff to change it to its present name 'E&Cplus3'. Unfortunately, it seems that having the '&' in there means that nobody can send me PMs through the forums. When you do a search on my name to send the PM it comes up with the message 'no such user'.

 

Has anyone else with special characters in their caching name had similar problems?

 

Is there a solution? Other than asking Groundspeak to once again change my account name, that is?

 

Cheers,

Chuck/E&Cplus3

[+StarBrand]

This has been a long standing problem within the forum software that Groundspeak purchased.

[+Cache O'Plenty]

I believe it only applies to the ampersand "&". I have an apostrophe "'" in mine with no prolems.

[+simpjkee]

it looks like you bit off more than you could chew.

[+ECplus3]

Huh????

[+simpjkee]

shoulda stuck with what you had.

 

if ain't broke don't fix it.

 

etc. etc.

[+ECplus3]

Ah, I see. But as far as I was concerned, it was broken.

 

My original caching name was just something I made up at the spur of the moment when I first found the site. When I became hooked on geocaching, I wasn't all that concerned about the nonsensical name. But when the rest of my family became involved, I needed the name changed to show that we were interested in geocaching as a family.

 

I'm more than willing to keep the name and live with the minor inconvenience caused by not being able to receive PMs -- my profile mail works just fine.

 

I just think that Groundspeak could have avoided the whole issue with either of these simple solutions:

 

1. reject account names that contain non-viable characters

2. demand that the software vendor fix the bug

[LordEd]

Ah, I see. But as far as I was concerned, it was broken.

 

My original caching name was just something I made up at the spur of the moment when I first found the site. When I became hooked on geocaching, I wasn't all that concerned about the nonsensical name. But when the rest of my family became involved, I needed the name changed to show that we were interested in geocaching as a family.

 

I'm more than willing to keep the name and live with the minor inconvenience caused by not being able to receive PMs -- my profile mail works just fine.

 

I just think that Groundspeak could have avoided the whole issue with either of these simple solutions:

 

1. reject account names that contain non-viable characters

2. demand that the software vendor fix the bug

 

Warning: The following is technical in nature. May cause confusion and dizziness.

 

The reason your username comes up with is a technical issue. In posting this reply, the URL looks like:

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...mp;qpid=3408597

 

Notice that the & is used to separate different variables being passed back and forth. This page has an action of "Post", some code "02", and a number of other variables following (probably message identifiers). Looking at the PM form, it looks like the response is in the general form: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...me=yourUserName

 

If this is the case, then Groundspeak may want to look into this issue further. If your username was LordEd&Cplus3, I believe it would send the PM directed to you at me instead. In the above example, it is trying to send a message to the user "E" (with an unused parameter "CPlus3" following). If the example is user=LordEd&Cplus3, then the email user is me, followed by the unused CPlus3 variable.

 

If this forum package includes source (being PHP, it should be accessible), one solution would be to substitute the & character with a reserved or delimiting character instead of '&' until it passes through the URL encoding and sends the message.

[+ECplus3]

Exactly! I've never worked with php, but I've done this several times myself in ColdFusion-based and Perl-based web applications I've written. I can't imagine it would be any more difficult in php.

[+Jennifer&Dean]

Known issue, we've mentioned it about once a year.

I'm just happy they fixed the TB naming and Cache naming issue that cropped up due to the & .

-J

[Mushtang]

Ah, I see. But as far as I was concerned, it was broken.

 

My original caching name was just something I made up at the spur of the moment when I first found the site. When I became hooked on geocaching, I wasn't all that concerned about the nonsensical name. But when the rest of my family became involved, I needed the name changed to show that we were interested in geocaching as a family.

 

I'm more than willing to keep the name and live with the minor inconvenience caused by not being able to receive PMs -- my profile mail works just fine.

 

I just think that Groundspeak could have avoided the whole issue with either of these simple solutions:

 

1. reject account names that contain non-viable characters

2. demand that the software vendor fix the bug

At the very least they should have mentioned this problem with the & character to you BEFORE they changed it and let you reconsider and maybe pick a different, different name.