Put actual character rules regarding new group names

[HeatherMarie]

So when you make a new group you see this:

 

There is no text or rules or warnings about what can go in that box, what characters and such. It just says 'provide a name'. But when I try to create a group with the above name (notice the plus sign) I get this box that says 'Please match the requested format'. ??? What requested format? What does that mean? Why is that there? I'm assuming you can't use plus signs in group names, but that is not at ALL clear in what the text actually says. (Sorry, I can't seem to get a screenshot of the box, it goes away when I try.)

 

I think there needs to be clarification there on what is actually allowed in the name box, especially clarification with this whole 'requested format' box. If the character limits are the same as the dragon naming (not totally sure about that) then the exact same text could be used: 'Names may be up to 32 characters long, and can contain letters, numbers, spaces, apostrophes, and dashes' or that can be tweaked if needed. It seems simple enough to add a single line like that, to give some sort of context for this box that comes up.

[GhostMouse]

Very much agreed, as well as wanting to know a name is not allowed before trying to create the group. (Linking because I feel like these are pretty closely related, although not the same.)
 

 

[HeatherMarie]

Bumping because I forgot about this issue and then ran into it again when naming a group tonight. If there are going to be naming restrictions/limits on groups can it *please* say that somewhere? Please? Even something as simple as 'same rules as dragon naming' would be fine. It's very frustrating to find that a site feature is restricted in some completely unstated way.

(Also, it seems *very* strange to have that little 'please match requested format' pop-up thing when there is no mention of a requested format in the first place. Why does that pop-up exist?)

Edited August 16, 2020 by HeatherMarie

[Ruby Eyes]

Funny thing is, I have a group named UNDYING! which I cannot edit anymore (e.g. to change sort order) because those invisible rules were apparently modified at some point after that group's creation.

Other groups like (-: Stories :-) can be edited and created with such names, which raises the question why some punctuation is allowed and other punctuation isn't. Since group names are not used as an identifier anywhere (they don't even need to be unique), this makes no sense.

 

Either way, this "requested format" should actually be REQUESTED somewhere.

[Keileon]

2 hours ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Funny thing is, I have a group named UNDYING! which I cannot edit anymore (e.g. to change sort order) because those invisible rules were apparently modified at some point after that group's creation.

Someone somewhere has a group that's just named some emoji for more or less the same reason.

[Ruby Eyes]

My jealousy know no bounds

 

But yeah. Either list the "requested format" somewhere or dump it entirely. I plead for dumping it.

 

[camelia2]

Full support. I'm so anoyed at blindly navigating through naiming.

[spatio]

This sounds to me more like a bug that needs reporting than a feature that needs adding. Gonna tag a couple mods to get their opinion.

 @LadyLyzar  @Infinis 

[XDLugia]

From what I can tell, you can use all letters, all numbers, space and the following characters: _ - : ' / ( )

[camelia2]

Oh, should I mention that it should also clarify English alphabet letters. I tryed naming in Russian, Spanish and Romanian and the letters are not accepted which was frustrating since they were 'letters'

[HeatherMarie]

5 hours ago, camelia2 said:

Oh, should I mention that it should also clarify English alphabet letters. I tryed naming in Russian, Spanish and Romanian and the letters are not accepted which was frustrating since they were 'letters'

 

It's generally understood that DC is an English site, it says as much in the Description Guidelines: 

English Only

Dragon Cave is entirely in English; to keep with this, descriptions not in American English will be rejected.

 

However, it doesn't mention that when you name a dragon, or with groups, so I do think it could be clearer. Maybe the 'English only' should be in the actual main Help somewhere instead of hidden behind description guidelines (which people who aren't interested in describing their dragons would never think to look...)

 

[pinkgothic]

1 hour ago, HeatherMarie said:

However, it doesn't mention that when you name a dragon, or with groups, so I do think it could be clearer.

Definitely. In fact, "English" is explicitly not a requirement for dragon names! The rules are generally much laxer for dragon names that for descriptions - pop culture references are okay in names but not in descriptions, real world or meta references are fine in names but not in descriptions, and any language that can be expressed with/mangled into ASCII is fine though you wouldn't be allowed to write a description in anything other than English. So the ASCII restriction would probably be useful to mention for names.

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

I support this, I'm all for clarity and transparency regarding rules, and this seems to be a rather irritating issue for some people!

[Ruby Eyes]

Apparently, comma is also not allowed.

 

What is it with this arbitrary character filtering in strange places like descriptions and group titles?!

 

[ShorahNagi]

On 3/8/2021 at 6:52 AM, Ruby Eyes said:

What is it with this arbitrary character filtering in strange places like descriptions and group titles?!

I could understand the names limiting things that double as code characters [by that...think of searching for something with qualifiers like #CB or Pichu&+3*] but other non-code characters [!,$♤♡◇♧,etc] not so much

 

I agree there are a few places that the rules need to be better defined...so I'll give my support because if added, great - and if not, well no big deal

[HeatherMarie]

Okay, I'm bringing this up again because it seems like something has been changed but still no actual guidelines stated. I'm no longer getting the strange 'requested format' error, but now it instead shows a 'this field cannot contain' pop-up.  Examples, I try to name a group test? and it says 'This field cannot contain: ?'  and if I try to name a group test+ it will say 'This field cannot contain: +".

 

While this is definitely preferable than the strange 'requested format' text, there is still *nothing* to indicate what is actually allowed in that field *before* you try to click 'save' and this new error-message pops up. And since the little pop-up only says one specific thing, you still have no idea what is and isn't actually allowed in the box. You only get that specific message for each invalid character, so it's basically trial and error trying to figure out what is and isn't allowed. 

 

Is it possible to just get a simple little character-limit statement, just like we have with naming? (Although, now that I think about it, the character-limitations aren't actually the same for Groups as Naming because you *can* make Group names with certain punctuation at the beginning/end, and you can't with naming.)