Mastodon: feature request: custom nicknames for people

[wchristian]

So you can remember who's who in the people who change their names like socks.

[Gargron]

Usernames can't be changed though

[wchristian]

I've seen a number of toots where they were hidden by long display names and such.

[wchristian]

Also just in general it can be nice to give a nickname to a person so you can remember better who they are, and not just stare at the account name and go "uuuuh???"

[expenses]

Seeing as usernames _can_ be changed now, I think this would be useful to implement.

[Fastidious]

@expenses how can usernames be changed? We have @usernames, and names, why do we need "custom nicknames" (whatever that means)?

[wchristian]

An example of how the Steam UI does it.

[Fastidious]

@wchristian I hate Steam, specially its UI. I think it is rubbish. I see no need for this request, nor a way to implement it on a distributed, federated environment.

[wchristian]

@Fastidious Quite frankly, given that you don't contribute code to the mastodon backend, i think it's fairly irrelevant whether or not you can see a way to implement things.

Particularly since there is clearly one, as this would be data entirely local to each account, and nothing more than a modifier to the rendering for each user.

[Fastidious]

@wchristian I expect frankness at all times. Pardon me, as I did not know this was for contributors only. I will take my irrelevant comments else where.

Good luck with your persistent usernames.

[NeimadTL]

Hi guys, was wondering if this feature has been implemented yet ? I'm newcomer, still new to ruby and rails and I'd like to contribute this project.

[mgiagante]

I'd like to work on this feature. I plan to submit a pull request with the backend code and passing tests.
After that, if it gets merged I can work on the front end side of it.
Does that sound good?

[mgiagante]

@Gargron Since this is labeled as a suggestion, not sure if you want a pull request on it. But if you do, count on me.