I remember trying that with an old account a few years ago (suggesting your solution of just hiding the username) and was denied. Maybe things have changed since then though.
I've suggested making usernames invisible unless you mouse-over a field. That way you can still see a name if you mean to, but you're mainly judging by content.
Making some kind of temporary "masks" is too much PIA IMHO.
I was wondering about the @ thing. There is a strange account that keeps @ my account name and a few other people in my field whose names I recognize. I would like to be able to disable that.
I agree, but the point I was trying to make (perhaps unclearly), was that the username can be checked against a list of blocked patterns at account creation time.
The username should just be permanently taken off the available list. This is done with other sites, I don't see why it goes back into the pool once used.
Perhaps no perfect scheme, but you can do better than provide a "lock someone out of their account if you know their username" button as described above.
Keep the username, implement a "display name" option so nobody sees your actual username, just the name you'd like to display - but everything else stays nice and connected.
You could also consider shadow banning these users. If you're immediately preventing them from creating accounts with certain usernames, they'll probably just get more creative with the profanity or save it for their posts.
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