Usernames you'd actually choose

A new member's profile address used to be a long string of letters and digits until they picked something better, and most never did. New accounts now start with a username made from your name — dsimpson, or dsimpson47 if that is taken — and the 2,506 existing members who still had a code as their address have been given one the same way. Your username is your public profile's address, so it should look like a name.

The rules have been straightened out too. Dots, dashes and underscores are allowed, as they always should have been: hundreds of members had chosen them years ago and were being told their own username was invalid. Email addresses and other special characters are refused everywhere a username can be entered, including by the server itself, after one new member's sign-in address ended up as their public address.

And a bug a member reported: if the username you typed on the settings page was already taken, pressing Save did nothing at all — no message, and none of your other changes saved either. It now tells you the username is taken and saves everything else.