Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2017 July 26

= July 26 =

Smileys
(Windows 10) I suddenly see annoying smilies in places like editsummaries and usernames. For example: User:%F0%9F%98%82 If I urldecode %F0%9F%98%82 then I see one of those horrible things. Please help me, I fucking hate smilies. &#40;&#40;&#40;The Quixotic Potato&#41;&#41;&#41; (talk) 00:21, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

I rightclicked the taskbar and then "Show touch keyboard button", then clicked the smiley and I found a bunch of smileys. A few of them were already registered, and others were disallowed in usernames. I am also able to see them in editsummaries. &#40;&#40;&#40;The Quixotic Potato&#41;&#41;&#41; (talk) 00:48, 26 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Emoji are part of Unicode. Unless they're specifically disallowed by the programmers, they're typically a built in part of any modern thing that allows text.
 * Supporting Unicode is important, of course, for supporting all those languages that use a different language than us, so you're going to see them more and more until people get bored with them, which could take a while. 😎ApLundell (talk) 16:35, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
 * There are plugins for firefox (this plugin, or this one) or chrome (this one) that claim to hide emoji. I haven't tried any of them, though, 🤷 and can't vouch for them. ApLundell (talk) 16:47, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The community has judged that they should be allowed. As with any annoying username or signature, your best option is usually to personally appeal to the person in question. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:08, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
 * You're right, looks like there have been a few abortive attempts to limit or ban them on wiki. Village pump (technical)/Archive 143 Village pump (policy)/Archive 131 Village pump (technical)/Archive 151 It doesn't look like allowing emoji is very controversal. Most of those discussions are pretty one-sided.
 * The only discussion I can find with any teeth to it is this discussion on whether the people who do the global account renaming will allow renaming existing accounts to emoji. (I can certainly imagine how they'd get tired of people who see single-emoji account names as a finite resource and are determined to stake their claim like it was a gold rush.) ApLundell (talk) 20:25, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Related question: do the filter stopm the use of Russian characters that look like ASCII characters? They can be used to impersonate other users. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:25, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, they're blocked. Matt's talk 14:18, 27 July 2017 (UTC)