Searching the Username Space

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#1

Hi @codinghorror

Is there a mechanism for searching the space of usernames?

I know the Users page has a filter function that will filter on the first letter(s) of a username. And I know about the similar autocomplete of the @ syntax to refer to a user within a post.

But I’m looking for a feature like “Return a list of all users whose name contains the string ‘guy’ anywhere in the relevant field(s)”. From there I could count them, or click to visit their user summary pages. So the results would be akin to what the user page (filtered or not) currently shows.

#2

For staff, or for regular users?

#3

For regular users to search for regular users.

One of the use cases is puzzlegal’s lament that she can’t remember enough of somebody’s name to find them as-is, but she can remember a syllable or so.

My use case was similar: “out of curiosity, which users and how many have [cat] as part of their name?”

#5

Moderators can access a search of all users. Put in part of a name and it will search both user names and emails. This is not available to regular users.

#6

Thank you. Makes sense the feature would exist. And I can see some logic to not exposing it to the entire user group, including anonymous “users” which is really to say the entire internet, Bulgarian bots and all.

#7

Sounds like a great candidate for being something you can assign to a Trust Level. It seems to me that bad actors would t make it to Trust Level 2, so maybe it could be a feature for us.