Webmaster - problem with Pms when name contain emojis or special characters

I’ve found this annoying too with several people I’ve tried to respond to. Is there a reason that people can add emojis to their profile but it’s not actually part of their name in the message system and prevents a quick response without deleting cats, globes, flags, etc?

Sounds like the Profiles can handle Unicode while the messages are restricted to a more limited set.

When you send messages the software processes them to remove some things that can act like little "programs". That's why a lot of systems (like this one) stop you from using the "angle brackets" like "<" that enclose words.

There's some trickery you can use with Unicode so a lot of systems restrict it as mentioned. But allowing it in profiles is confusing.

Emily. You and I both figured it out. Tge others will too. I'm afraid the big bad wolf will take our emoji away!!!

My emoji is after my location. I wonder if it's the same issue.

Yes, it's anything in a "reply."

The others will too

Some may have figured it out and decided it wasn't worth the trouble for anyone sending a reply having to delete them.

When replying to a PM it is easy to delete the emoji or anything else that causes a problem before you send it. I added an emoji to my name when I noticed multiple other Andrea’s on the forum. There weren’t any others when I joined many years ago and there’s probably a handful of them now.

My emoji is after my location. I wonder if it's the same issue.

No, it's not affected because (as mentioned by CWSocial) the location is not in the reply. Since the name (and accompanying emoji) are, however, the emoji gets busted. The location is not in the reply so it is not affected.

For newcomers, the reason for this rule is the tech team removed the ability to post emojis due to abusive posts by spammers that were filled with them. And because a PM reply uses the same software as a post, you can't reply with an emoji.

That said, you can occasionally sneak in one of the more unique emojis. I would imagine that is because they are not in the system's database (or whatever it's called). 🪏 ☺︎

That is really interesting, Mardee, thanks for sharing that. I noticed that other alphabets are blocked as well when I tried to wish a poster going to Greece “have a good trip” in Greek at the end of a response- my post was blocked but when I rewrote it in the Latin alphabet it went thru.

Hi. I've noticed it too. Mardee has it right, mostly.

To some extent it is my fault as my desire to allow for emojis when possible is leading to this issue.

I have a "no emoji" function in my admin. It is indiscriminate: on or off. I turn it off anytime we get an influx of spam with it. Sometimes I turn it back on when the coast looks clear. That seems to work fine for awhile, and then I need to turn it off again. I would generally expect it to be off more often than not given how the last two years have gone.

We could either live with the nuisance of needing to remove emoji in PMs when it's off, OR I can keep it off and tell everyone to remove emoji from their names. I'm open to everyone's input.

I just turned emoji back on. We'll see how long that works out.

Also, I'm not sure why the emoji filter is catching Mr E's umlaut. It may depend on if e.g. he copy/pasted the umlaut from somewhere that wasn't using the standard E-umlaut character. If that's not the case, that specifically isn't something that we'll be able to fix as to my knowledge the list of characters is not reasonably editable.

Mr E, specifically for you, it may be best for you to replace the E-umlaut character.

"I noticed that other alphabets are blocked as well" That likely has nothing to do with emoji.

I think the filter is catching the two flags. Not the Ë. Which no one has noticed that the E keeps changing. Its been E. É, Ë

And i had no trouble putting this in a PM.
Слава Україні!

Fwiw I don't see flags. After the E, I see "US" and "UA" in smaller characters.

That is interesting- I tried posting just now with a Greek word to see if it works and got "oops! there are problems with your reply- you may not post to this forum." Which is interesting since the Cyrillic seems to have worked above.

Cat VH, it's because the topic I posted is so precious it overrides the programming.

Andrew, i see letters on my laptop, but flags on my cell phone. Very strange that.

FWIW I see Mr. E's flags on my laptop (Windows/Firefox) and flags on my Android phone with Firefox.

I completely understand the dilemma, Webmaster! And you will do,what you need to. But I do love emojis. 🤣🩷

If I behave then the Webmaster will have the time to police the emojis and take a longer lunch break.

I love emojis, too! ❤️ Thanks for putting them back in, even if it does have to be temporary! 😊 And thanks for saying that I was mostly right—story of my life. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

🎉🎉🎈🍰😊😊😊🤩😎😴...