Question regarding user created Usernames

[draklin]

We are thinking to allow users for our website to be able to create their own usernames for access to their member page. Currently we use their member id as the username, but we are looking at ways to increase security. My question is, do you allow them to create any username they want or is there a list of keywords that the usernames should be filtered by? This would be in addition to filtering out swear words of course.

[Haggis Veteran]

its really up to you

but i would filter swearwords

and the likes of

Admin

Administrator

etc

[Dick Montage]

I allow people to create usernames within rules (list of unusable words, conforming to a regex). But this username field is mostly meaningless. So more than 1 user could have the same username, don't care doesn't matter, as their unique keys are the numeric ID that is assigned, their email, and password.

[Phouchg]

Does your site have very many users at any given time? Otherwise an admin or mod would see the list of all new (or changed) usernames and easily banhammer all inappropriate ones. Intricacies of natural language is something "manual labor" is still considerably better at.