simplify (user)name in profile/ account

[scheidtdav]

Description

The application currently knows about a users email and an arbitrary name in the account.
In addition to that, the profile also holds a username.
This seems to be redundant to the point, that it may cause confusion as outlined in #645.

There should probably be only a single username either in the profile or in the user schema.

Use case

• Public self-chosen username for public profiles
• Displaying it in the profile/ settings

Implementation ideas (optional)

• consolidate username into User table- Move username to user table, keep profile for settings only.
• consolidate into Profile table
  • Pros:
    • All public-facing identity in one place
    • Profie becomes the "public identity" object
  • Cons
    • User table becomes very minimal
    • Need to join profile to get display info
• Keep both, define clear purposes
• Merge into Single Field with Alias: Use one field but allow an optional display name override.
• Remove profile.username, use user.name as Username and enforce URL-friendly format: wouldn't recommend this!

Additional information (optional)

[zven]

That's definitely 🍌 🍌

[jona159]

@scheidtdav after discussion with @zven we lean towards keeping both name fields, but to define a clear purpose for each of them. What do you think of following the same model github uses? We could display both fields publicly on the users profile, but the profile.username could serve as a URL-friendly handle. I would also make user.name unique and allow users to log in with it (currently we only support login by email).

[scheidtdav]

Not sure if I'm getting that right.
Are you proposing to do:

• profile.username: e.g. Spiderman
• user.name: e.g. Peter Parker

I suppose this would make sense, but making user.name unique wouldn't work.
If its a URL-friendly handle, it should be profile.username no?