In the past we used to support usernames which ended with a dot e.g. “fred.”
This caused a problem where someone referenced a user in a post using the @ notation e.g. “@peter” which generates a notification to the user (to draw his attention to the thread, etc). In such a case, if a dot (full stop, period in US-english) was placed immediately after the username, the notification would not be generated. This was visible because the username would not get emphasised, so you got
instead of
This has now been fixed 
There was, as far as I can tell, only one user whose username actually ended with a dot. I removed the dot and emailed him about it.
Peter wrote:
There was, as far as I can tell, only one user whose username actually ended with a dot. I removed the dot and emailed him about it.
I’ve always wanted to spell my nickname \/|_/\|)() but I am still to find a web site which allows special characters in usernames 
The next thing someone would do is create a username containing a link to an infected website
That’s why people invented HTML encode / decode.
I’m sure Bobby Tables will be delighted. https://www.xkcd.com/327/
