🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Jun 20, 2005 11:51 PM UTC:
They aren't garbage characters. He is giving his name in Chinese (or maybe
Japanese). You may need to install a Chinese font to see them
appropriately. Still, the name field should be used only for names spelled
with alphabets that are rooted in the same Latin alphabet used for English.
It shouldn't be used for URLs or for names spelled with non-Latin
character sets, such as Chinese, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. The reason
for this is that this site is in English and is run and frequented mainly
by people who speak English as a first or second language. And most of
those whose first language is something else, such as Dutch, French, or
Spanish, still use the Latin alphabet for their primary language. So, to
give the majority of people here an idea of how to pronounce your name, it
should be given in Latin characters, transliterated if need be. For
example, this person might put the Pinyin transliteration of his name in
his name field, then use the 'Notes' field of his user information to
give his name in Chinese, and 'Web site' field to give the URL to his
website.