>And importantly, everyone knows this. Do they though? I mean, I'm open to being convinced but just asserting this isn't very compelling. Why were there pre-ex

>And importantly, everyone knows this. Do they though? I mean, I'm open to being convinced but just asserting this isn't very compelling. Why were there pre-existing rules governing the use of this field if this behavior was completely harmless? Saying "it's a free form field therefore no one should ever trust it" as a general principle seems like a stretch. Lots of web services separate display names from underlying IDs and allow flexibility in using the former, with some reasonable restrictions.