Wikipedia talk:User account policy/Archive 2

Archive 1

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Archive 5

Complaint about instant blocking

Okay, after having read this through I'm even more surprised that my original choice for a user name for this site was instantly blocked, and my IP blocked, by an admin. Not becauase of anything I posted, but simply because my name was "obvioustroll". Now, I have no problem with Wikipedia having a policy about appropriate names, my main complaint is about being punished for a crime I had no idea I was committing. Particularly since I've used that name on a variety of sites for several years. And now, reading this page, I see that the punishment appears to be a violation of wiki policy after all.

So which is it? For personal reasons, I've been using obvioustroll on several sites - if you google for it, the first hundred or so hits are me. Was the blocking of this account in accordance with wikipedia policy or not?

hmm...i don't mean to be rude, but isn't it sort of obvious...that a username like "obvioustroll" could be against the rules because of the connatations the word "troll" has in internet communities? It's a bit like walking down the street with a T-shirt saying "I'm a burgler" or "I like to make bombs" or just "terrorist". It's not against the law, but if you get harrassed or get strange looks from people, isn't it obvious why? Yaksha 10:36, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Now that's just stupid. We live in a world where people are supposed to be able to dress as they like with out being pre-judged by others, a world where we are supposed to endorse alternative live styles - yet wikipedia's policy is to pre-emptively enforce the personal beliefs of the admins. Here's a hint. Like the term "hacker", "troll" didn't always have a negative connotation. Porkchop 13:08, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

What if you like the story book or fantasy trolls?

The Wikipedia registration page has a link to the Username guidelines. I know it's not right at the very top, and I personally feel it should be, but there is a link to the rules and this is definitely one of them.

Since you haven't done anything, I'd advocate your being unblocked (though I can't do it myself as I'm not an admin). I think making allowances with this kind of policy just makes room for people less scrupulous than you to abuse it. Is Obvious available? Or Trobvious or something similar?

Sorry you've had an annoying experience. I hope it gets worked out. --Masamage 00:23, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Trivial question about usernames.

Hi, I've been on wikipedia for some time now and every now and then I'll come across users (a lot of them) who register using an IP as an username. This cause the tiny problem of their contributions not being immediately available as one would expect by clicking an IP. Does anyone know why people do that? Is it just to mislead other editors or is there some meaner, darker scheme at work here =P Jean-Philippe 00:40, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Any attempt at IP-spoofing gets blocked on sight, by any admin I've spoken to. —freak(talk) 10:47, Aug. 16, 2006 (UTC)

well...i can think of legitamate reasons why someone would want to register an IP address as a username? Someone who has an internet connection which has a constant IP, wants to do things that require registration (e.g. moving articles...editing semi-protected articles), but really doesn't want to (or doesn't bother to) choose a username. So they go register the IP address.Yaksha 11:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I think I might see your problem. Any anonamous user who uses ~~~~ to sign a post will automatically link to a user page for the IP address, unlike the links found in page histories which go right to the anon's contribs. It's not that the account is registered to look like an IP address (which I thought was impossible, btw), but is actually the IP address. Timrem 01:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Website names

Are accounts with website names in them appropriate? --HappyCamper 02:42, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, look how long Nathanrdotcom (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log) was with us. —freak(talk) 10:45, Aug. 16, 2006 (UTC)

Well, I was actually thinking about usernames which are not websites written semantically, but rather explicitly, say, www.<insert name here>.com or www.<insert name here>.org . --HappyCamper 16:51, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Isn't this included in "usernames intended for spamming or advertisment: Usernames intended for spamming or advertisement: Accounts with usernames that advertise a particular website, company, etc. (e.g. "visit [name of url]" ) are discouraged and may be blocked."? Yaksha 11:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Random letters/numbers in usernames

I have just reverted the removal of one of the criteria for the blocking of users with inappropriate usernames, namely those comprised of random letters and numbers. My reason for doing this is that, in my opinion, there has been no discussion of this matter that would warrant its removal. The discussion that did take place above was not actually about random sequences, but about variation in the definition of words. This is an entirely seperate issue from users who register accounts like User:adlewoinfibhoiejhrqt. This article is a policy page and nothing should be removed without a relevant discussion. Rje 00:57, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. To the first point, however, it sort of looks to me like this rule was, in fact, added without such discussion. As are many of the rules around here, to be sure, so since it went by unopposed, we may infer consent from those who would notice such things. To the second point now, I think the section above ("Rules I don't get") did discuss specifically that, mentioning specifically "DSFFGDV423C". If you will permit me to summarize:

• Pro: They are annoying. Random sequences of letters and numbers are very difficult to remember accurately.
• Con: Difficulty to remember is a non-justification, or at best a petty justification.
• Con: A person is not required to register a name at all, and can simply be a sequence of four fairly unmemorable numbers.

Please weigh in. 192.75.48.150 18:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Followup: "repetetive letters" and "sexual preference" was also just added, without discussion. 192.75.48.150 19:24, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Saying a name is difficult to remember or 'confusing' is not a justification for it not to be allowed. Someone using english letters to spell an obscure russian name would probably be confusing to me, not to mention difficult to remember. So what? They're not doing anything wrong.

IMO making policies about "confusing" names takes things too far. Misleading, offensive or troublesome are fine..but confusing is way too arbitrary. Rules like names consisting of random letters will result in people getting "blasted for petty offenses with rules that they could never have guessed at in the first place.". It doesn't take a genius to realize registering "George Bush" may get them into trouble. But someone who writes their name in Leet (which often looks like random assortments of letters/numbers/symbols to non-leet-fluent people)...or registers a birthday, or decides to add numbers in the middle of a common name (instead of at the end of it) could easily get caught out by this rule.

I also object to "Names that are extremely lengthy". I can see technical reasons why *extremely* lengthy names are undesirable, but "extremely lengthy" needs to be defined. Is a username of 50 letters too lengthy? What about 30 letters? Or 20?

I think in terms of usernames, any rule that's going to result in people "breaking it" without at all realizing is going too far. Rules like not using famous people, not insulting people, not using 'admin' in the name, is fairly obvious. Someone isn't going to have registered "wikiadmin" or a 100-letter long username by accident). But beyond that, i think it's just stupid. If there's really something that *really* needs to be not-allowed, but isn't obvious...then at least there should be a warning message about it when people register (i.e. due to [insert reason here], usernames that are [insert description here] are not allowed...etc). Yaksha 11:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Serious

Okay, this is not hypothetical anymore. Admins actually act upon this. See User:12123434 and User:1122334, for example. These aren't cases of someone choosing an offensive, or otherwise bothersome username, in fact there is absolutely no reason to think the name is malicious. Allow me to quote Fearless Leader here:

What we want to avoid is a situation in which people are blasted for petty offenses with rules that they could never have guessed at in the first place. Yes we have style standards for example, but if someone doesn't adhere, we just fix it and leave them a friendly note, rather than yelling at them for breaking a rule.

Not only do we yell at them, we block them on sight. As rulecruft goes, this has to take the cake. Objections to removing this rule? 192.75.48.150 18:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it is much better to leave a friendlty note to them. The above usernames are in no way malicious in nature. This is a classic example of rulecraft that had gone overboard a bit. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 18:39, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Not only that, it's totally random, one day someone might create 123456 (talk · contribs) and wind up blocked, 1 hour later, some other person creates 654321 (talk · contribs) for instance, and winds up growing up to be a constructive user--205.188.117.5 15:31, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh, actually, this is not hypothetical either. Lkjhgfdsa (talk · contribs) versus Asdfghjkl:; (talk · contribs) versus Asdfg12345 (talk · contribs) versus ... 192.75.48.150 17:57, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Removed

I removed "random" again. It really looks like a lot of the policy needs an enema, especially as regards to enforcement, but I don't have the energy for that at this time. 192.75.48.150 15:51, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I say good riddance :).

Just one question...if it becomes not a rule anymore...then wouldn't people have to like...call in the admins to unblock all the accounts that were blocked because of this rule? And like...i saw some people over on the page for requsting username changes who where denied their requests because their current (or requested) usernames violated that rule. Wouldn't that need to be fixed too? Yaksha 10:36, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about unblocking. They have no contributions and are probably not coming back. We could even just delete the account outright and let them or someone else recreate it. But in any case, yes, stuff remains to be done. 72.137.20.109 02:28, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Anons removing portions of polciy without discussion and consensus could wind up being blocked. User:Zoe|(talk) 01:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Notability

Notability is a social construct, and as such, is not a universal phenomenon. A person who is well-known to one person, may be entirely unknown to another. Accordingly, preventing the use of names of people notable in any circle as usernames will only lead to confusion, bad veteran-newcomer interaction, and arbitrary enforcement. Currently, if one or two administrators find a username to be "too well-known", it is blocked with little oversight. Given that most new users do not know how to raise objections to username-based blocks, many potentially helpful contributors will be turned away.

As it stands now, the term "well-known", as used in the policy, needs to be better defined, not just for new users signing up, but for the administrators and editors in conflict over its interpretation. The term "well-known" begs the question, "to whom?", and this needs to be addressed specifically in the policy. Is it to mean any person whose notability merits a Wikipedia entry? Is it to mean any person which should be known to the English-speaking adult public? Is it to mean any person whose name has become an icon in pop culture? On this, I am tagging the policy as having been comprimised by weasel words.

Additionally, the policy fails to address how to balance the need for acceptance of real names as usernames with the need to prevent disruption and misunderstandings caused by the use of such names. Obviously, a username containing some element of George Bush, John Kerry, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, Britney Spears, et al, needs to be sanctioned for the possible disruption it may cause. For lesser known persons, the policy needs to address how to handle account registrations sharing a name with a long-deceased figure, or notable figure unknown out of specific circles.

Let's foster some discussion here, folks. WhoMe? 14:01, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

In the greater scheme of things, it's not really important. Arce 20:31, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

When new users are being blocked along arbitrary guidelines, with no clear malicious intent, it is important. WhoMe? 20:43, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I do not think it will be practical to word an enforcable a policy that will appease all of your concerns, ultimately it is impossible to escape the fact that all blocks are decided by the subjective judgement of our administrators. This being said, I think a very useful change we should make to this rule is regarding how common a name is. For example: Michael Owen is a moderately well-known person globally, but he also has a pretty common name. I would argue that it would be wholly inappropriate to block such an account as it is quite possible the creator is genuinely called Michael Owen. Paul Gascoigne, on the other hand, is equally famous but has a much less common name, it would therefore be far more reasonable to block such an account. Obviously such an addition would still be enforced at the discretion of our admins and would still, no doubt, lead to a few arbitrary decisions, but hopefully it would make some admins think again on borderline decisions. Obviously accounts like Tony Blair or George Bush would still need to be blocked on sight. I am not sure if this proposal would just further muddy the waters, but some people might think it will help. Rje 03:46, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I would consider a username as being of a 'notable' person if that person was notable enough to justify an article about them on Wikipedia (as in an encyclopedia article.)

I can understand exactly what WhoMe? is saying. For example, using "George Bush" is obvious. But if i registered the name of my school principal and started editing my school's article, there'd surely be complaints if anyone at school saw it because the principal is 'notable' within the school community. However, i doubt wikipedia Administrators would be willing to block me, especially if the said name is quite a common name and what i was editing was not actually vandlism.

However, i don't really see a problem. If i understand correctly, the idea of "Notability" is one that's been argued/debated about on wikipedia for ages in terms of whether someone is 'notable' enough to deserve a content article about them. So wouldn't it be better to debate about the notability concept over at WP:NN, and just sort of 'pin' the definition of "names of *notable* people" to whether someone is notable enough to have a wiki article? Yaksha

inapropriate

I have an idea on this line between acceptable and un.-If someone has a username that is obscene but no big deaK like user:one damn fine bastard, for example dont block them -- Jig-Saw 02:08, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Idea I'm floating

I suggest the following addition to "troublesome" names (Not the block-on-sight-indef ones):

;Slogans or imperatives. We have had bad experiences with users' whose names either sounded advocative or declaratory, or seemed to read like an order. Also, if you contribute to an articel that is related to your slogan-based username, many people will find it hard to not assume you are there to advocate the opinion expressed in your username, possibly at the expense of neutrality.

Look any good? 68.39.174.238 23:26, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Using dates as usernames

I would like to add "Usernames that consist of nothing but a date" to the types of inappropriate usernames. Recently, we had User:September 7th 2006... and I don't think we need to allow usernames like that. Also, with the exception of certain very well-known dates, such usernames will be hard to distinguish from each other. Any objections? Mangojuice^talk 17:56, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Many objections. First: Unnecessary Rules For Rare Cases. Second: see above under "randomness". Third: the particular example is bad, as he was blocked for vandalism anyway, so what benefit would there have been? 192.75.48.150 15:20, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

That's my point. As soon as I saw that username, I concluded the user in question was up to no good. Better to block vandal usernames before they get used. Mangojuice^talk 17:09, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Unless you're really sure, better to block vandal usernames AFTER they get used. See, for example, User:SeptemberX1990. 192.75.48.150 17:33, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Objection. It's a stupid rule. IT'll become a rule that'll get innocent newbies banned for breaking it when they didn't even know it existed. It's not common sense, and having a date as a username is not "obviously" offensive. So what if they're hard to distinguise from each other? You don't make a username for other people's convinence. If it's not *bad* (i.e. offensive, causes technical problems..etc), then why should we disallow it? If we really wanted to avoid confusion, i say stop un-registered users from editing. No username is more confusing on "history" pages than whole lists of different (but similar) IP addresses. Yaksha 10:36, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Dates are easy to distinguish. We have to be careful to avoid instruction creep. --WikiSlasher 10:05, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Suggest add information on how to find out what are vandal/sockpuppet names

The policy says that Usernames that closely resemble any used by vandals are inappropriate. But neither of the links in that section seems to provide any kind of a list of such names, or other way to identify them. Presumably there is such a list (or other way to identify such names), under the principle of verifiability. It would be much more useful if this information were included or prominently linked to by the section. Otherwise it just makes it hard for beginners - you tell them that there exist names that are frowned upon, but give no way of knowing what the names are. ("I have ... a list ..." [Joseph McCarthy])

I believe that there used to be one, but that it was removed on the basis of WP:DENY. But this leaves us in the situation of giving rather useless advice to beginners. We should probably rethink this. 192.75.48.150 19:07, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

IMPORTANT

To clarify, since this is not explicitly stated here: Do the names of well known characters —fictional or otherwise— fall into the trademark category? For example:

• Can a bot account go by the username "Autobot", or use another well know name that ends in bot?
• Can someone create a user account with the username "Santa Clause" or "Eater Bunny" or "Ronald McDonald" or something along those lines?
• And can well know culturaly signifigant things like "67 Chevy" or "VW Bug" be used as a username?

I ask out of couriosity because this doesn't appear here, and the question has peeked my interest. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:48, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

It looks like just another rule we don't need. There is no legal issue here. 192.75.48.150 18:52, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Mediawiki change affecting usernames

As of September 26, 2006, the Mediawiki software was changed so the users may no longer register usernames with the "@" in them. Existing usernames with the sign are not blocked, but should be encouraged to change their names as the sign interferes with some Mediawiki functions. Please see bugzilla:6849. I added this to the page but the old paragraph may need to be rewritten. From Brion "Existing usernames won't be blocked for now, but they ought to get renamed..." pschemp | talk 18:27, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd say the old paragraph is not necessary anymore. Your note is better as is. 192.75.48.150 18:41, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

"ought to get renamed?" This may be a problem in the case of probably a few established Wikipedians that have @s in their usernames. (User:I@n springs to my mind first) Misza13 18:57, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes that's not an email either and exceptions can probably be made, but certainly the ones with 2 edits can be changed. pschemp | talk 20:23, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I am a bit unclear as to whether I need to change my username or not. "...interferes with some Mediawiki functions." sounds ominous. What exactly is the issue? (I'm not overly bothered about changing it BTW) -- I@n 06:16, 3 October 2006 (UTC) Don't worry. I've now changed it anyway. -- Moondyne 00:03, 19 October 2006 (UTC) (formely I@n)

The problem with this, and I'll check out that bugzilla stuff, is that the only thing about my username hard to find on the internet is my given name, and for some people, that's not hard, either. Just subtract all the aliases I've used until you find something in Edmonton's telephone book. Another problem with this is that <link rev=made href="mailto:brewhaha@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca"> is a required tag in SGML and HTML 3.2, and I've gone through nearly a decade of trouble defending it. Do you maintain backward compatibility if required tags become optional in later versions of a standard? And, if I change it, what happens to all of my edits? Do they still link to me? What about the edits I made with only a mailto link and an IP number in them? Brewhaha@edmc.net 10:39, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's a potential problem unrelated to email: Stewards acting on Requests for permissions use usernames in the format user@wiki. See m:Special:Log/rights for an example of this. ~Kylu (u|t) 05:45, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Illnesses, disabilities and conditions?

Personally I don't see a problem with all usernames that refer to illnesses or conditions. If someone identifies in good faith as having a condition, I think it's OK for them to identify that in their usernames. For instance, Asperger syndrome is given as an example, but what's wrong with names like "Aspie princess" or "A.S. Pride"? There is at least one established user whose name would technically violate the policy as written: Dyslexic agnostic (talk · contribs). Of course, there is something wrong with names that refer to illnesses in an inappropriate/tasteless manner, like "AIDS Rules" or "Bird Flu". Perhaps the policy's phrasing should reflect that. Any thoughts? szyslak (t, c, e) 20:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The clause should be removed altogether. Really. There are lots and lots of ways in which names might potentially be offensive, and I don't see the benefit in trying to detail them all. 192.75.48.150 18:43, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not like that clause either. What if a persons name was CancerSurvivor, or LivingWithAIDS, or DeafButStillSmart? A name that was a reference to surviving and succeeding despite illness? If the name was using the illness in such a way as to be offensive it would be covered by the slurs or insults section or the hatred or violence section.

This is a rule that is not needed, it is covered by existing policy, and it can limit legitimate usernames. HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 16:36, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Username question

A friend of mine was looking to register for User:Garran, but it seems to be already taken. He thinks this might have been him, but if so he has forgotten the password and did not supply an email address. His IP is 64.180.173.135 -- is there a way to see if that matches that of the extant Garran? --Masamage 06:09, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't think so, not after several months have passed. 66.230.200.227 16:34, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Although, if WP:DUU90 gets its act together, the account will be deleted and he can take it. 66.230.200.227 16:37, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Ooh, thank you. --Masamage 18:21, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

How do i delete or request deletion of my user account

By law it is required to follow the request of a user to have his account deleted. So how can i do that. Please can anyone help me with this issue. Best let me know on my talk page.thx.Slicky 12:57, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Accounts cannot be deleted see m:Right to vanish. See also Wikipedia:No legal threats--`/aksha 02:15, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

You can, however, add {{db-userreq}} to your user page and talk page, and those will be deleted. --Masamage 02:50, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Clarification, please..

I have very recently made my account, and as such have not made any edits yet. Before I get started, I wanted to make sure my account was "legal" within the rules defined by this policy. I noted the one about no references to organized crime, but my name was not ment to alude to pirates as theives but rather a more romanticized vision of pirates and corsairs apparent in videogames, books, and movies etc, etc. Any one know if I should request it to be changed because its offensive?--The Corsair 01:22, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm no authority, so wait for others to reply...but it seems okay to me. I like it. ^__^ --Masamage 01:43, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I like it too. ^_^ I didnt think it was going to be an issue, but I wanted to be sure before I went and wrote an article and then had to get a new account or somesuch.--68.108.169.139 01:53, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Whoops, signed the above while not logged in. It was me. --The Corsair 01:54, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I see there have been no further replies as of now, and seeing how I dont think "The Corsair" could plausibly be very offending, im satisfied. Ill check back now and then, though, so feel free to reply if you think it isnt a valid username. --The Corsair. 04:31, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Removal of random rule

I really have a problem with the removla of the random character rule, which was longstanding. The issue is that we get names like User:Dfbsnndsmmmmtjgggjregggeggtreadsqdevwwwwe (was registered just tonight) which are untypable and not conducive to collaboration. I think a rewording rather than an outright removal should be done, especially since not that many people commented support on the removal. Its not so much the numbers but users like user:hjkrhaewkrheawuifhaewrjewmea that just aren't good choices, whatever the intentions and removing that reson for blocking is silly. Usernames are meant to be a human, understandable interface, that promotes collaboration, not a random string of garbage. Combinations like User:ajkdks8938j (not excessively long) are also an issue. pschemp | talk 02:49, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Who removed it, and did they say why? --The Corsair. 03:51, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Here's the diff. They cite this discussion above. --Masamage 04:18, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

The anon claims it was replaced with the wording "repetitive letters" but that's not anywhere in the current policy either. Additionally, repetitive letters doesn't address random combinations or letters or letters and numbers. This initiative for removal seems very much to have been pushed though by that one anon. The thought behind it is good, but the execution has removed teeth from the policy. Besides, its better to block usernames before they've amassed a lot of edits and formed a reputation as it is easier to change names then. pschemp | talk 04:23, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree that combinations like User:ajkdks8938j are an issue at all. The other two fall under the category of overly long usernames. But exactly what is wrong with something like User:ajkdks8938j? You may find it a little annoying to understand, but being difficult to type and random are completely subjective. What if the person has good reason behind a seemingly random username?

The bottom line is - it's going to get innocent people banned for breaking rules which they're not even aware of (and are by no means expected to be aware of). It's not something that's glaryingly obvious (unlike say, trying to use something like "fuckoff" as a username). Randomly is slightly inconvient. Saying its a "random string of garbage" is a subjective judgement. Which brings up the second problem - every admin is going to draw their own line for what is "random enough", people are going to be banned erratically (as pointed out above). Would "aj" have been too random a username? what about "ajk"? or "ajkd?" Or "aj59"? or "ajk59". What happens when the person says "hey! the username isn't random, it's my initials and my year of birth!".

saying the first two are bad because they're excessively long is fine. But being random shouldn't be a reason why usernames get banned or asked to be changed.

my point is - usernames should only be not allowed if they're actually 'bad'. So basically if they're offensive, misleading, causes technical problems, or overly disruptive. A 50 letter long username is going to be overly disruptive because it'll stick out everywhere. Being random itself is not disruptive in any way, some people just find it hard to remember. --`/aksha 13:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

And, by making it hard to remember it violates this part of the username policy "but it also means picking a name that others are comfortable seeing and collaborating with." Many people are *not* comfortable collaborating with a random string of letters and numbers. The ather thing is that 99% of those names are never used or are used once to vandalize. Its very rare that serious contributors use such things precisely because they are just random and meant to throw away. We should be doing everything we can on wikipedia to facilitate communication, and those username don't do that. In fact, I'd like you to find some examples of serious users with names like that (over 8 characters and randomly strung together). pschemp | talk 14:23, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

some people are not comfortable seeing and collaborating with random strings of letters and numbers. Some people do not mind. I'm not going to bother looking for names, it's a balant waste of my time. But let's just assume there are no serious users with names like that - what does that mean? Does the fact that we currently have no serious users with such names justify not allowing such names? and therefore justifies people with such names to be blocked or asked to change names? It's hardly a valid justification, or even a valid supporting reason, to ban a type of username. (besides, the fact that random names were previously not allowed probably means not many people who started using random names ever got the change to begin).

I'll repeat this - Wikipedia's guildlines are not supposed to get innocent newbies banned for breaking rules which they can't be fairly expected to be aware of. It's not like "don't use offensive usernames" which is intuitive and common across most internet communities. Random names is not causing anyone or anything any harm, where as banning them will not only get innocent newbies banned for no-obvious reason, but it'll be getting innocent newbies banned inconcsistently. Policies that are enforced should be at the very least possible to be objectivly enforced. --`/aksha 14:46, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

What you are missing is that the username policy is the only place where "some" make the rules. Some people are not offended by user:gayfag either, but that doesn't matter, because some are. The other thing is that 99% of the time, those users are *not* innocent newbies. If you are going to say they are, you need to some facts to verify that statement. Where are these legions of innocents who have been wronged? If you can't produce them, your point is moot. Additionally, I don't see consensus to remove that rule, so until then, it should go back in. pschemp | talk 14:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Only some people are offended by something like gayfag, but most people would agree that it is offensive. In other words, there would be consensus that it is offensive even if not everyone is personally offended. Here, i don't see consensus that something like a random stream of letters is offensive, annoying, disruptive, or bad - whether people personally feel annoyed at it or not. "The other this is that 99% of the time, those users are *not* innocent newbies." well, by this line of reasoning, we may as well block all anon ips. The majority of vandalism comes from anons, and many if not most of anon edits are crap. So assuming bad faith, we could just make a policy of not allowing anons and it would save vandal fighters a lot of time.

Ficing legions of innocents who've been wronged? Well, considering random usernames were once not allowed, they were banned, probably before they even had a chance. But going by your earlier offer of "examples of serious users with names like that (over 8 characters and randomly strung together)"...let's see, User:YUL89YYZ, User:GRAHAMUK, User:2004-12-29T22:45Z, User:Dp462090, User:M1ss1ontomars2k4, User:H1523702. If you include random usernames under 8 letters, you have names like User:JB82, User:TML1988, User:JHMM13, User:JW1805.

and that's all from the Wikipedia:List of non-admins with high edit counts, so i guess if i bothered to look through a larger list of "serious users", i'd expect to find many more. I'd assume having a very high edit count and not banned counts as a "serious user".

as for consensus in removing it - well, it was removed when the guildilne caused a clear problem, (outlined here). So unless there is consensus to put it back in (and somehow address that problem), it shouldn't be put back in. And here's the quote i was trying to remember too "What we want to avoid is a situation in which people are blasted for petty offenses with rules that they could never have guessed at in the first place." - i think this is a brilliant example of a petty offense which users could never have gussed. Or at least, many users will never guess. --`/aksha 15:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Your examples aren't random, so its fairly obvious you have no experience being on the front line and dealing with this. There are words and dates and l33t in there. That's why they weren't blocked to begin with. And I specifically didn't include shorter ones, because the human brain can deal with short strings of random letters/numbers and those were never blocked under that random rule. (most of those have initials or something in there too). Its fairly obvious here you don't trust admins to excersise good judgement. But they did, seeing that names like TML1998 were never blocked. The overzealous admins bashing innocents is wildly exaggerated here. You seem to think that a username block is being "blasted" for a petty offense, which it isn't. A usernameblock contains a polite request to change the name, it isn't "abuse" or anything like you are implying. You seem to be of the "oh the admins are abusing everyone" which simply isn't true. I find that legitimate users who inadvertantly choose a bad username always say "oops" sorry, wasn't thinking, could I be named X instead? A username block and request to change a name isn't harassment, and if you see it that way you have some persecution issues. Innocent users get caught in the no offensive usernames rule too. Should we throw that out too? The other thing is that often, vandals will created a string of gibberish usernames in a row, that are obviously the same person and meant to vandalise. Waiting for the next one to vandalise is just silly. Again, there is no evidence of the wronged innocent you speak of. (and if they were blocked, they could have complained, and this issue could have been discussed, but it never was because the serious users didn't mind picking a different name) pschemp | talk 15:33, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

There wasn't consensous to remove it in the first place, since none of us knew about it then, so what makes you think there would be now? It's going back in. // Pilotguy (Have your say) 17:33, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

There was even less "consensus" to add this bit of rulecruft in the first place. The post-hoc justification given above is weak. Some people are not comfortable seeing a 12123434 or a S10006883? Please. I wonder what they would say to an IP address, which is what you are if you don't log in at all. The trouble with this page seems to be that the threshold for adding rulecruft is very low (can be done unilaterally without discussion) whereas getting rid of it quite painful. Ah well. 66.230.200.227 20:39, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

You, sir/madam, are quite naive. IP addresses are far from random. I don't quite understand your reasoning here, considering this has the support of administrators to add this one, while it was removed by an IP address with little justification. Surely you can come up with a better reasoning than saying that you belive people should be free to do what they wish. // Pilotguy (Have your say) 20:54, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

That's the right thing to do. Keep dicussing--see if you can drum up consensus to get it removed. Until then, by WP rule-changing policy it should stay the way it has been. Maybe a rewording to make it more specific is best?

Also, where is the discussion of how that rule was first added? That would be good information to have for this conversation. --Masamage 20:41, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Report: I can't find any discussion of the change, either here or at the Blocking policy talk page, or in the archives of either. Here is the record; it was done November 28, 2005. The wording originally stated, 'It is also recommended that users do not choose usernames that consist of random characters, such as "asd89w43jsw94". The user may be mistaken by an administrator for a vandalbot and blocked.'

The "recommended" wording was removed, and it was placed among the regular guidelines, on March 15, 2006. Here's the record.

Since it appears that there was no consensus--at least as far as I can tell--I will remove it for now, and we begin proper dicussion of a proposed guideline. --Masamage 22:04, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Random Letters 3: The Debate

Please see the above section. It has been proposed that "random or apparently random" be considered qualification for a 'Confusing, misleading, or troublesome username'.

This has been done in the past, both by inclusion in the list and by simply mentioning the issue, as a suggestion, underneath. It has also been removed. None of the times this was changed involved any gathering of consensus, so it has been removed for the time being. Should it, in fact, be a guideline? Please share your thoughts! --Masamage 22:04, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I can see you're trying to help, but you've got it backwards. The rule is longstanding and so it *stays* unless there is consensus to remove. Also, three people up there already agreed it should stay, so I'm not sure what the point of starting another section on the exact same topic is, but the fact is that there is no consensus to remove it, nor was there ever. pschemp | talk 22:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Consensus to add it actually never happened, as you can see for yourself in the links placed in the above section. That's just as big a problem, isn't it? --Masamage 22:11, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes but it was in there for over a year and the longstanding time trumps the lack of discussion. Back then, lots of things weren't discussed, and if you search I bet you'll find half of the policy was written that way. That doesn't mean those things should be removed. If we followed that rule, half of our policies would be deleted. Also, when you are linking to action, please link to the actual diff, not the revision so it can be see who did what. That's the difference between linking to a revision and a diff. The diff is a lot clearer.pschemp | talk 22:15, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. Anyway, people are clearly divided about it and are second-guessing eachother, so I hope a properly-documented discussion will happen. And you're right, that linking-method is a lot clearer; silly me. Thanks for the tip. --Masamage 22:20, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Well this right here and above is a properly documented discussion. Adding things is being BOLD. This is a good thing. That was a useful addition, and so no one complained and it stood for a very long time. Recently someone complained, but they didn't get enough consensus to actually remove it, so until then, it stays. I do think that it could possibly be made more clear with some rewording, but I'm not sure what, have to think about it. pschemp | talk 22:25, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Should it perhaps be made back into a 'recommendation'? That would seem to take care of the "well, it's not really wrong" issue without failing to mention that it's usually a bad idea. --Masamage 22:50, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

At this point, pschemp, you never provided a reason why random in itself is bad. You're reasons against random was that they are "untypable", "not conducive to collaboration", "not a random string of garbage" and that "Many people are *not* comfortable collaborating with a random string of letters and numbers".

I can't seem to understand why words/dates in leet would not fall under the category of "untypable", "not conductive to collaboration", "string of garbage" that "people are not comfrotable collaborating with". Something like "2004-12-29T22:45Z" is defintely difficult to type. The first bit is a date, the second bit is meaningless to me, and i suppose would be more so to someone who has 0 experience with leet. I'd also really like you to explain how something like "YUL89YYZ" is less random than "ajkdks8938j". because it's shorter? Because it has a vowel in it? Similarly, i fail to understand how "H1523702" (which if you backtranslate from leet, is "hiszetoz") is not random. or "Dp462090", which gives "dpagzogo". What about "GRAHAMUK"? what is that leet for? Or "JHMM13"?

As for users who contribute fine with random usernames, take a look at User:Lkjhgfdsa. Now don't start telling me "Lkjhgfdsa" is leet for something too. I'm not a total leet newb.

I'm going to post a notice about this over at village pump so we can (hopefully) get a few more people here to share their opinions.

Until there is consensus, the policy shouldn't be added back in. And i'm not saying this because there was never consensus to add it in the first place, but because the policy clearly did create problems (as addressed Wikipedia_talk:Username#Serious here). --`/aksha 04:26, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, it doesn't work that way. There was never consensus to remove it in the first place. btw. your example of User:GRAHAMUK (ie. GrahamUK) is hardly random. You really should look up the definition of the word random. pschemp | talk 04:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

uhh, and "YUL89YYZ" and "2004-12-29T22:45Z" and all the other ones i've named? What to come up with explainations for them too?

and what about User:Lkjhgfdsa?

And i'd also like to challenge your claim of "You seem to think that a username block is being "blasted" for a petty offense, which it isn't. A usernameblock contains a polite request to change the name, it isn't "abuse" or anything like you are implying."

As far as i can see, you're block of User:Asdfghjkl:; did not come with a "poliet request" to change the name. In fact, there wasn't even an explaination or offer for name change left on the persons' talk page after you decided to block on sight. You gave the person an indefinte block, and from the blocklog, it seems like the reason given was "usernameblock nonsense".

I'm not going to go as far as accusing anyone of abuse, but i'd say "assuming very bad faith" or "trigger happy" would be appropriate. And if indefinte bans within half an hour of account creation (and before the user has even made a single edit) because the randomness 'annoys' some people and is hard to type doesn't count as being a "blast for petty offense", i don't really know what else would be.

Now, let's look at User:Asdfg12345 (an account created about 2 months after User:Asdfghjkl:;, but before the line of no random names was removed from the policy). This user was never banned, even though the name is as random as User:Asdfghjkl:;, and has gone on to make about a hundred contributions on pages about Falun Gong articles, and doesn't seem to have recieved any warnings for wrong doings.

Similarly, users like User:1122334 and User:12123434 where blocked on sight within two minutes of their creation. No poliet requests. No notes left on talk pages. No offer for a name change. --`/aksha 04:54, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

On and on and on you go. 2004-12-29T22:45Z is obviously a date. December 12th isn't random. Also, though *you* don't see it, the usernameblocked template expands and gives the user a nice polite message about the block when the user tries to edit. If those users wanted to complain, they could have done so on their talk pages too, as blocking still allows you to edit your talk. Once again, you have failed to find the victims who were so disturbed by this. pschemp | talk 05:58, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Random usernames are blocked very regularly -- it's the modus operandi, and has been for some time. I have no idea why it's even an issue if I block something like User:aSSDLFASFHlkdhfu!!1;;;1 (for example). This shouldn't be a question of whether random names should be blocked -- they absolutely should be -- but of where the line between "quirky random" and "block random" would be. That's my take. Luna Santin 06:04, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. As I said way up there, it could possibly use some clairification for borderline cases, but 99% of these are throwaway vandal accounts and taking the teeth out of the policy is silly. pschemp | talk 06:12, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. If people don't want to be blocked instantly, they can spend five seconds thinking up a name that can (usually) be pronounced or at least remembered with some ease. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 06:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I have an obvious opposition to this guideline, especially as an independant grounds for blocking. Having a random username could be "recommended against" or "discouraged" in the rules, and used as an additional contributing factor in cases where the user does appear to be vandalizing, but there is nothing inherently wrong with random names. As I, and probably most other random named contributors have discovered, it's a lot easier to keep a consistent internet identity by picking a memorable random letter combination or phrase acronym than it is following a real word with numbers. If a random username was disruptive, shouldn't it be taken to WP:RFC/NAME? Even the obvious sexual reference people get a chance for a hearing there. --tjstrf Now on editor review! 06:36, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

"Once again, you have failed to find the victims who were so disturbed by this." the victims...are the people who were blocked as i pointed out in my last edit. What exactly is it about User:Asdfghjkl:; that makes this user deserve less of a chance to even begin editing than User:Lkjhgfdsa or User:Asdfg12345? Both User:Lkjhgfdsa or User:Asdfg12345 have gone on to make useful contributions. What reason do we have for thinking User:Asdfghjkl:; was bad from the start and never giving this person a chance?

You can block something like User:aSSDLFASFHlkdhfu!!1;;;1 on the basis of a very long username. But blocking individuals like User:Asdfghjkl:; when other random names of almost equal length like User:Asdfg12345 are not blocked is hardly fair.

For all those of you who want the rule placed back in, does any of you actually have a suggestion on how to fix this problem? As in how to implement such a policy fairly? Can you give some objective defintions of what a random username is so we don't end up with each admin simply using his/her own definition?

How are you going to avoid cases when a User:Asdfghjkl:; will get blocked but a User:Asdfg12345 is allowed to continue contributing?

If the policy is going to be enforced in such an arbitrary way - where a random username gets banned only if an admin enforcing the rule happens to be around at that time, then it needs fixing.

Policies, should at the very least be fair. The example i've pointed out clearly shows the policy does have problems. And policies don't exist by default. --`/aksha 06:48, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Asdfg12345 isn't exactly the pinnacle of random. The five letters in the middle row and the first five numbers are a specific sequence. So is Asdfghjkl:; for that matter, but it's closer to a quickly-typed vandal username becuase it doesn't have any meaningful break. Someone just typed across the keyboard in sequence. In the end, throwing out this policy because the potential minimal harm it could cause is pointless. I say minimal because most editors do actually take the effort to type out a name that's easy for themselves and others to remember. – Someguy0830 (Talk | contribs) 07:10, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

but then, on the same token, what's the point of keeping this a hard-(and ambigious)-to-enforce-fairly policy for the potential minimal good it may do? I don't see anyone causing a problem only because of the randomness of their username. There's no evidence taking the ban-on-sight approach for usernames based on randomness alone is doing any good. If it's just because vandals often use random names, well...as i said, we may as well go block anon editing in general because vandals very often use anon editing. --`/aksha 07:38, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I would argue that a username needs to be recognizable. User:Asdfg12345 strikes me as being significantly more recognizable than User:Asdfghjkl:;. What about User:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!! or User:!"£$%^&*() +? Or User:!pÝwû∫¡ú? User:$%YB$%N&%$^&*N£%B^VU£U^B£%^N&? User:A0MUS0K71uDhb2c9f? Are you positing that all of those would be valid usernames? Do we need to prove that all of these were vandals, or is it enough to remember that a large number of these sorts prove to be throwaway accounts? There are always exceptions to trends -- the overall trend is still noteworthy. It seems to me that you're holding up one example of an admittedly somewhat iffy "random" name, and claiming it's the pinnacle of a "random username" block -- as I said before, the real question to me seems less about whether there's a line, but where the line should be drawn. It's additionally complicated by the presence of username trolls. What honestly probably happened is that User:Asdfg12345 slipped through during a quiet moment, and User:Asdfghjkl:; was unfortunate enough to come into play shortly after something like User:Shanel sucks FireFox off on the milkman's communist wheels! was registered; when username trolls and vandals are active (and trust me, they get active), blocking necessarily comes a little quicker, as there's less time for everyone to put into assuming good faith, as much as we'd like to. The simple fact of the matter is that admins are human, and do not have infinite time, resources, or mental faculties. Luna Santin 08:10, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

"User:Asdfg12345 strikes me as being significantly more recognizable than User:Asdfghjkl:;." How, exactly? --tjstrf Now on editor review! 08:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Asdfg and 12345 are short and obvious sequences; granted that Asdfghjkl is still a sequence, it's a much longer one, and the non-alpha-numeric characters don't help. In the same sense, tjstrf seems fine to me, but tjstrf;1;1;1;1; wouldn't so much. If that makes sense. Luna Santin 08:51, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

User:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!! seems pretty easy to recognise to me. It's just exclaimation marks repeated over and over again, not random at all. A bit annoying since it's too long, and probably not valid since it's too long, but User:!!! and User:!!!!!!!! seem fine to me. "It seems to me that you're holding up one example of an admittedly somewhat iffy "random" name" - one exam seems to be one whole example more than what you're providing. Any evidence on your part to support your claims, to support this "overall trend" you see? "What honestly probably happened is that User:Asdfg12345 slipped through during a quiet moment, and User:Asdfghjkl:; was unfortunate enough to come into play shortly after something like User:Shanel sucks FireFox off on the milkman's communist wheels! was registered" unfortunate enough to come into play at the wrong time? Gee, i thought something as significant as blocking would be done on a case-by-case basis. I suppose some newbies are just unlikely, and i guess that's really fair reason to block some and not the luckier ones. "The simple fact of the matter is that admins are human, and do not have infinite time, resources, or mental faculties" which is why the rules exist for both admins and nonadmins.

seriously, you want evidence so badly on my part, try dishing some of your own up. As far as i can see, you want this rule because you like it. What evidence do you have that this rule actually does good?

even better, what evidence this rule does more good than harm? --`/aksha 14:20, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Your logic is lacking here. If you can't show evidence of harm, you can't prove there is a problem. My evidence is the lack of complaints by legitimate users and the fact that most random account are 1. never used and 2. don't even bother to try to change their names because they are vandals anyway. You've never watched the username bots in your life and therefore have no idea what you are talking about. All the people here who have commented that have don't support your removal. (Luna, Pilotguy, Lar). pschemp | talk 16:38, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

User:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!! is easily distinguished from User:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!? I'm sure the space will help loads, if I can ever remember where to put it. User:!!! and User:!!!!!!!! are poor examples because neither of them is blocked for username violations. I notice you didn't respond to User:!pÝwû∫¡ú or User:A0MUS0K71uDhb2c9f. You said "seriously, you want evidence so badly on my part" -- care to point out where I asked you for evidence? ;) The information we're debating over is quite subjective; we can't say for sure whether most of those accounts would be vandal or troll problems, because they're blocked; I'd bet money, however, that a good number of admins familiar with these matters would confirm: many of these users, left unblocked, become problems. Your last complaint -- "Gee, i thought something as significant as blocking would be done on a case-by-case basis," is in fact exactly what I'm getting at -- username blocking is done on a case-by-case basis, which is why it's subjective. You're right, I do want this rule, and I do like it, but that's because I just so happen to think it's a good idea that saves time and resources which could be much better put into other areas. Luna Santin 22:18, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

An example, from last night User:Plmoknijbuhvygctfrdxezswaq blocked on sight, had already vandalised the moment he created his account. Check the contribs. This happens all the time. pschemp | talk 16:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

"Your logic is lacking here. If you can't show evidence of harm, you can't prove there is a problem." your logic is similarly lacking. if there is no evidence of harm, then we shouldn't make a rule to forbid it. Similarly, we shouldn't ban people for it.

"My evidence is the lack of complaints by legitimate users and the fact that most random account are 1. never used and 2. don't even bother to try to change their names because they are vandals anyway." neither of these things show there is a problem with random names. A *lot* of usernames are not used. And very few newbies will complain about bans anyway. Why do you think rules like WP:BITE exist? To protect new people who don't know how to complain, or just don't want to.

"You've never watched the username bots in your life and therefore have no idea what you are talking about. All the people here who have commented that have don't support your removal. (Luna, Pilotguy, Lar)." You have no idea what i have done or not, so don't base your arguments on it. And what i have done or haven't done is not relevant either. Luna, Pilotguy and Lar are also not only people who have commented aside from us.

"I notice you didn't respond to User:!pÝwû∫¡ú or User:A0MUS0K71uDhb2c9f." because there is no point. The former uses names with really wierd non-latin characters, which is not allowed. The latter is too long. You originally listed "User:!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!! or User:!"£$%^&*() ? Or User:!pÝwû∫¡ú? User:$%YB$%N&%$^&*N£%B^VU£U^B£%^N&? User:A0MUS0K71uDhb2c9f?". The only one there that is not very long, and sort of not containing wierd non-latin symbols would be User:!"£$%^&*(). Even so,"£" doesn't exist on all keyboards, which makes it hard to type (for a reason that's got nothing to do with randomness). Aside from that, i don't see any problem with it. It's annoying, probably looks bad, but i don't see it as being a bannable offense.

"You said "seriously, you want evidence so badly on my part" -- care to point out where I asked you for evidence? ;)" ops...i should apologise for that. It wasn't directed to you at all. That comment was to pschemp. It seems like i'd just mixed the two of you up when i replied. Pschemp was the only asking me to provide evidence, not you.

"An example, from last night User:Plmoknijbuhvygctfrdxezswaq blocked on sight, had already vandalised the moment he created his account" then block the person for vandalism, not for having a random username. Although i should point out that the username is way too long to egin with, randomness is only the second issue. --`/aksha 04:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

There is no reason to have usernames that blatantly do not identify a user uniquely and easily. These usernames will continue to be blocked. —Centrx→talk • 07:34, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

As an observation on some of the comments above, Consensus != Vote. Policy is descriptive, not prescriptive etc. wikipedia is not an experiment in democracy, you don't get to come along and say I never voted for it therefore it isn't policy. If to meet a need we start doing something and it gets general acceptance by definition that is consensus, this policy has been in place and implemented for quite some time, it has consensus (that's not to say once something gains consensus it is set in stone...). That list is intended as a guide, it is not supposed to be exhaustive (wikipedia is not a bureacracy or experiment in rule making), it is the broader purpose behind the username policy which is important, if the rationale for an item on that list doesn't tally with the broader policy rationale then there is arguably something amiss. It also has to be remebered that the emotive "banning a newbie" etc. is not the case, blocks for most inappropriate usernames are without prejudice and the autoblocks should be removed without question, it is of course important that appropriate edit summaries are used {{usernameblock}} for example expands out in the block message to give the whole text regarding the status. --pgk 12:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

"`/aksha"... if that were your actual username and I saw it when doing new user patrol I would have blocked it as too random and too unreadable. Have you ever done new user patrol, Yaksha? Unless you have, I don't think you really understand how names can sometimes fly in fast and furious, and sometimes how it is hard to keep up with blocking them fast enough to prevent vandalism. Random names are a giveaway. That's what pschemp is saying, all the users that HAVE done newuser patrol that have commented here are in favour of the policy as it were (the status quo ante). The policy you propose now, as it is worded, is not restrictive enough to match reality. Policy here is descriptive, not prescriptive, and regardless of what policy says, I am going to block "iplkda" without a second thought, and ask questions later. Because that's how policy gets done here. People do stuff, and then it gets written so that it describes what people actually do. I'd challenge you to actually find a user with any valuable contributions harmed by this policy. I have to say that I see this discussion as a huge waste of time, really, you're trying to challenge fundamentals of how things are done here. ++Lar: t/c 18:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

harmed by this policy basically means banned by this policy. Since you're banning completely new accounts, what's the banned person going to do? Stick around and complain? I've already pointed out enough examples of usernames which are random, but have made valuble contributions. Registering at a lucky time was probably the only reason they weren't blocked. Or are you saying users like User:Lkjhgfdsa, User:Asdfg12345 or User:YUL89YYZ are not random? And, as i said, there's no evidence that vandalism is lower than it would be if random names are not blocked. You say many random names are vandals, but since you block before they even contribute, how can you even be sure? Do you have any evidence that most, or even many, of the random names you blocked were intended to be vandals? --`/aksha 03:19, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Do you have evidence they weren't? You go on and on but you seem to miss many points, that there is an existing consensus, that changing away without discussion isn't going to happen, that the onus is on those advocating change to provide compelling evidence in support of the change, that many if not almost all random usernames vandalise, that random usernames hinder collaboration, that there is little or no harm in changing usernames, that the way the pages are written is affirming and friendly and on and on and on. At this point I would really wish you'd drop it, because it really feels to me, even under assumption of good faith, that you are either trolling or wikilawyering, and both are tiresome. Repeating assertions is not addressing issues raised with them. ++Lar: t/c 03:29, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

You're doing the same thing - repeating assertions, and throwing around accusations. The fact that many non-blocked random usernames belong to sensible, helpful contributers supports the assumption that many of the blocked random usernames also belonged to sensible helpful potential-contributers. As far as i can see, the entire point of your argument is that "it exists, we let's keep it" and "some random accounts defintely belong to vandals, therefore they probably all do". It's this entire approach of "things should be banned until someone proves it's not harmful," in this case being "let's just ban random usernames until someone can prove what we're doing is wrong". There is no existing consensus. There never was - having no complaints is not the same as having consensus. And now that the issue has been bought to light, i think the village pump discussion proves there is no consensus, i'm not the only one argueing against banning randoms. To quote ONUnicorn, "As for the length of time that it was there representing consensus, I'd be willing to bet that WP:Username is not one of our highest-traffic policy pages; I know I've only looked at it once (before today) and never referenced it in discussion. Most Wikipedians have probably never paid it any attention at all.". --`/aksha 03:51, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your opinion Yaksha. pschemp | talk 04:15, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Restored to earlier version

I have rolled back changes to this, restoring to this version. The policy has been the way it was for a very long time, and therefore clearly there was consensus for that version. At this point there needs to be consensus FOR THE CHANGE here on this talk page, which there is not, before the page itself is changed. If reversion to a non consensus version continues, there may be repercussions. Please seek consensus to change away from a long time version before doing so. ++Lar: t/c 14:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

tjstrf: Along this vein, I think your proposed words have some merit, but you need to propose them here so we can discuss the changes first sincee this is obviously a contentious issue. Would you mind doing that please? pschemp | talk 14:12, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Note: The page has been protected by Celestianpower (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) due to the revert warring. I support this protection as there were some folks warring over it without seeking consensus here first. ++Lar: t/c 16:48, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposed wording on random names.

Shortly before the page was protected, I added the following line to the page:

• Extremely lengthy names. Because of their difficulty to type, excessively lengthy names are not permitted. By the same token, random letter combinations are also discouraged as usernames.

Leaving aside the issue of blocking random letter names as vandals itself, I like this wording because it justifies the two rules, which previously had been unexplained. Any suggestions or objections on this? --tjstrf Now on editor review! 19:54, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

That seems like an alright compromise to me until we can sort this out better? The first sentence, at least, just seems to be an elaboration on what's already there. Should probably wait for Yaksha to weigh in before we add it, though, I'm not sure what he'll make of it. Luna Santin 22:23, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I would interpet his subsequent editing of the sentences for grammar here as indicating acceptance or at least toleration. --tjstrf Now on editor review! 22:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm happy with it. discouraging it is fine. I just didn't like the policy saying they are "not allowed" because it seems to justify "block on sights" for usernames that are only random (but are acceptable in every other sense.). A poliet explainationary message with encourage to change usernames should come before, not after, the person gets banned (assuming their username isn't breaking any other rules.) --`/aksha 03:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Since the users are mostly vandals, it is illogical to force people to wait until they vandalise to block them. If you had proof that good users were run off by a polite block message saying their name has been blocked and could they please change it, then i might agree, but so far you've come up with none. Your wording takes away a powerful vandal fighting tool so I don't agree. pschemp | talk 04:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

You've not yet shown conclusive proof that most of these users are/will be vandals; to some people, tjstrf or pschemp look like random character sequences. Why should we Abandon Good Faith in this matter? Probably all this needs is some sort of guideline on what is, to quote from above "blockable random" and what is "quirky random". -- nae'blis 17:11, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Again, that's why only blatantly random names are blocked on sight. You guys just aren't getting how this rule has been applied in actual use. Good Faith *is* assumed in all but the really blatant cases. The only random ones that are blocked on sight are the really obvious ones like User:1524gf86d3sf546 and User:Plmoknijbuhvygctfrdxezswaq. The borderline ones and unobvious ones and short ones aren't and never have been. pschemp | talk 17:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I can't believe you just wrote that, to be honest. What is "blatant" about User:12123434? User:1122334? What seriously makes Username90001 a threat worthy of blocking before they ever made an edit? How is User:Asdfg12345 all that different from User:Asdfghjkl:;, except in length of service? Let's be honest with each other here, the current wording is not clear and is causing uneven enforcement. If User:Space Vampire 84092384902384230984 is too long, let's change the software to not allow names over N characters. I'm not arguing with the ones that look like somebody mashed their hand down on the keyboard for a one-off vandalism account, just to clarify what is and isn't acceptable to a broad consensus of users. Would some admins have blocked User:*unelmankutoja on sight? The variety of native languages here makes "random" difficult to quantify, but that doesn't mean I don't think it's possible to provide some guidance. I don't want this to be a "you guys" versus "us guys" debate. -- nae'blis 18:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Um, I never said that User:12123434? User:1122334? are blatantly random. In fact since they are borderline, I wouldn't block those, but that's not what I'm talking about. User:1524gf86d3sf546 *does* "look like somebody mashed their hand down on the keyboard for a one-off vandalism account". That's my whole point. I should be allowed to block those and the people on the page are saying I have to wait until such an account vandalises. I don't think the wording needs clarification because I don't see any evidence of it being misused. The other thing people miss is that often a whole string of names will be registered by a vandal, and if Username90005 and Username90006 and Username90007 vandalise then blocking Username90001 just makes sense but if you aren't watching the username creation bot, you'll miss that fact. But those aren't *random* so I don't see the point of you bringing it up here. We are talking about obvious randomness here. The mashed on the keyboard one offs, not the borderline ones. I am talking about the crazy obvious cases, and that's what admins block. You claim "uneven" enforcement, but there is no proof of that. Unless you happen to be watching the username creation logs, you don't have all the facts in many cases and berating admins because of their decisions in those cases is counterproductive. Its another case of "we don't trust admins to make good decisions."pschemp | talk 19:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll thank you not to assume that I don't trust admins; I'm saying, and several other people are saying, that this is already happening:

12123434 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

1122334 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

Username90001 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)

These are already blocked, and I was looking directly at the block log so there was no Username90005, 90004, etc being blocked at the same time. I'm not saying you are saying these were right, but the first two names were already mentioned in the thread above, and it's not like Rje, Freakofnurture or Misza13 are new admins who haven't acculturated to the username blocking policy. Two of them have a thousand or more username blocks, and yet legitimate users may be getting caught. We agree about User:1524gf86d3sf546 - I'm just saying there's a world of difference between that and the examples I've cited, and that was just going through the last several pages of the username block log for a few minutes. -- nae'blis 19:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not saying that you don't trust admins, I'm saying the people on the villiage pump arguing that admins can't make good choices don't. There are two discussions about the same thing going on here and I'm using information from both. Quoting pgk here 1. blocks for most inappropriate usernames are without prejudice and 2. appropriate edit summaries are used {{usernameblock}} for example expands out in the block message to give the whole text regarding the status. We aren't perfect and its possible good users get caught. Good users get caught with the potentially offensive rule too but it does more good than harm. If these were users who cared enough to try to edit, they would see the note that usernameblocked expands to and could complain or explain on their talk page. No effort has been made to do so. I see no proof of users being harmed. pschemp | talk 20:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I scanned the VP discussion but came here to try to keep things centralized. -- nae'blis 20:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Link to the Pump discussion just in case anyone else wants to know. I wish this was centralised but I think that's probably a hopeless proposition at the moment. I admit I've gotten bogged down in details but basically, I still think that usernames should foster collaboration and communication. Also, most of this policy is enfoced with discretion and well, itis going to continue to be whether that rule is in there or not. {{usernameblocked}} isn't punative, and never has been nor do I see evidence of it being abused. None of our systems here are perfect, but its doing more good than harm, and that's all we can ask. pschemp | talk 04:27, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

" you had proof that good users were run off by a polite block message" what you ask for is impossible, since users who run off by defintion are not the ones who stay and complain about it. And if they've run off, it's quite impossible to get proof that they would have been good users. I've already provided examples of people with random usernames who have been sensible contributers. User:Lkjhgfdsa, User:Asdfg12345, User:Dp462090, User:YUL89YYZ...to name a few. If all admins did block-on-sight for all random user names, none of them would have survived.

Your entire argument comes down to the point that random usernames = vandals. I've already proved random usernames doesn't nessasarily = vandals. If we don't welcome randoms just becuase they're likely to be vandals, why do we bother welcoming anon editors at all?

The whole deal about them being hard to type obviously isn't the issue, because you seem to find User:2004-12-29T22:45Z fine. And "2004-12-29T22:45Z" is far harder to type than "Asdfghjkl:;", since it involves both numbers and symbols (the dash and the colon). It's also longer, more obtrusive, and harder to remember (it's a date+time with no meaning. Where as "Asdfghjkl:;" is easy to remember. It's just the second row of a standard keyboard.) --`/aksha 07:48, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that waiting for someone to vandalize before blocking them is...a really, really good idea. >_> Innocent until proven guilty, and all that.

That said, I like the new wording. --Masamage 07:55, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh Yaksha. The point is that those names *weren't* blocked. You just don't get it. You really should read the comments by pgk and centrix in the section above. And sorry, but waiting for obvious vandals to vandalise is just silly Masamage and is totally contrary to logic. If that was the case, no usernames should ever be blocked until they vandalise, again an illogical proposition. If you guys just don't trust admin discretion, then say that rather than arguing about a rule. pschemp | talk 16:34, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

No usernames should be blocked until they vandalize...hey, I like this proposition! (Of course, if the username is -itself- a form of vandalism, such as including obscenities, racial slurs, deliberate attempt to impersonate another user, etc., that's a different story.) But I've got no problem with "random" usernames. Besides, what's random? What if I spell out my first name in ASCII hex codes? That would look pretty random to anyone who doesn't know them, but would be entirely non-random to someone who knows how to read those codes. As for being hard to type, I've not seen a computer which does not include the "copy" and "paste" functionality for several years now. Seraphimblade 09:43, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I do trust your judgment, but because I've seen you make sound decisions, not because you're an admin. I do continue to disagree. Some users should be blocked before ever doing anything, but it's because the usernames themselves are actually a form of vandalism. I'm in favor of blocking random usernames, but it's because they're confusing and will always be hard to work with, not because I automatically assume they're vandalizing. That just seems ideologically inconsistent. --Masamage 18:09, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes and that was my original argument, that they aren't conducive to collaboration and that's what I feel is the best reason, but Yaksha keeps saying they are harmed innocents and there isn't any truth to that statement. Pgk says it best here "emotive "banning a newbie" etc. is not the case, blocks for most inappropriate usernames are without prejudice" yet people continue to think that a usernameblock is somehow punishment, where it isn't. Vandalism is a secondary reason, but honestly I'm just mentioning it because yaksha says those usernames are being harmed. Which they aren't. Because 99% of them are vandals. pschemp | talk 19:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay. I'm good with it as a secondary reason, just not as a primary. ^^; I do think you're probably right.

Anyway, the worst things that can come of blocking confusing usernames are that a) someone will reregister, and become a contributor with a name people can actually communicate with; or b) someone will get confused and hurt and leave, which would be...really reactionary. It seems like such a person would also be confused and hurt their first "thank you for experimenting with PageName" notice, their first time being reverted for POV, their first deleted non-notable article...the list goes on. I just don't see how someone who would get angry at WP for not allowing the name 'l9dmn45jc8s'--when it says in the Username guidelines that we don't allow that--could be a person who would not get angry at other inconvenient guidelines. And vandal or not, that sort of person is probably not going to be very helpful. So yeah. Anyway, it's always their choice whether or not to come back.

Does the registration page have a link to the Username guidelines? --Masamage 20:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

No. It probably should. The block notice they get does though. pschemp | talk 03:29, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Here, I'll save you the time, "It also has to be remebered that the emotive "banning a newbie" etc. is not the case, blocks for most inappropriate usernames are without prejudice and the autoblocks should be removed without question, it is of course important that appropriate edit summaries are used {{usernameblock}} for example expands out in the block message to give the whole text regarding the status. --pgk 12:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)" That is exactly what is done in these cases. pschemp | talk 16:38, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

"If that was the case, no usernames should ever be blocked until they vandalise, again an illogical proposition." - no, that's not true. By "innocent till proven guilty", a username like "diefags" proves the person guilty of flaming. But a username that is random doesn't prove the person guilty of anything, let alone vandalism.

"Vandalism is a secondary reason, but honestly I'm just mentioning it because yaksha says those usernames are being harmed. Which they aren't. Because 99% of them are vandals" you make statements like this without any proof. And yet you blame me for not prooving that innocent people could be banned? What evidence do you have that 99% of banned random users are vandals? 99% of all random users are not vandals, i've already shown that by giving examples of random usernames who are decent contributers. So what's there suggesting that 99% of the randoms an admin happens to ban are vandals?

"Does the registration page have a link to the Username guidelines?" it does, but it's not obvious. The guildlines need to come before the registration form, not after it. I'm sure someone's noticed that before, but it seems like no one really cares enough to put the "create account" button AFTER the guildlines so people will at least be forced to notice the guildlines before they hit okay. --`/aksha 03:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Again, thanks for your opinion Yaksha. pschemp | talk 04:16, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The username guidelines definitely need to be prominently linked from the registration page. I logged out to check, and they're there, but they're toward the bottom and are only a plain Wikilink in the middle of a sentence. If we're going to be blocking people based on their actions at the registration page, which are often the very first interaction with WP as an editing tool, we need to make it clear that we expect something of them first. --Masamage 05:20, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Whoa, strike that--I just looked again, and saw something I'd missed the first time, which is that the reg page actually delineates several of the username requirements, right there, without following any links. They are at the bottom, but they're there. It says:

"Your username must not contain:

• offensive, confusing, random or unreadable text or characters
• names of celebrities, notable world figures or events, or known Wikipedians
• words like "bot" or "script" that refer to automated editing processes
• titles like "admin" or "sysop" that imply authority on Wikipedia"

So...wow. I guess since it's already there...I'm not so worried. It is at the bottom, but if the field where you entered a username just said "See below" or something... --Masamage 05:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

non-latin names

I don't understand why there is a prohibition on non-latin names; it seems obvious to me that we should allow users on other projects to use the same names here. (yes, some names are harder to type than others; but all can be cut and pasted. some english names are harder to type than others too. perhaps we could mandate that all usernames be no more than 8 characters?) If anyone can find a link to the discussion that preceded adding that section to this page, please link to it here. +sj + 04:54, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually some can't be cut and pasted and we can't expect that the average wikipedia user will reconfigure their browser to display various and sundry obscure scripts. There have been various discussions about this all over but none has ever had enough consensus to remove the rule, and it will be difficult to track them all down (Think I've seen some here, some on ANI, some on CVU but not sure). I think the current feeling is that we're just kind of waiting to see what happens when we get universal login, at which point the whole policy will have to be looked at. pschemp | talk 05:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

For some browsers these don't render properly, so you end up with ? or little square boxes or whatever instead (happens on my windows box). Making the usernames indistiguishable. --pgk 06:11, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The "turning into "?" and little boxes" is the main problem...although that adds to the typability issue. From the looks of it, people just use latin letters in their username and go ahead with using wierd letters/characters in signitures (although that causes the same problem on talk pages...) --`/aksha 07:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

That's my problem with them. Right now there's a user I keep seeing around that has their signature as (apparently) "??? (????)". I can't figure out who they are (and can't install new scripts on some computers), or how to differentiate them from some other non-latin username with the same number of characters. Hence the problem. I'd encourage renaming for those users. -- nae'blis 17:03, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

All you have to do is to hover your cursor over the name link to see what their real name is. User:Zoe|(talk) 01:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I wish I could remember where I saw that username/signature, now. I got the impression that the username was encoded strangely too, but now I can't come across it. -- nae'blis 02:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I saw it too, maybe on an AFD? I can't remember either but it was an attempt at rendering a script so obscure that firefox wouldn't recognize it (and I have firefox set to recognize as many script types as possible). pschemp | talk 03:10, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

If we're talking about the same person, the username itself was wierd also. You actually had to click on the username to see who it was, hovering didn't work. --`/aksha 03:18, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

For the longest time User:Cyde's sig, when you hovered, gave a sideways arrow (the resize cursor) instead of details, unless you are a popups user, the popup came up eventually. Was that it? pschemp, do you have a doc pointer to how to set firefox to recognise lots of script types? that sounds handy... ++Lar: t/c 14:50, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

No, it most definately was not Cyde and this was recent. I saw it 4 days ago. pschemp | talk 14:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Protest

I oppose Wikipedia:Username; it is too Western culture centric and make her as Asian hard to work comfortably here. I feel it discriminative. I heard a user whose account is Kanji is permenently blocked due to this policy, though he is trusted user on Ja Wikipedia. On Japanese Wikipedia someone said it would have been a rumor since English Wikipedia couldn't be so discriminative for non Western cultures, but yesterday I knew it true. I cannot stand for such hostile attitude from Westerners. So I decided to go away unless you change your attitude. It is my consolation Sj brought it up; he is always cooperative in our multilingual activites and did many to enhance it. It is sad for me however to see him as minority at this point, and also sad and disappointed to see English Wikipedians value more technical convinience than human rights (yes, how to be addressed is highly a matter of human rights). It is too condecence and overreaction not to be satisfied to ask them to use an alternative signature in Latin character, but force them to use their username what you prefer, I insist. If you would like to contact me, please visit myr meta page. Farewell.--Aphaia 02:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

well you aren't the first person who thinks its racist, but it isn't. Until recently it was a serious technical issue for English users and their computers, and still is for some. If you choose to interpret that as discrmination we can't stop you, however that was never the intent. As for calling it a human rights violation that's a bit much. No one is saying you can't contribute. And this has been long standing policy, it isn't anything new. You can use kanji in your signature all you want. The fact that our computers can't type kanji isn't hostile, its just the way they are set up. After all, this is the English wikipedia. I wouldn't go to the Japanese wikipedia and expect people to be comfortable working with my English name. Politeness goes both ways. pschemp | talk 03:00, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Pschemp, you have no good reason to change what I wrote. I hope you altered your edit and restore the original construction of my messages: paragraphs etc. --Aphaia 04:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Please provide a diff of what she changed, thanks. I didn't see any signs of changing things. That's typically not done. If something is an out and out attack it may be removed entirely but we have a long tradition of not doing that. ++Lar: t/c 11:14, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Aphaia probably means this --`/aksha 12:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Nothing was changed, just formatted more compactly. pschemp | talk 13:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. That was most defintely not a change, the words are the same, it just fits the page (and style here) better. Different 'pedias have different norms. (changing a signature, for instance, to make it more readable, is something you will see done here from time to time, it is not what I would call a change either) And the difference in norms is something to take into account, as pschemp said... this is the English Wikipedia and it has english centric norms. PS, Yaksha, thanks for the diff. ++Lar: t/c

I understand the English Wikipedia requires latin-character names not accepting kanji as if the Chinese Wikipedia required hànzì names not accepting latin alphabet because that is the Chinese Wikipedia. Nonsense! 58.0.119.26 14:22, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

This issue was recently raised on foundation-l. While I certainly can understand en.WP wishing to advise new contributors to pick a certain style of name, I think it is a bit too much to pemenantly ban those who do not follow these preferences. I would really like to see this policy revised in light of the problems that will be caused by the implementation of Single User Login. I understand how this policy has been brought to its current state by well-meaning people. However I think that when you step back and look at the bigger picture here, you can see the assumptions this policy was written on top of are not entirely valid. What was once a good rule of thumb which helped en.WP function smoothly could now ending doing a great deal of harm to the project. Perhaps this policy should be re-examined at an RfC with Single User Login in mind?--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 17:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Well that is a ver good point, BirgitteSB! If, for example, someone starts out on the Chinese Wikipedia and picks a userid that is prefectly fine in that context, they may well have an ID as a result of that, when they come to en:wp, that is totally unintelligible (and unpasteable) to the majority of en:wp users. I'm not sure where exactly this should be discussed, and further, I wonder if it's been thought about already... If it hasn't, it ought to be. Thanks for suggesting that the wider context be looked at. ++Lar: t/c 19:15, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

A small point although it is unitelligable; it is in fact pastable. After Wikisource split, I went around and repaired all the links on en.WP. Several of these links contained Asian characters which I was able to paste into the new {{wikisourcelang}}. I had no problems fixing these links despite not being able to read a thing. That said the display issue is unappealing. Perhaps there is a technical solution to that.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 19:37, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry who is it who has been permenantly banned, blocking an inappropriate username is not banning the user from contributing. Username blocks are generally without prejudice. The template normally used for such blocks ({{usernameblock}}) describes the situation quite clearly. It contains wording such as "You are encouraged to create a new account and contribute to Wikipedia under a more appropriate username" which to me seems a million miles away from the permenant ban you are telling us there is. This seems to be one of those urban legends, choose a username against the username policy and we ban you permenantly, send you a virus, burn down your house etc. etc. --pgk 20:13, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I could be wrong here, but I was not aware you could distinguish a permanent ban from an indefinate block accoding to the buttons clicked. I realize each community may use two or more different terms for internal reasons. However when you are trying to generate a list of users banned from any Wikimedia project in a language neutral enviroment, I believe the interface does not distinguish an indefinate ban from a permanent ban. If that is the case I cannot give you any credit for only naming the action an indefinate block, I am afraid we will not be able to split hairs in translation. If I am wrong about this, please correct me.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 20:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

You can't distinguish it in the button clicked but can distinguish it in the block summary and WP:USERNAME does make clear what the cause is. That said, if this is in fact driving off productive contributors it may make sense to reevaluate the use of blocks to force the use of latin characters. However, insisting on the use of latin characters given the technical nuisances involved otherwise does not strike me as inherently unreasonable. I'd like to be pointed to an actual example of a user coming from another project and being blocked for this matter. JoshuaZ 20:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Please read m:Single login specifications on how the new feature will be implemented. Once this happens many people who are currently casual anon editors (adding interwiki links, sharing a good picture, etc.) will be coming here with there main identity intact. For some of these editors this identity will certainly contain non-latin characters. Just because this has not happened yet, does not mean we cannot clearly see what will happen once the new feature goes live. If non-latin user names are still being blocked by en.WP admins after Single User Login, this situation you want proof of will certainly occur.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 23:15, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Your assertion was that we "pemenantly ban those..." my point is that the *person* is not banned, indefinitely blocked whatever we want to label it. The thing which is blocked is the username. The *person* is fully welcome to contribute etc. etc. Maybe it is pedantic to pick out that point, but many misunderstandings of this (and similar) have arise and there must be a clear distinction between banning the person and blocking the username.

On a similar vein, if a new user comes along and creates content (in total good faith) which doesn't meet our standards and is eligible for speedy deletion, we don't sit around and concern ourselves if we are being "nice" and newbie biting by removing it, nor does anyone suggest we leave it in place so as not to offend that person. We deal with the situation and carry on, this should be no different. Of the two I would suggest that your average new user is far more likely to have an article they have created deleted through speedy deletion, prod or AFD than they are be blocked for their username, and yes many do get upset by having their work deleted. (It's in a bit of an old joke, we first show users how to create content followed very swiftly by a demonstration of how we delete it....)

I agree there is a problem when single sign on occurs and one which we need to consider carefully. There is another issue which isn't addressed which is of course that such names are open to a different sort of abuse which is potentially very embarassing for wikipedia. If a new user is created in a different language (lest of all character set) it is quite possible that many admins will not understand it, if maybe the <language x> equivelant of "John Smith" or it maybe "<famous person> is an <expletive>". One of those being involved in an incident which gets broad coverage is clearly more problematic than the other. I don't think we can overplay or over account for this sort of thing, but it does indeed happen (we've have wikipedia is communism etc. in a wide variety of languges for instance). --pgk 20:54, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes I realize it is the username which is blocked not the person. However these usernames are our identities here. I don't think you realize how big of a problem this will be when this policy is no longer applied to new contributors but rather to well established identities. Currently you are only biting newbies with the policy, newbies generally have little attachment to the identity and if they do care enought to get mad they just go away. With single user login this will be a whole different ball-game. I suggest you seriously reconsider the current policy. I think the question of offensive non-latin user names is a very minor concern. If they are vandals, you will see this by their edits. If they wish to provoke someone with the name, I am sure an admin will hear about it. If they neither vandalize nor provoke people yet still register under an offensive name, I really doubt they will be active enough to come to the attention of the media. On the other hand, continuing to block non-latin usernames will certainly cause problems. And you will be getting emails in languages you cannot read from people who cannot read your blocking summary or polite template, but understand the logs well enough to see they have been blocked. (BTW the template for blocking usernames is quite disturbing if you cannot read english) I personally have contributed an over a dozen communities that I cannot read one bit because I can still manage to fix links and work with images. I imagine I am not the only person who does this and it is only logical to imagine what will happen when all us are contributing by our native identities rather than IPsBirgitte§β ʈ Talk 23:15, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

In m:Single login specifications, point 5 of stage 3 (A patch is written that allows User:Isam on en:wp and User:عصام بايزيدي on ar:wp to share a single universal login. Perhaps this would allow a single global-user to have different usernames on different wikis, and to reserve each of them globally. (This could require a special request.) ) seems quite germane. It speaks to the possibility of different userids or userid representations, if you will, being under the same single user login. If this is more than a wish, if it can be implemented, it really seems like 'have your cake and eat it too' which would be awesome. ++Lar: t/c 02:52, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad you see the difference, please be careful how you represent the action we still aren't, as you said and indeed bolded, permenantly banning anyone. I of course understand the singe sign on issue an indeed note it is one to be addressed. As to the problem of offensive non latin usernames being a minor concern and unlikely to be noticed seems to be sticking your head in the sand. We have various people declaring an intent to damage wikipedia because they are unhappy with previous encounters, we have had our share of incidents with non-offensive names gaining broad press coverage (e.g. Steve Irwin that one would have been ripe for some offensive names to be involved with). In a 24 hour period I looked at earier en wikipedia had 8000+ usernames created, we have had plenty of offensive English language names created (1000's upon 1000's), in the archive for this page we have an admin for the Chinese wikipedia commenting on the large number of offensive Chinese usernames he see created, the cross project nature of the usernames in single signon coupled with only local blocking makes the issue very real. As to many non-English speaking users signing up to the English wikipedia to make contributions, I would suggest that is a small minority and we can't start leaving ourselves open to broader issues based on a small minority, a wider minority will have problems rendering the names, a wider group impacted by offensive names, we can't be all things to all people and would be foolish to expend huge amounts of effort on try.

Really is it that onerous to ask people to use something else? Of course it isn't, in fact I'm sure it happens many times a day silently - when I signed up I had to try several times before I got a name which wasn't already in use, not everyone will get their first choice that is impossible. I see this as no different If you can't get your first choice because it is already taken or locally inappropriate what's the big deal?, if you aren't willing to contribute under anything other than your first choice you've probably come to the wrong project, we are a collaborative project to build a free Encyclopedia, personal identity is not a prime concern.

As to these non-English speakers turning up to do all this work unable to understand our messages, lets not narrow the field on this one, what about all our other messages, local policies which they don't understand etc. etc. Perhaps we should translate all our project space pages and warning templates into as many languages as we can, just for those few, or perhaps it isn't an unreasonable expectation that those who do come here either (a) understand some English or (b) will get put out occasionally because they don't understand a message we place on their page. Again we can't be all things to all people. --pgk 06:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

If there is a technical solution developed here that will be great. And I hope the admins at en.WP will direct people to how they may request the implementation of this feature without banning them. I do not think you are realize how it will affect things for someone to end up in the list permanantly banned Wikimedians because you dislike their username. And as I said above you may call it "indefinate blocking" but it is a permanant ban to the interface. Yes I mean that bolded and all. I said that I realized what you meant, not that I thought it those semantics actually made a difference in this situation. In a best case scenario this will mean everyone must ignore the results from en.WP's block list and all the people you have banned for serious concerns will be allowed to fully take part in wider workings of Wikimedia (board eletions, steward elections, etc.) However I doubt people will take this so lightly. I really think it will be harmful to the reputation of en.WP. I think that some people will decide that this is not a community they want to be associated with. I would really like to see you all fix this now, so it doesn't blow up after Single User Login goes live. However if you wish to insist it is not a significant problem, I am afraid I am wasting my energy here. I am fully aware I could be completely wrong about this, but all the same I am quite certain I see a train-wreck coming.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 13:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Your comment indicates you have a huge misunderstanding about the way Wikipedia works. There is more to the project than a computer interface. People still work here. No one is permanently banned for just their usename because a request to change it is always honoured. pschemp | talk 14:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

You obviously do not understand what I am talking about. If a person (which we can only identify by their username) was blocked on any Wikimedia wiki they would have been ineligable to vote in the last board election. Checking all Wikimedia wiki's does not involve reading the block summarries. All that is examined is the action; the semantics are indistinguishable. And honestly, I do not understand how these blocks are allowed under WP:BLOCK at all.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 15:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

You are missing the fact that if they change their username, the block record of the new username is clean, therefore there is no block in their log. Also, in the last election, having a clean block record wasn't a requirement to vote. The only stipulation on voters was, "To be eligible to vote, users must have been a contributor to at least one Wikimedia project for 90 days prior to August 1, 2006, as indicated by the date of the user's first edit, and must have completed at least 400 edits with the same account by August 1, 2006." That's it. It doesn't mention blocks anywhere, but even if it did, when you change your username, your block record disappears so that's a non-issue. pschemp | talk 17:36, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

(<--)I am really failing to explain this clearly to you. Lets try this differently. There is an editor we will call "Cyrillic" as his username at ru.WP uses that alphabet. Cyrillic is an established editor at ru.WP and cares about the larger Wikimedia organization. Cyrillic routinely adds interwiki links to other languages, like this. As you see this looks like a normal anon edit. This is because Cyrillic has not made the effort to sign up for an en.WP account. After Single User Login, when Cyrillic comes to en.WP he will automatically be registered at en.WP under his ru.WP username. Cyrillic may not even be aware of this unless he notices the change of the top 1/2 in of the screen. Cyrillic will likely continue adding interwiki links as he presently does but now instead of an IP, a non-latin username will be displayed. If he is blocked, it will show up on his username which he has been using at all Wikimedia wikis. Simply changing his user name to rid himself of the mark against it at en.WP is not a viable option. If elections continue to be held under the same rules as this last one (which they will not if this policy is not changed) Cyrillic would not be allowed to vote for the community board seat of WMF as a banned user. If this does not change, at the very least, block logs from en.WP will be absolutely useless for determining which editors are a serious problem and should not be participating in Wikimedia issues. However I see it becoming a larger problem as established editors will be highly offended. If you still think I am missing the point, please ask someone you normally discuss things with to read my comments and explain my objections to you in a different manner.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 18:09, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I understand exactly what you mean, however could you point to the place where a clean block log is a voting requirement, because in the last election (the one that picked Eloquence) a clean block log was not a requirement to vote. As for the rest, yes we are aware that there will be issue with universal login, but there is no consensus to change it now. People seem to want to wait and see. You aren't the first person to point out that it might cause problems. the other thing is that username blocks always have the {{usernameblocked}} template in the edit summary so its possible to scan for that with a computer. Ignoreing those wouldn't require a humn to look at every entry. pschemp | talk 18:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I forgot to adddres the election rules. I do not know where it was decided the blocked users could not vote but it definately was so. Aphia, who started this thread, was one of the election officials. Unfortuanately her emails do show up in the archive but I will quote her response on learning of this policy: "Also, I am very shocked no one didn't alert us about that when we were going to reject vote eligiblity to the people who were blocked indefinitely from somewhere else."--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 18:21, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Also where is the "wait and see" discussion about Single User Login? I wonder if any key points were missed in that, as I find that conclusion very surprising. If this does become a large problem, I honestly don't know how you would be able to repair the damage to en.WP's reputation after "waiting to see."--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 18:28, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

OK the problem with find a clear link about voter ineligibility due to blocking is that none of Aphia's email show up in the archive and I believe she annouced this by email to foundation-l. However at m:Requests for comments/Board Election 2006 there were two questions about Voter eligability. First Was "400 edits, 90 days prior to August 1" fair? If not, why? and finally Then how about the ineligibility of blocked users?. If you want a more definate answer than that I suggest you ask Aphia herself as she actually determined if voters were elligable or not.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 18:45, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Well unitl you find some real evidence that that rule was put in place I remain skeptical as it was not written anywere on meta. Additionally, if that is the rule it shouldn't be since there are people who mees up on one wiki but a good contributors on others. Maybe you should be working to get that rule eliminated instead of complaining about it here. As for the discussion, there isn't one specific one, that's just been the general attitude when this is brought up. I agree that it should be discussed but I don't think that anything that can be solved with software or rule changing will "damage en.wiki's reputation." I'm confident a solution will be found so I just don't see that happening. pschemp | talk 18:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Got to agree with pschemp here, if such a rule exists on the elections then the soloution is to fix that as a very stupid rule. Many admins on en wikipedia have been blocked at one time or another, quite often by themselves as experiments. Many admins here have had their username reused by someone else on another wiki for vandalism and that other account is now blocked indefinitely. Jimbo Wales has been blocked on this wiki, Eloquence who was elected in the last election has also been blocked on this wiki. --pgk 19:38, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps I was unclear the rule only included actively blocked editors. Which would of course include anyone with an indefinite block.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 21:19, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes but there are people who have had imposters register the same username on other wikimedia projects and those are actively blocked. For instance, this has happened to me and I have currently active blocks on the username pschemp on other wikimedia projects that were imposters yet I was still allowed to vote.pschemp | talk 21:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how that was handled, but people with a block that participate on the mailing list were told they could not vote. After Single User Login there will only be one database of usernames shared by all Wikimedia wikis so a block in one wiki will be definatively linked to an editor's identity.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 22:22, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Details on this courtesy of Aphia [1]--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 21:07, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Remark; something to also take in to account regarding usernames is that certain words can be totally normal and non-offensive in certain languages and/or cultures, even be the official name of a person. But have negative meanings in other languages. My point is that when you see a username that is offensive one needs to take in to account the possibly that it is not indented as offencive. --Walter 09:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Seems to me that brand new users and the blocking of same, is something that requires snap decisions (as the random names discussion above outlines and demonstrates, sometimes stuff happens fast and furious). But snap decisions are nont needed in the example BirgitteSB gave above, of user "Cyrillic" turning up here after Single User Id happens... the decision to block seems like it would allow more time. Could education of admins that they should check for contributions elsewhere (perhaps with a new tool??? I dunno how to easily check) before blocking, help at all? Again, if SUI allows for multiple userids to be associated with one signin easily, en could still have a roman only rule, enforced by asking people to change... I have a great deal of respect for both Pschemp and BirgitteSB, knowing them both to be highly valueable and thoughtful contributors from their respective wikis (BirgitteSB does a lot of great stuff at WikiSource), so I'm hopeful that we can all, by listening and thinking about what is said, work through to a good solution. I recently edited on half a dozen different Wikis that I have no language facility on, as an anon (fixing up images) so once SUI happens it would be bad if i was blocked from that work on the armenian WP because Lar means stupidhead in armenian or whatever... ++Lar: t/c 20:17, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I've suggested to Brigt that if she really has issues and wants a bigger discussion that she should post to AN. I just don't see it being they type os issue she thinks it will be, but maybe others will comment if its posted somewhere more visible. pschemp | talk 20:25, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

This is the right place to actually house the discussion, no? Posting to AN/I seems very good thinking to me though. Wider visibility seems prudent, but spreading the discussion into multiple places may be bad. ++Lar: t/c 20:37, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Well this discussion has reached all of 5 people. But I said AN not ANI. pschemp | talk 20:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I am going to think about this a bit before taking it to a wider audience. I want research some the people currently blocked under this reasoning as well as re-read the comments here after short time removed. Especially because of the insistance here that this is not a significant problem, I feel I need to talk to some people who would actually be affected by this and be sure of myself. I will also try and discover what would be the most appropriate forum for a wider disscussion. Hopefully I will be able to find out more about which features will be included in the implementation. Luckily I do not think this will happen tommorrow so we have plently of time to research things so we are not jumping to conclusions in the discussion. I will place a notice here when this happens. Thank you everyone for your input so far.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 21:19, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes Lar, it would be bad if you personally were blocked, but if just your username was blocked that wouldn't be such an issue. If "Lar" happened to be a strong personal insult in that language I'm sure you'd understand why it was inappropriate for use on that wiki and why if appearing in places could negatively impact the image to third parties of the whole project (ok one username probably wouldn't be that big a deal, but allow multiples through and it's a different matter.). Reading the archive here that is a good part of the reasoning behind the username policy coming into existance here. I personally may not be offended/care if we have people called "Shithead" as a username, but it hardly makes us look a serious "professional" project. Again the project is to build a free encyclopedia, working towards that and looking to the integrity of that is far more important than the personal vanity of being able to use the same name on every project. The only issue I can see here is concerning making sure we maintain WP:AGF for such instances. --pgk 06:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

What we don't know is how the whole thing works. At the moment most of these usernames are blocked within a minute or two of creation as they appeat in our user creation log. After the change will all the names appear in our creation log? Quite possibly not, they may just appear on the wiki they were created. If that is the case then we may actually see this the other way around, user creates the name on the Chinese wiki (say) and is blocked by an admin there as inappropriate, we haven't seen the creation so the first we know of this is when they've already "done some damage" here. --pgk 06:14, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

This is not about vanity. At the very least it is about not making it difficult for experienced editors to help build an english language encyclopedia. By difficult I mean that an editor would come to en.WP from their native wiki and have to log out of the blocked account before being able to edit as an anon and then re-login when they leave en.WP. I can only imagine that many editors currently participating as anons would cease to contribute here in such a scenario. They would also not have access to any global preferences they have set-up when editing en.WP logged out. That is the least. In the long term, it is about editors having access to the full set of features that will go along with a Wikimedia account. These may someday include a single watchlist for all wiki's, a single contributions history, a single User Talk Page, compatability with OpenID, etc. Being able to attach and romanized name to a non-latin one may solve some of these problems. However only if it does not involve too much effort. If it is going to be as troublesome requesting a checkuser from stewards, we would want to only encourage heavy contributors to go through this so it the process is not overburdened. I suspect that SUL will also involve only having one log for account creations across all Wikimedia wiki's. But you are right we do not have alot of hard facts about how this will exactly work. I intend to find out exactly what is actually expected of SUL immediately and in the future and what is simply a wishlist before proceding with a wider discussion.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 18:56, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Maybe my point wasn't clear here regarding the "vanity". The specific question here is about usernames in latin characters, such that if a username in language X is a perfectly legitimate and reasonable username, but in another language the username is actually a common swear word/insult/question (in this case English for en wiki). There is no question of lack of good faith on the contributors part. The number of the users which this may legitimately affect I expect to be negligible, I can't remember the last time this happened or someone claimed it had happened here, and I do not believe there are 1000s of them waiting for single login before they come here to contribute. The question which I pose is: Which is more important, that a negligble number of users not having the inconvenience of having to use a different id and having to login/logout when changing projects, or the intgrity of the project? (My assertion being that as per the archive of this page and the very root of this policy that having such usernames does negatively impact the integrity of the project). To me this is an easy choice (i) the community is here to serve the project, not vice versa (ii) Those serious about contributing will also be serious about the integrity of the project and will therefore be understanding of the problem (this is the vanity point, I believe Lar to be a reasonable person who would understand the issue and therefore be happy to contribute under a different name) (iii) There is a question of proportionality about such a measure - does the benefit outweigh the harm? In this I believe the number of users for this specific problem in reality is likely to be very low and so yes I believe the benefit does indeed outweigh the harm. --pgk 19:36, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

First on a side note I wonder if you misread my use of community. I use this term to distinguish ru.WP from en.WP from en.WS etc. as in each community has separate policies and admins. While parts of these communities are hopefully complementary, they are not interchangeable. They all exist to serve the goal of freeing knowledge, not the goal of creating communities.

I agree that there are not legions of people waiting for SUL to contribute. I think they are currently contributing as anons. I also agree about how you want to analyze things. However I think the harm here will be greater than the benefit after SUL. I think putting roadblocks in front of editors will hurt our efforts to write an encyclopedia. There are lots of things which negatively impact the integrity of the project, however we can not place this above the project itself. I mean the project would have a greater integrity if we didn't allow anons to edit. But the point of the project is allowing people to contribute to building an encyclopedia without barriers of entry. That is the project, the encyclopedia anyone can edit. When a sister editor enters en.WP default blocked and has to log out to edit, this is worse than requiring unknown people to get an account to edit. Attaching a romanized name could really fix this as long as there is not a block on sight practice but rather warnings given and so forth.

You must also consider that this is only subproject of a larger one. And the cost/benefit to the larger project also needs to be calculated. I am strongly in favor of keeping things autonomous. I cannot stress how strongly I feel this way, but this will only have widespread support for as long as the larger community is comfortable with the decisions made by sub-communities. Perhaps this is my biggest reason for wanting to see this resolved here. I believe this policy combined with SUL is by far the best case I have seen for making something a global policy. If it even comes to people seriously asking for that, I think it will be harmful. If it actually happens I think it will a difficult first step followed by many easier steps in eroding this autonomy. I cannot ignore this larger picture in my cost/benefit analysis. Perhaps this is why my scales tip the opposite way of yours.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 20:57, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Interesting parts regarding continuing allowing anonymous editing, which I support. For me that would fail my point (iii) it would be disproportionate, the amount of people who do good edits as anons or start anonymously and gain an account, to my mind at least, outweigh the negative impact. I'm sure there are others who disagree with me. Whilst considering this you might also like to consider that Wikinews (? I think) blanket banned AOL... I would suggest that perhaps many of our projects have "barriers to entry", perhaps we just aren't aware of all of them. As I touch above username policy is just the start, each project operates to different fundamental policies to each other these of course often will be based on national type cultural differences of the people involved in the projects and practical issues relating to the size and content of the wiki. Trying to gain some global consensus on some issues seems like a very tough request --pgk 09:16, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think anyone will even try to get a truly global consesnsus; that would be impossible with our current translation reasources. I really don't want to see this happen, so I won't outline how it can be done here. Honestly it probably would take some bad press to make it happen quickly. Perhaps you haven't thought about the non-latin newspapers. It seems as though there have not been definate decisions made about how SUL will work as far as logs go. This is maybe a sign it is not as close to happening as everyone thought. I will continue to ask questions and hopefully there will soon be answers. However there are no current plans for attaching different names in any way. I will keep you posted.Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 16:25, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Question about my username

Does the inclusion of the word "evil" in my username make it offensive? --ÆAUSSIEevilÆ 23:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

No. Whom would it offend? Evil people or good people? Chick Bowen 03:57, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

username

I want to use this username, but is already taken and is not being used right now, how can I use it? 201.130.66.5 23:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Get "consensus" before...

Anons removing portions of policy without discussion and consensus could wind up getting blocked

I thought that's exactly what I did. Discussed on the talk page. Waited. No objection. So, it was removed. There was no objection till much, much later. On that basis, I don't think I did anything wrong, even if we assume that the rule is sensible to begin with -- and it seems I'm in the majority when I say that it isn't.

Well, whatever. 192.75.48.150 16:58, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

suggest invalid characters list be added to username page

I just signed up as Segers_J and now I cannot log in. A warning that underscore "_" will break things is needed, I read the username page before I submitted, and it said nothing about underscore being invalid, and everywhere else I have a login they allow [A-Z] [a-z] [_-] further, can someone remove Segers_J as I have since registered Jerry Segers, Jr. User:Jerry Segers, Jr. Also, what gives with the editing setup of this page, very clunky.

I've redirected User:Segers_J to your currect userpage for you, not sure what else to do. The best place to ask about possible ways of making underscores work would probably be Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). --tjstrf talk 18:15, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

A more immediate fix would be to mention on this page warning about these characters. Does anyone have a complete list of problematic characters? HighInBC ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 19:19, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Username disambiguation

I suggest adding a section titled "Username disambiguation" to cover cases where a username is identical, or similar, to that of an article (or indeed another user). The section would merely say that it is reccommended to place a WP:HATNOTE at the top of your user page if people may confuse your page with an article or another user's page. This might seem like instruction creep, but in at least one case (the fossil mentioned below), people searching on Google might end up at the wrong place. Suggesting a WP:HATNOTE to direct lost people to the right place would help. Examples are User:Opabinia regalis and User:Carcharoth. Please note that we can't discourage people from picking usernames that are identical to articles, as future articles might be created with that name.

For more on this, see this Village Pump thread. Thanks. Carcharoth 13:29, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

A while back, I casually disambiguated my own userpage but pretty much just as a joke. I see a serious side to this argument and I've gone and inserted a standard dab, per Carcharoth. I oppose new, strict rules in general but I think it's wise to offer users a tool whereby they may disambiguate their user pages. Yes, in a way it's unnecessary since the user namespace sufficiently disambiguates but I think for Joe Blo readers, it makes sense.

Carcharoth seems to have constructed his dablink from scratch; perhaps we can use a built tool. Hmm... John Reid ° 21:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Done: {{thisuser}}. Check the docs; it has two optional parameters. John Reid ° 22:03, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Correspondingly, {{thisusertalk}} for talk pages, for the lame reason that "this is a wikipedia user page" on a talk page is slightly awkward. See also {{userpage otheruse}} created by Willow for the same purpose with slightly more formality.

I'm sure editors/regular Wikipedia readers can easily distinguish a userpage from an article, but some guy clicking through google hits might well end up in the wrong place (in my case, searching "opabinia" turns up the right article, but "Opabinia regalis" puts even my commons userpage above our article (perhaps because it's a redirect?). In any case, despite my usual distaste for instruction creep, definitely support adding this as a suggestion/recommendation (not a requirement, which is unenforceable anyway). Opabinia regalis 01:22, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Hey, look, all three of us are now immortalised in a Wikipedia policy!! Rather depressingly, this may well outlast us all when we are long gone to dust... Please edit and change as needed. Carcharoth 02:07, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Ack! Who made the Ashes to ashes article about the song! I wanted Dust_to_Dust, or maybe Day of the Dead. Carcharoth 02:17, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

In case the above seemed a bit morbid, I'm reading the lastest book from The Darwin Awards. Carcharoth 02:21, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I like this idea. Tonywalton  | Talk (no, not Tony Walton he's a lot more famous than me and was married to Julie Andrews, which I never have been).
I've never been quite comfortable with the WP:U policy against Names of well-known living or recently deceased people. Tony Walton, like it or lump it, is my name. Can I be on the official policy as well? :-) Tonywalton  | Talk 01:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the vote of confidence in the new section. I think three examples is enough. Otherwise it might degenerate into a long list. It might be possible to tweak the templates to include these userpages in a category of "disambiguated userpages". That would get you a list of Wikipedians with names like this. Carcharoth 12:56, 1 December 2006 (UTC)