Wikipedia talk:Username policy

2014 Request for Comment on reforming and updating this policy

Bot not editing since Sept 17

I apologize that my bot has been down for four months. Apparently a job got stuck on the server and new versions of it were not allowed to run. That said, anyone who doesn't see my bot in a few days, please flag me down so this doesn't go unnoticed for 4 months. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 02:58, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Doh. I'm guessing we all assumed someone else told you... Beeblebrox (talk) 23:22, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

UAA regulars, please be aware of this

It happened again and nobody let DQ know. Not as long this time, but the bot normally should be making several reports each day. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:29, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Relevant TfD nomination

There is a discussion that may be relevant for watchers of this page at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2019_September_18#Template:Uw-uall. Your input would be appreciated! --Trialpears (talk) 22:11, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Usernames with “BQUB19” prefix

Hi all. Has anyone noticed many dozens of such names appearing in the creation log the past couple of days? Any thoughts what this is related to? Usually for events the log states “created for xxxxx event” etc., N.J.A. | talk 10:36, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

NJA, they're Wikipedia's very own neutrinos. They blow through each year since 2013 and don't interact with their surroundings - Special:PrefixIndex/User talk:BQUB. The only response I've seen is at User talk:BQUB15-Agarno#Cholesterol 7 alpha-hydroxylase, "we are students of Medicine of the University of Barcelona and we are doing a Chemistry project in which we have to improve the information about one topic on Wikipedia.". On past form, none will last beyond 10 days, and they'll all be gone in 3 weeks. Hope that helps, Cabayi (talk) 11:01, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Interesting, glad I asked ;) , N.J.A. | talk 13:28, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

UAA rules on "not a blatant violation" comments by non-admin

This came up recently when I was commenting on UAA - are there any rules on non-admins marking usernames as "not a blatant violation"? Just from watching the page, I've almost exclusively seen that posted by admins (with non-admins usually using the comment template), but I can't find an explicit rule on the matter. creffett (talk) 23:15, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure there's much written down about the practice, and you'll find a slightly more liberal approach at UAA than AIV. There is a brief relevant instruction in this header on the page. What I would say is don't get it wrong, and try to stay clear of anything controversial. If you're disputing a user-reported name, this is by definition probably controversial, but feel free to add any other comment. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 23:35, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, that's what I'd figured, I appreciate the second opinion. I'm going to stick to things that are clearly allowed by policy, like real names or the "X at YCorp" type, and will stop if/when someone fusses at me for it ("Be Bold" and all that). creffett (talk) 23:45, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Are there recent instances of non-admin declines? My understanding is, and point 7 of the header linked to seems to confirm this, volunteers (admins or not) can remove non-blatant reports so I cannot see why they should not be able to mark it as non-blatant? This of course requires the person declining the report to be competent in the username policy otherwise they will certainly get grief from the person who made the report and possibly others. Therefore marking a report not blatant is conditional, which makes answering your question trickier, but as zzuuzz says feel free to comment and if it’s truly a poor report that fails to meet at least the several conditions in the header, then mark it as such, N.J.A. | talk 14:13, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't have a policy to point to here, but I will say I find that this is not particularly helpful. The reason is that, a patrolling admin will still need to look for themselves at each report regardless of such comments. I've been an on-and-off regular at UAA for about a decade, so I get that there a decent number of bad reports on any given day, but I think generally, unless someone is making really, really bad reports its best to just leave it for the admins to deal with. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:15, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Beeblebrox, okay, that's very good to know. Might be worth writing this down as a guideline somewhere. creffett (talk) 21:49, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

I don’t think Beeb (hopefully that's an acceptable nickname :) is saying you should not feel free to comment that e.g. a report is unlikely to be a blatant violation. What could become an issue is non-admins both declining and removing reports made by others. That could lead to abuse and arguments between editors about the quality of their reports and declines by non-admins, etc. I don’t think anyone wants to complicate policies or guidelines, saying that however, if it’s unclear, and after some more consensus, perhaps e.g. point 7 of the header (and WP:UAAI) could be made clear to say e.g. not to remove reports made by others without some admin input first, N.J.A. | talk 01:44, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Mmm'kay, well given the above then *I* won't say a thing about these, but I'll be interested in how they are handled. :) Shenme (talk) 06:25, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

looks like the person making those reports isn't very familiar with this policy, or WP:UAA/I. They were all rejected at once Beeblebrox (talk) 21:33, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

shortcut redirects nominated for deletion

"Wikipedia:AIVU/BOT" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:AIVU/BOT. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:35, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:UFA/BOT" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:UFA/BOT. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:37, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:AIVU" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Wikipedia:AIVU. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:38, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Impersonation discussion

I just started a discussion at WT:Blocking policy#Impersonation blocks which may be of interst to readers of thsi page. Please read it and offer your views. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 22:15, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Initial discussion moved here from WP:UAA to avoid cluttering that up while this is discussed.

Damedolladamianlillard (talk · contribs · deleted · filter log · SUL · Google) • (block · soft · promo · cause · bot · hard · spam · vandal) – Violation of the username policy as a promotional username that implies shared use. Resembles someone famous. Babymissfortune 04:22, 3 November 2019 (UTC) Note: User is in the category: Wikipedia usernames with possible policy issues. HBC AIV helperbot5 (talk) 18:22, 3 November 2019 (UTC) Being discussed with the user, since they have edited constructively. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 18:24, 3 November 2019 (UTC) Comment: @DESiegel: I'm afraid I disagree with you here as well as below (for entirely different reasons) Blocking is usually the tool of first resort when using the name of a notable individual. The reason is that there can be real harm to the reputation ofreal people if it looks like they've been editing their own Wikipedia article. The block template used clearly explains how to prove they are who they say they are, and that such blocks are for their own protection. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:58, 3 November 2019 (UTC) But this user hasn't been editing Damian Lillard, nor any article or page dealing with Lillard, Beeblebrox so no apparent harm is being done, and it seems to me that a "block first, ask questions later" approach violates WP:BITE and is not unlikely to scare off a potentially positive contributor. If that is the usual practice, I think it should be changed, and I will bring it up in a proper forum. If you wish to block anyway, of course you may, and I won't unilaterally unblock, but I will take it up in a community discussion. DES (talk)DESiegel Contribs 20:08, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Change to orgname block templates?

• {{Uw-spamublock}}
• {{Uw-softerblock}}
• {{Uw-causeblock}}

Had a RL discussion yesterday about the message our blocking templates for WP:ORGNAME violations, and I think we may have hit on a real issue here. None of these templates mentions what we historically called the "Mark at Alcoa" exception, that is, adapting an orgname to an acceptable name by adding an unique identifier for an individual.

What tends to happen now is that the user registers the organization name, (or the name of their PR agency working for that an organization) makes a draft or edits an article on that organization, and then gets blocked and told either it's because of their username or because of their username and spamming. The message they tend to get, whether intended or not, is "change your name and it's cool". And by the letter of our policy, this is true, at least for soft blocks. The issue is that if they go ahead and register a new, policy-compliant name, we no longer have that easy identifier that lets us know they have a WP:COI and/or are WP:PAID. This is not optimal.

So what I'm suggesting is that we modify these templates to suggest they use the <name>@<organization> format. I'm not suggesting exact wording since every time I do that someone else has better wording, so I'll leave that to ya'll should we decide to do this. Thoughts? Beeblebrox (talk) 15:22, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

I think part of the issue is the soft blocks you mention above, I have seen them used on editors who are strictly named after their organisation and are strictly either creating drafts or userpages on their company, or editing the article for their company in a blatantly promotional way. Perhaps the softerblock block template should only be used when an editor with a orgname is not blatantly promoting in their edits. For example this editor got a softerblock template after their userpage got G11'd [1]. I don't think they were here to do anything else, and although they didn't try a username change, it could have sent the wrong message. Agent00x (talk) 19:11, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

I'd rather that how to set the blocks was a separate conversation as that is more likely to be controversial, and we discussed how to word all of the orgname block templates in this discussion. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:22, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree with you 100%, Beeblebrox. What happens at present positively encourages editors to hide their conflict of interest, whereas we should be encouraging them to show it. Sometimes when I see a user with a user name which violates WP:ORGNAME I post a message encouraging them to choose a "Mark at Alcoa" type name, but it would be much better if the default templated messages did so. (And I really would prefer encouraging them to do so, rather than just mentioning it as a possibility, but either would be better than the status quo.) I also agree with Agent00x about the use of the different templates, but Beeblebrox is right in saying that should be a separate conversation, for several reasons. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 21:45, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

A bit tangential, but does anyone have a feel for how productive the "Mark at Alcoa" editors tend to be? That is, how often do those contributors make useful edits outside of their COI area? I'm all for encouraging the username changes, but in my (very limited) experience I've pretty much only seen COI contributions out of those sort of editors, and I'm not sure if that's something to encourage. ^creffpublic _{a creffett franchise} (talk to the boss) 21:58, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Well, yeah, they certainly tend to be WP:SPAs. I've seen some step outside the area where they have a coi but it seems to be the exception rather than the rule. The idea here is to encourage them to make their COI clear. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:03, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I would suggest just using a similar wording what is included in {{uw-coi-username}}. Agent00x (talk) 17:21, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

I like that idea, seems like it could slide right in to these. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:27, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Policy on misleading usernames

What's the general policy on usernames that use some "famous" person's name, but not necessarily in a way that implies they're actually that person? Does that need to be reported or not? For example, User:Jimbo's Consicence. Zupotachyon _{Ping me} (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:00, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

I would say case-by-case basis. But also note the discussion linked a few sections up that is -kind of- o this point. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:14, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Oop, I can't read... Thanks. Zupotachyon _{Ping me} (talk ⋅ contribs) 21:03, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Feedback request - bot to maintain CAT:UAA and similar categories

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Feedback request - bot to maintain CAT:UAA and similar categories * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 22:50, 11 November 2019 (UTC)Template:Z48

Randy in Boise

Could I please request an admin's attention at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User names#Randy in Boise? This is not urgent. HLHJ (talk) 18:22, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

This seems resolved, but in future I think the best venue to raise a non-urgent username concern is in fact at WP:RFCN with no need to leave a notice here, N.J.A. | talk 15:26, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 December 2019

98.118.102.2 (talk) 18:33, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
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