Wikipedia:Username policy

[[:|WP:U]]

When you create a new account, so you can log in, one of the things you'll have to do is pick a username. This page gives some advice on this.

What are usernames used for?

Your user name will be attached to all your edits (while logged in). This is partly for reasons of accountability. It's also helpful from a copyright perspective: if someone wants to use your contributions in a way not allowed under the Wikipedia copyright, they can ask you on your talk page, for example. Also, the GFDL encourages giving appropriate credit to authors, and your username is used to give that credit.

It's possible to change your username, see Wikipedia:Changing username.

We recommend against using multiple usernames, unless you have a very good reason. See Wikipedia:Sock puppet.

Choosing a username

The best username is typically either your real name, or a longstanding internet pen name. Please pick a username that helps us to write an encyclopedia. That means picking a name that you're comfortable writing under, but it also means picking a name that others are comfortable seeing and collaborating with.

Remember that a controversial name may colour other users' perspective on your own credibility or political viewpoint. In addition remember that Wikipedia is a world-wide source book and so take care in selecting a name to avoid anything that might potentially cause offence to someone from a different culture, religious or ethnic group.

Wikipedia recommends that users avoid

names of politicians, military or religious figures or events;
any other names that may be seen as potentially offensive, or endorsing the politics, policies or beliefs of a public figure.

People should be able to judge you purely on your contributions, not an emotional response to a potentially controversial nickname. Avoiding an offensive or insensitive name is in your own interest. So do please be careful. Remember you are working as part of a community. Show everyone else the respect for their beliefs that you expect them to show to you.

Real names versus pseudonyms

Historically many wikis have encouraged users to use their real name as their user name see, e.g MeatBall:UseRealNames, in their belief that a user will offer constructive contributions to the project if they are more likely to be accountable for their actions. Whilst real names are encouraged, they are not demanded.

Also if you use a pseudonym rather than a user name that identifies you with your real name U.S. copyright law grants you only a fixed period of copyright rather than one based upon when you die.

Username capitalization

Wikipedia usernames are case sensitive and, for consistency, the first name of all usernames will be capitalized when you create an account. This means that if you request the username, "your name," the account created will instead be: "Your name."

If your username will consist of more than one name, and you'd like your signature to be internally consistent, you might prefer to capitalize each one when you create the account. This conforms to the widely accepted rules of capitalization: usernames are, after all, proper nouns.

Inappropriate usernames

Inappropriate usernames include both clear and masked names. Wikipedia does not allow certain usernames, including the following:

No deliberately confusing usernames: usernames designed to cause confusion with other contributors or features of the software. If someone else is using a nickname that you wish to use, please consider using your real name or an alternative pseudonym instead. In the unlikely event that someone else is editing Wikipedia with your real name, please add a middle name or some other way of distinguishing between you and the existing contributor. Do not choose names such as recent changes, Administrator, or any other part of the interface or commonly used terms on Wikipedia.

No inflammatory usernames: Wikipedia does not allow inflammatory or offensive user names. Inflamatory usernames are needlessly discouraging to other contributors, and disrupt and distract from our task of creating an encyclopedia. This includes, but is not limited to:

Names which promote racial/ethnic/national/religious hatred
Names which are recognised as racial/ethnic/national/religious slurs
Names which refer to symbols of racial/ethnic/national/religious hatred
Names which refer to sexual acts or genitalia
Names which refer to violent real world actions
Names which are scatological or pornographic

No harassing or defamatory usernames: Harassment and defamation is in any case inappropriate on Wikipedia. Further, your username is not a vehicle to attack other users with whom you have a disagreement. Your username should not be used to insult or mock other users, usernames, articles, or actions. Additionally, a username should not be used to defame other people, companies or groups, regardless of whether they edit Wikipedia.

Fairly or unfairly, the line between acceptable and unacceptable user names is drawn by those who find the username inappropriate, not by the creator of the name.

Rationale

The primary purpose of user names is to identify and distinguish contributors. This facilitates communication and record-keeping. The user name is not a forum to be offensive or make a statement. No one has a right to any particular user name. While colorful, interesting, or expressive names may add to the pleasure of Wikipedia, they are not essential. This might include legitimate names and long-established internet pseudonyms that can be misconstrued.

Signatures

This section is still under discussion and should not be considered authoritative, official policy.

Through the Preferences, one can choose a nickname used in signatures, independent of the actual user name (connected to a User: page). In general, the same rules apply for signatures as for usernames.

It is possible to be playful with the signature, for example by including ornamental Unicode characters (☻♂♖♥★, etc.) and using <font> HTML tags to change the color and/or size. Including images in the signature is discouraged for several reasons:

it uses additional server resources
it can reduce searchability and makes it more difficult to copy text from a page
it is potentially distracting from the actual message
in most browsers, images do not scale with the text, making lines with images higher than those without.

Your signature should not blink, as this is perceived as annoying by many other editors.

Please try to keep signatures short, because very long signatures cloud up the page source, making it harder for other editors to find where your comment stopped. Both images and long signatures carry the danger of giving undue prominence to that user's contribution.

Changing inappropriate usernames

If enough people complain about your user name (through talk pages or the mailing lists or Meta-Wikipedia), the administrators will change it. Neither complaints, nor name changes should be arbitrary, but user names that are offensive to a significant number of people will be changed, not without notice, but without appeal.

Co-operative contributors should normally just be made aware of our policy via a post on their talk page. Voluntary changes (via wikipedia:changing usernames) are preferred: users from other countries and/or age groups may make mistakes about choosing names -- immediate blocking or listing on RfC could scare off new users acting in good faith.

Where a change must be forced, we first discuss it. This can take place on either (A) the user's talk page, (B) a subpage of the user's talk page, or (C) a sub page of Wikipedia:Requests for comment. It should be listed on Wikipedia:Requests for comment in the appropriate section. The user should also be made aware of the discussion.

For uncontroversial cases where the user is actively editing, the decision can be taken in a day or two. For more controversial cases where the user is less actively editing, a week is more appropriate. For highly controversial cases, or cases whether the user has left Wikipedia, discussion might well take a month.

After an appropriate time for discussion, a sysop can take a judgement on the name in question. They should only take action if their judgement is that a "rough consensus" has arisen that the username is inappropriate. This will involve blocking the inappropriate username, for which see wikipedia:blocking policy.

Where inappropriate or borderline inappropriate usernames are coupled with vandalism, the username may be blocked indefinately on sight: again, see wikipedia:blocking policy.

Usernames that are designed to impersonate legitimate users may be blocked immediately. The IP address of these users should be left autoblocked.