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Scope of RFC/Username

After trying to bring a signature issue to RFC/U, I was told this: "The purpose of RFC/Username is narrow: to provide feedback on whether a username violates our username policy. It is not for discussing signatures. It is as simple as that. ÷seresin 19:12, 27 September 2009 (UTC)"

What do you all think? The username policy applies equally to signatures and usernames, after all. (Context) Gigs (talk) 19:55, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:RFCN is a forum in which you are requesting a block under the username policy. I completely agree that it should not be used to address issues with a user's signature. For that, report to WP:ANI for egregious cases, or use a normal WP:RFC/U (user conduct) otherwise, which requires you to find at least one more user who agrees the issue is serious. The instructions at the top of WP:RFCN are quite clear that it is for discussing usernames. Mangojuice^talk 05:55, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you seriously suggesting opening an WP:RFC/U over a user's signature? Come on. Gigs (talk) 21:29, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes and I don't see any problem with it. I've seen several RFCUs, long in the past now, that dealt with signatures. Mainly they were cases where the policy wasn't defined. If the policy is clearly being violated, it's a simple enforcement issue: go to ANI. If not, I'm glad we aren't set up to enforce signature policy as harshly as the username policy. Mangojuice^talk 00:02, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

The username policy is the signature policy. Gigs (talk) 02:17, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

hard-vs-soft blocking

You'll have to forgive me as I'm sure this was discussed before, but I think I stayed out of it because at the time I was not an admin and did not really know the difference between the two. My question is, when a user both has a promotional name and is actively spamming articles, should I be going for the hard block? I'm always nervous doing that because of the risk of collateral damage, but if the spammer can just pop right back up with a less obvious name, it seems like nothing was accomplished by the block. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:37, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

"actively spamming" is open to interpretation, can you give an example? If someone named "BobsFurniture" just started editing today, and his only edits were to create a promotional userpage and add links to his store to 3 pages, I would hardblock using {{uw-spamublock}}, the menu option called "spamname indef" on easyblock. If they created that article on their usertalk page and had either done that once before or the nature of the page suggested they did this kind of thing a lot (and that's hard to pin down; comma-separated search terms or other evidence of search engine optimization counts, for me), then I use "spam indef notalk" on easyblock. - Dank (push to talk) 19:48, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

My view is that if they have been warned that they will be blocked for spamming, and continue in spite of it, then a hardblock is appropriate. If they haven't been notified that we actually have policies/guidelines about spamming then they can consider the softblock to be proper notification. You get some people who clearly just don't care mind. Remember that autoblocks can cause collateral blocks sometimes. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 19:52, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Look at their language to make sure they are indeed an unwanted selfpromoting spammer, not some clueless newbie unaware of policy. "Example, Inc is the best provider of XYZ, we are committed to ABC, contact us at zzz@zzz" should get a hardblock, for example. Other signs of bad faith (link spamming across dozens of articles, sockpuppetry, etc) that show an unusual motivation for their spam to remain in place could also indicate a COI and should also get a hard block. Triplestop x3 20:44, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

• Unfortunately, easyblock does not seem to work properly with my browser (Safari4.0.3). Actively spamming I guess would usually be creating an article with the same name as the user's name and/or adding advertising or spam links to articles, as well as having an obvious spam user name. I've mostly been doing the soft block, the notification template makes it fairly clear that spamming is not ok. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:47, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

You're exactly right about why softblocks on spammers are counterproductive. I'd go farther than that, and say that in cases of promotion, you should either be hardblocking them (if they're serious spammers) or not blocking them at all (if they just strayed on the wrong side of COI and could possibly be set straight with a warning). Softblocking sounds like a compromise, but is often the worst of both worlds. rspεεr (talk) 07:17, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Offensive

As usual a little concern brought up by a specific case. "Offensive" is one of my least favorite types of usernames to see reported because of the inherently subjective nature of what is and is not offensive. The current wording in the policy is as follows:

• Offensive usernames are those that offend other contributors ...

I would like to propose seeing more concrete language such as the following:

• Offensive usernames are those that are used to deliberately offend others through the use of vulgar or derogatory language ...

Granted, it is still subjective (and unfortunately will always be subjective). The rationale for the proposed change is that we should only be blocking names as offensive when they are clearly designed to offend, and not those that simply might be considered offensive. Thoughts/feedback? Shereth 19:53, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I think the deliberately part is good, since people using offensive usernames for trolling need to be blocked. However not all clearly offensive usernames might contain vulgar or derogatory language. Triplestop x3 20:00, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

You're probably right, but that's what I came up with off the top of my head. I'd welcome improved wording to that effect. Shereth 20:08, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with "deliberately." Deliberately offensive names are trolling and definitely need blocking. But if a user chooses a truly offensive username and isn't intending to cause offense with it, it's no less unacceptable. Plus, I just feel that would be opening the door to Wikilawyering, where a user with an offensive username claims they didn't intend offense and thus expects to have the name be allowed. Mangojuice^talk 00:05, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and Shereth - if you see anyone reporting usernames that have some vague potential to maybe at some point offend someone, just don't block it. It needs to be a clear and present issue: hence "offend other contributors", present plural, no "might", no "considered offensive", but actually offend contributors. Mangojuice^talk 00:07, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the sentiment, but not necessarily with the wording. "Vulgar or derogatory language" doesn't seem to correlate all that well with whether a username is offensive. For example, a username involving the word "ass" is vulgar, but does not necessarily offend any actual Wikipedians. But usernames can be quite offensive without using "vulgar or derogatory language", such as by including Unicode swastikas in them, advocating terrorism or warfare, describing a horrible way to die, and so on. rspεεr (talk) 07:11, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

• Not sure if you are talking about the name I declined to block, but my reasoning was/is that names that insult the user themselves and not other users without being baldly profane are not something that should be blocked, although it is worth noting that often times such users turn out to be vandals or trolls. So if I named myself "Shereth is stupid" obviously that is blockable on sight, but "I am stupid" probably is not. What is offensive in the first place is of course highly subjective, a lot of what gets reported as offensive seems fairly harmless to me. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:15, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't think anyone disagrees with this. Hopefully nobody's particularly misled by the bot, which can't tell the difference. rspεεr (talk) 07:11, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Too Close to Existing Name

We've been letting people register accounts here for about eight years, so a lot of names are going to be taken. That's understandable, but many of those users have never once made an edit. They just registered an account because they thought it was cool or wanted to secure "their" username. Now, I understand why you might not want to delete those accounts and put the usernames back into circulation, but why are people prohibited from creating an account under a name that is "too close" to the username of an account with no edits? Surely, there's no way for us to confuse a new user with an old user we couldn't have possibly encountered (since there are no edits on that account for us to have seen). Is there some sort of work-around for this? 128.143.146.66 (talk) 21:22, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Is there a particular name you're interested in? We have a "Request an account" page at WP:ACC that we use for scenarios where the normal way of registering an account won't work. If you want the 0-edit name itself, rathe than just something similar, it's possible to take it over, but only if you have a sizable number of edits on your account (so that we know you're going to use it) and no one else exists with that name on any other wiki has a greater claim to the name. (That's how I got the name "Soap".) But for you (if you're looking to create a new account but can't) I would use WP:ACC. -- Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 21:28, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Does this question point to a need to have a link to WP:ACC somewhere in the UI that comes up when someone gets a rejected name? Gigs (talk) 15:06, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Corporate names

I saw a comment off-wiki today about a user who had chosen a corporate username, whose account was blocked quite normally. The point was made that this action probably didn't help the project.

Some users create corporate names for promotional purposes, some simply name their account via commonsense (that's the entity they are editing on/about).

We allow such users to edit provided they don't self-promote and don't breach WP:COI, yet by blocking the account immediately, we confuse them without much need.

I'd like to propose a rewrite of this section and slightly different handling:

=== Company/group/organization names === Your username should represent you personally. Explicit use of a name or url of a company, group, product, or promotional material as a username is not permitted, nor may accounts be "shared" between multiple people (see Sharing accounts below). Each individual wishing to edit as an account, must have their own username for their own edits and activities on Wikipedia. If you have created an account with such a name, it will eventually be blocked to prevent its use, and you are asked to re-register with a different name that does not represent a company, group, or other promotional item, and note the affiliation on your user page instead. A "grace period" will usually be given to either create a new account under a new name (letting the old one become disused), or to request renaming of your existing account. In any event, whatever your account name, please be careful to avoid controversially editing articles with which you may have a conflict of interest. You will need to read and follow Wikipedia's guide to editing with a conflict of interest.

Benefits:

• Less WP:BITEy
• Less bad-faithy (doesn't imply there's probably a promotional intent)
• More friendly (we can afford a few days to let them rename)
• More explanatory of the issue.

FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 23:17, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

• As someone who patrolled WP:UAA for years , this makes perfect sense to me. Definitely support this. We need to be far less BITEy in this area - Alison ^❤ 23:28, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

• Four years ago I registered my account under its first name, TKE (later renamed to Teke). Many of my first edits were to the Tau Kappa Epsilon article. I'm pretty sure that based on today's environment, I would have been blocked and accused as a COI SPA without so much as a blink. This is indeed an issue. Keegan (talk) 23:33, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Originally this was related to the prohibition of role accounts, and that even if an account was not a role account, it could be confused for one if it had the same name as some organisation. Now the policy seems to be talking about promotional connotations. I think the focus should be returned to the original idea. --bainer (talk) 23:49, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

• The proposed language above sounds reasonable to me. I would even go so far as to say that we don't need to mix the concepts of a company/org/role account with the concept of sharing an account. The point of this section is that company names used for promotion / COI are not allowed (regardless of whether or not they are shared or used by one individual), and we may be confusing people by introducing both topics (corp sharing) in the same section. However if others feel it's helpful to include the sharing comments then the language above is fine.  7  00:00, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

  My question to this is how is one to determine the purpose of why someone created a user account? Also, don't we have other policies which deal with self-promotion? I'm not sure if it even makes sense to prohibit user names "used for COI" since we have guidelines (not a policy) on COI--and our other policies handle this adequately enough. It seems to me that while the intent of this particular part of the policy was well-intentioned, it has the effect of running contrary to our mission. Bastique ^demandez 00:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

  I think it's more of misunderstanding/misinterpretation of the policy based on not knowing the intent. If I came along now as a new admin, I'd probably think that I was supposed to block User:FoobarInc on sight based on the current wording. Obviously this concern needs to be addressed, I'd be interested to see thoughts on how. AN and VP are fine options for figuring all this out, but making a broader community change in perception of use of accounts and applying AGF are not easy to do. Considering the massive amount of corporate and personal spam we have in userspaces, thinking that this place is like facebook or monster.com or craigslist, will inevetibly cause false positives in reactions. Sometimes, it is an over reaction, other times it is legit. Personally, I believe in deleting the page as a userpage, dropping a talk page note, perhaps recreating in a sandbox in the userspace while making it clear that this may still be deleted. This doesn't always work, but I usually don't block the account unless they consistently linkspam with an obvious corporate-related name, but even then I leave a talk page notice and not templates. Templates for warnings and blocks are evil, IMO, unless it's obvious spamming or vandalism. Keegan (talk) 00:42, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

  Often I see our harsh reaction to anything that sounds like a company name justified by "it's probably a role account, see NOSHARE". Even if Wikipedians had magical powers with which they could correctly determine how many people are using an account, role accounts just aren't that big of a threat. Sure, they don't belong on Wikipedia, but they don't come with the same urgency as legal threats, copyright violations, or even spam. We should separate the prohibition on sharing accounts from anything having to do with corporate/promotional usernames, and stop using it as such a knee-jerk issue.
  I think there's a huge improvement that could be made in this policy by eliminating hasty overreactions (the proposed phrase "will eventually be blocked" makes the right point for both the new user and for admins and username reporters). But it shouldn't be about shared accounts. Right now, the second paragraph sounds like it's talking only about shared accounts -- "such a name" sounds like "a name of a shared account", a concept that is not particularly well-defined.
  Assuming that company names are evil, dastardly shared accounts represents a branch of the username policy that has simply veered off the topic of what the username policy was supposed to be for. rspεεr (talk) 01:46, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand where we're going ... are we going to say that any company name is okay now, regardless of the content of their userpage? It looks like we're searching for some kind of new consensus, and I'll hold off from UAA work until we get there, because I'm not sure that the work I usually do wouldn't be violating this new consensus. - Dank (push to talk) 22:01, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any new consensus here yet Dan, I think you can keep up the fine work you do at UAA. This new language is really not much different than softblocking as a promotional user name. They are asked to create a new account that represents only them, and they are not prevented from doing so immediately, but it is also made clear to them that we are vigilant about spammers and it's not tolerated. Personally, if I have any doubt about a name, I don't block it at all, including initialisms or abbreviations that only mildly imply an affiliation. But if they are editing with a blatant corporate/business/organization name, they need to be promptly discouraged, and the softblock does that quite handily. The fact that most of these folks never return or appeal their block speaks volumes to it's effectiveness in preventing spamming of Wikipedia. . Beeblebrox (talk) 22:18, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Much of the preceding discussion presupposes that the purpose of WP:ORGNAME is to prevent the mis-use of role accounts, which are forbidden. I have been under the impression that the current wording of the policy was born out of an attempt to crack down on people using Wikipedia for promotional purposes/free advertising. The purpose of ORGNAME in the username policy has a bearing on how it should be enforced and whether or not it should be rewritten. While I am sympathetic toward those who feel the current policy is too exclusive (were I active at the time I would have voiced my opposition to the RFC leading up to ORGNAME), I think it is important to clear up this point. Shereth 22:21, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying to separate the issues as well. Preventing misuse of shared ("role") accounts isn't really our job, because whether or not an account is a shared account is not determined by the username. Obvious shared accounts will be dealt with, even without UAA trying to be the first line of defense against this rather unimportant threat. The "promotional username" clause should not be used to prevent shared accounts, it should be used to prevent promotional usernames. rspεεr (talk) 03:48, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Signpost?

There have been a lot of changes to this page since July 1; would anyone be interested in a WP:Signpost story on the changes? We did something recently on changes at WP:SOCK. - Dank (push to talk) 21:10, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

"Politically charged usernames"

A question has been raised about appropriateness of "politically charged" usernames [1]. I believe it belongs to this talk page. In addition, I would like to discuss a possibility to elaborate criteria that define if some user name is politically charged.--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I have followed User:Paul Seibert here. The case is wether neutrality applies to the idea of nationalism when it can be argued that most forms of nationalism produce undersirable results. Arising from concern that a username "Anti-Nationalist" is not neutral. This debate seems to include accepting usernames such as Anti-Communist, Anti-Nazi and so on. Perhaps quite noble for some but nevertheless not neutral at all. I just want to point out that this would be the Anti-Thesis of the neutrality guideline. Anti-Thesis is an example of a legitimately neutral Anti-. ~ R.T.G 12:41, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't give squat if someone wants to go around wikipedia as a political poster as long as they don't label anybody they have a disagreement with related political tags. Lets say if I get a username "Anti-Nazi" and start calling someone I have differences with a "Nazi". As this is exactly what triggered the whole thing, someone called Anti-Nationalist thinks its OK to label editors he/she has disagreements with the "nationalist" tag.[2], [3]

So lets say if next time I come across someone who has chosen to call him/herself "Anti-Communist", and in case we have a disagreement, do I need to be called a Communist because of it? Perhaps its me but I can't see how such political usernames help to create an harmonious environment for working on an encyclopedia.

And finally, hypothetical usernames such as "Anti-Communist", "Anti-Nazi" along with existing Anti-Nationalist came into discussion by Paul pointing out that according to Arnold J. Toynbee nationalism, Communism and Nazism were the 3 evils of the XX century [4]. So are we suppose to fight the evil here in our minds only by choosing Anti-Something usernames or simply build an encyclopedia based on WP:RS, WP:NPOV etc.?--Termer (talk) 21:02, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I can see the case for why we might want "Anti-Nationalist" to be a username forbidden by the username policy, but I think it would be a bad idea to add a clause forbidding politically charged usernames. Here's one key example: we've had users whose usernames declare up front that they are gay. To half of the U.S., this is just fine. To the other half of the U.S., a positive reference to homosexuality is "politically charged". And the rest of the world's reaction to homosexuality ranges from complete acceptance to considering it a crime punishable by death. So given that politics contains such a huge range of opinions, how can you possibly draw a clear line between what is "politically charged" and what is not?

I think there are better processes to use, anyway. If we added a clause like this to the username policy, we'd have to grandfather in Anti-Nationalist himself, because we shouldn't be in the business of using the username policy as a bill of attainder against a particular editor. rspεεr (talk) 22:08, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the statement above by Rspeer. It is not possible to please everyone, and in terms of being "Politically Charged", Anti-Nationalist is well within reason. It simply states an opposition to a viewpoint, it doesn't say "F*** Nationalists or anything like that. Triplestop x3 23:04, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

So what does a username like "Anti-Nationalist" state exactly? like already pointed out elsewhere, for example Irish nationalism has been associated with a desire for political independence from Great Britain. So does someone called "Anti Nationalist" have anything against Irish political independence from Great Britain?

Regarding the gay question, in case someone would call him/herself "Anti-Gay" on wikipedia how would such politically charged username help harmony on wikipedia exactly?--Termer (talk) 23:15, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Again, it's not possible to please everyone. Anti-Nationalist has already stated that they would consider recovering their previous account and has given reason why he wishes to keep his name. Triplestop x3 23:30, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Re: "So does someone called "Anti Nationalist" have anything against Irish political independence from Great Britain?". As I already pointed out elsewhere, in an Irish context the "Anti-Nationalist" username should be understood not as an opposition to Irish independence but as opposition to presenting Irish related historical events through a prism of Irish nationalism (i.e. opposition to violation of WP policy.)

In addition, I believe that is not a good place to discuss the concrete name. I initiated this discussion here because the focus of the previous discussion has shifted from a concrete username to WP name policy in general. However, to my big surprise, the present (general) discussion appeared to be shifting from general questions back to "Anti-Nationalist". It looks quite illogical.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:46, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea from where do you get it Paul since there are no such explanations like "not as an opposition to Irish independence but as opposition to...etc." anywhere on Anti-Nationalists userpage like you suggest. I'm reading your post like there should be included a tutorial guide how exactly a politically charged username should be understood.--Termer (talk) 02:54, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Re: "I'm reading your post like there should be included a tutorial guide how exactly a politically charged username should be understood." The definition of politically charged username is only of academic interest until a consensus is achieved about inappropriateness of such names in WP.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:36, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that he is opposed to Irish independence and etc? Triplestop x3 02:59, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Obviously not. It is just an explanation of how should Irish nationalist interpret this username.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:27, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Why only Irish independence, for example Indian nationalism refers to the many underlying forces that molded the Indian independence movement. So once someone chooses a political username like for example Anti-nationalist, it's a reasonable question what is this "Anti-Nationalism" all about?--Termer (talk) 03:05, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Again, this concrete discussion is intended to elaborate a consensus on whether politically charged usernames are allowed (because by now WP policy says nothing about that). It is not a discussion of the "Anti-Nationalist" username. If you want to discuss that concrete name, please, continue here. And, please, remember, that any discussion there makes sense only if this username is blatantly inappropriate. ("If the username is NOT blatantly inappropriate, and the user has made no recent edits, do not post as there is no need to take any action.")--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:27, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

It's clear what this particular user means by this name. What you make of it is your own opinion. Triplestop x3 03:28, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

RE:Paul-First of all the username "Anti-Nationalist" triggered the whole thing, so there is no reason to exclude it from the "general discussion about politically charged usernames" as a practical example.

RE:Triplestop. please let me point out that a statement like "It's clear what this particular user means by this name" is what you make of it and is therefore your opinion.--Termer (talk) 03:37, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Well if you actually knew the context behind this username then you would know what it means, because it is obvious. Clearly what I think he means is less far-fetched than your interpretation. Let me ask you a question: Are you upset about this user's name as a matter of principle or are you trying to aggravate the situation because he is on the opposite side of a certain edit war? Triplestop x3 03:45, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

those questions you just had should be well spelled out in my first post on this thread [5]. And the context behind this username I'm aware of should be spelled out by me over here:[6].--Termer (talk) 04:18, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Alright, then there seems to be an agreement that the username itself is not the issue but rather the user's conduct combined with the username. For example we wouldn't block a user "ABC", however if they started spamming a company called "A Better Car Company" then that is a problem. I suggest taking this elsewhere, possibly a user conduct RFC. Triplestop x3 04:36, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Care must be taken not to start creating new rules and regulations based upon subjective criteria. It is hard enough as it is to judge what constitutes an "offensive" or a "disruptive" name without throwing a new qualifier like "politically charged" in to the mix. I would rather see cases concerning so-called "politically charged" usernames to be handled under our current criteria; if the name is blatantly offensive or clearly intended to disrupt, handle it as such. No need to muddy the waters by trying to determine how political or not a name is. Shereth 14:30, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I prefer the guide at WP:SOAPBOX where it says that there should be no advocacy, that it is alright to create article about advocacy, following wiki standards, but not to be seen advocating anything in the content of the site. Where this happens in talk it should be checked over and where it appears in a username or other site content it must be changed. It is of little consequece to ignore that in regard to advocating Wikimedia topics and figures such as Mozart or DaVinci but when you cross over to current politics and modern figures you have crossed over into the realm of debating and deciding. One does not prevail because this is not a contest. "Blatantly offensive" is a different category. I live in the Republic of Ireland. My government and the vast majority of its people consider themselves nationalists because nationalism in my country stands for freedom from oppression but as Nazi oppression was televised and had tanks, I should be a bit more accomodating in the political murals I choose to take offense from. Nazi opression didn't last too long just think of that when you tell me that offending the word "nationalist" in a public arena is suitable. This island was oppressed for hundreds of years, millions died, and nationalism is on the side that opposed that. They are not all good but the vast majority are. You would sink those who seem to encouraged more Polish to live with them than anyone else on the same ship as those who would have massacred them all. This is not a local debating forum. No advocacy except for Wikimedia topics and non-political topics. ~ R.T.G 18:09, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

You are misguided in your citing of WP:SOAPBOX. If a username is offensive or disruptive then it is a violation of the username policy; otherwise, there is no violation. If the user's behavior is disruptive or problematic that should be dealt with accordingly, but it is not a username issue. Until there is a consensus to the contrary there is no prohibition against usernames that advocate a particular political position or viewpoint, except where said usernames cross the border into offensive or disruptive. Shereth 18:22, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Again, this concrete section is devoted to discussion of appropriateness of inappropriateness of politically charges usernames in general, because by now WP name policy says nothing about that. Since any changes made to the Wikipedia:Username policy page should reflect consensus, and, since, as I see now, no consensus can be achieved on that account, I propose to close this discussion and to return to the discussion of the "Anti-Nationalist" username in more appropriate place.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:25, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Discussion on individual cases (such as "Anti-Nationalism") should not have been made here anyway. You are correct that any change requires consensus, and I do not see any kind of consensus emerging for this kind of change to policy. Unless someone is sincerely interested in trying to make a change to this policy rather than disucssing specific cases, this discussion should indeed be archived. Shereth 19:41, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

IMO, common sense works here. Something like User:F*** Nationalists would obviously not fly. Triplestop x3 02:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Restrictions on characters in user names

I looked around, and only found one mention on what you can't have in your user name: on WP:Changing Username, which says:

'Please note that for technical reasons, your username cannot begin with a lowercase letter, nor can it contain any underscores

However, I am assuming that the following characters also can't be used: < > / \ ? & = [ ] { }

Am I right in that? And if so, should there be a subsection on this page (and also on the "create user" page) which mentions this? (Perhaps as the first subsection of the "Choosing an appropriate user name" section, before "How your name will appear").

Any comments? -- PhantomSteve (Contact Me, My Contribs) 17:25, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you're quite right: I have met users with ?, =, and & in their names. The characters are properly URL encoded. It's likely that some characters break the wiki syntax -- you might need to find this out by experimentation -- but this seems like the kind of fine detail about MediaWiki that belongs in the Help: namespace, not in the en:wp username policy. rspεεr (talk) 18:32, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Depends on how the account is created. \ / # are forbidden (to check that, you have to log out, try to create a new account and you get this information. If you request assistance the & won't work either. It should also be noted that initial character of a username is automatically capitalised by the MediaWiki software. -- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 13:47, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

There's stuff you used to be able to do and cannot do now. For example, you used to be able to create a user name that was just numbers. You cannot do that anymore. (Does admin 7 realise that their name is grandfathered in, and is not compliant with current username policy? Do they care about this when issuing username warnings and blocks?) Since you find out when you try to create a name what is and isn't possible technically, and since that changes from time to time, it's probably better to either leave it out of policy, or have a bot generated section to create a list of dis-allowed types of names. (leading to beans attempts to get around that list?) NotAnIP83:149:66:11 (talk) 17:12, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

As a matter of being a technical rather than a policy issue, there probably isn't much to do as far as altering the policy, as the users will find out pretty quick that they can't make a username that the software won't take. A link to a help page explaining these technical restrictions might be useful, however. Shereth 17:53, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

internet addresses / sanity check

A new editor registers a name of the form xxxx.yy, where xxxx is a common forename, and yy is (coincidentally??) a TLD (See List_of_Internet_top-level_domains for the long list of possibles). They make a couple of edits to the sandbox. They make a couple of good faith edits to an article talk page, providing reliable sources to information. Their name happens to match a 'live' but domain squatted domain. None of their edits link to that squatted domain; there's no suspicion that they're trying to insert spam links anywhere. An inurl: google search for xxxx.yy shows no hits, a google search for xxxx.yy shows no relevant websites. (The .yy is very common word.)
What do we do with this editor? Do we really want his first message from anyone to be a twinkle warning with an edit summary saying "warning: name is against policy?". What do we do if the editor politely declines a name change? NotAnIP83:149:66:11 (talk) 17:07, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

The people leaving twinkle warnings are in the wrong. Coincidentally matching a domain name is not a violation of anything at all. Leaving nonsense warnings for new users is a violation of WP:BITE. rspεεr (talk) 17:47, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Some leeway may be granted to people whose usernames might accidentally match a real domain name, but I wonder how often this happens. Obviously enough to warrant this thread; could you post a few examples so I can see what is going on? Either way, with no evidence that someone is actually spamming/promoting then some AGF should be applied. Shereth 17:51, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd have to dig back to find the examples, but I have seen a few instances of this. If the domain is "parked" there's no need to even mention it, although the bot reports them as a matter of course, it also says in it's reports that users dealing with the report should check to see if the domain is actually active.Beeblebrox (talk) 18:37, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

username "dave.in". I replaced the warning with a welcome. I'm talking to the editor who placed the warning. I would welcome some mentorship on this, especially with keeping calm and discussing politely with the editor. NotAnIP83:149:66:11 (talk) 20:18, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, that one is pretty innocuous. Common sense should prevail in these kinds of cases; you did the right thing in replacing the warning message with a welcome. Shereth 20:33, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

I would like some folks with solid knowledge of username policy to weigh in on my talk page.

• Please see User talk:Beeblebrox#User:Nipple37 Beeblebrox (talk) 17:39, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Issue appears to be closed.  7  23:22, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't follow through here on this. It's here and also a few billion more words in the WP:ANI archives somewhere if anyone cares. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:33, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

*bot, technical limitations, and policy.

I'm guessing that consensus would e clear that having a name ending in bot (especially with a capital B for Bot) is a bad idea. Would it e worthwhile adding this to the filter that prevents users creating such names? That would avoid editors creating a name and then having to change it (or being blocked for it), and it would make the various reporting pages a bit clearer. NotAnIP83:149:66:11 (talk) 23:15, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there a filter that prevents even the creation of such things? How did this get past it? Beeblebrox (talk) 23:24, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Beeblebrox: we have filters, but as far as I know they don't try to prevent vulgarity. Vulgarity is notoriously difficult to test for computationally. For example, "shit" is a common syllable in Indian names and "porn" is a common syllable in Thai ones. rspεεr (talk) 23:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

It would also make it even harder to create an actual bot. That's process creep, and I don't think it's the answer; the answer is people having the common sense to not harass the hell out of users whose names happen to end in 'bot'. rspεεr (talk) 23:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

I feel the whole "bot name" policy is bit silly, but for the moment we're stuck with it, and users who create such names are inevitably going to get the standard message about it. If it really is a bot, all they have to do is say so, and UAA is (usually) done with them. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:27, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

But that's the thing. The proposal was to make it impossible to create an account named ...bot through the standard form. No more UAA to even reason with. So if you're making a bot, you'd have to run it by ACC and wait for them to create the account, as well as getting approval from the BAG. That's what I called "process creep". rspεεr (talk) 06:11, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) There is already a bot User:HBC NameWatcherBot which picks up on possible username violations and reports them to UAA. There are occasionally false positives and the bot's maintainer adjusts the parameters as appropriate. -- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 12:20, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure all of us here are familiar with the namewatcher bot. Replying to the original comment, there are other reasons not to explicitly filter *bot style names. False positives can be a problem, for example with the last name Talbot. UAA is pretty good about dealing with egregiously problematic usernames, and unless we start having to deal with massive backlogs here there is no reason to talk about encouraging pre-filters to do our job for us. Shereth 14:16, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Should we require that usernames be written in Latin characters?

Currently, while there is no requirement that usernames be in English, to avoid confusion and aid navigation, users are encouraged to use Latin characters in their signature. Today we had an RfA where it turned out that user 龗 was a sock. I'm concerned that problematic editors will be more likely to use non-latin-character user names, because it makes scrutiny of their activity more difficult. Do people think that this rule should be tightened, to require that usernames be in Latin characters? Thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 05:40, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

That would be problematic because people from different Wikis would have non-Latin names making SUL difficult. Triplestop x3 00:27, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Our letters are not the end of the universe, there are many alphabets out there. I see no reason why we should limit ourselves in such a way. Chillum 00:28, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah. It's impossible. It used to be "encouraged", and probably still is for people who don't edit much outside of enwiki, but I don't think there will ever again be a rule that usernames have to be in Latin characters. There may already be a filter in place that blocks certain mixed-script usernames, though, to prevent people from registering names such as Jimbo Walеs, where the "e" has been replaced with a Cyrillic е; and if there isn't, I'd probably be in favor of it. -- Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 00:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki has an extension for this, which appears to be used on Wikipedia, so that accounts with mixed-script names can only be created by administrators, bureaucrats and account creators. When bugzilla:15545 is fixed, it will also disallow some usernames that are similar to existing accounts, but it would probably be impossible to achieve this with blacklists or abuse filters (other than by blocking names that attack or impersonate specific editors). snigbrook (talk) 01:04, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Creating restrictions based on "what-if" scenarios is not helpful. I would wager that most "trouble" users are sticking to the Latin character set, and that most users who have non-Latin characters in their names are not "trouble" users. Shereth 15:43, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

If you had trouble scrutinizing 龗's activity, that's a bug in the MediaWiki interface. It would be entirely the wrong solution to force people to change their usernames to Latin characters -- not only is that a bit xenophobic, but that cat's already way out of the bag because usernames are global now. rspεεr (talk) 23:16, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Since this would totally break the SUL functionality I think it's a non-starter.  7  23:20, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

The only reasons I can see for restricting character-sets would be technical, not social. There are technical reasons why usernames should be type-able on most English-language keyboards - after all, this is the English Wikipedia - but this technical rationale can be overcome if the person has a "how to type my username with your keyboard" instructions on their userpage. Maybe it's time to create a template for that. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:52, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

The easiest implementation of that template, by far, would just contain the username as text you can copy and paste. But every user page already has that, in several places, such as the header line.

"This is the English Wikipedia" is a poor argument, because we welcome contributors from other Wikipedias, and we encourage them to keep the same username so they can benefit from Unified Login. rspεεr (talk) 08:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Registration User Name

After making me enter the registration information 4 times .... you tell me that my user name (MOGL) is "too similar" to another user (Mogi)!

(1) Seriously?! 6 million people on the planet and no two user names can be differentiated by only one letter? Seriously? LEGAL DOCUMENTS require less differentiation!

2) You couldn't tell me this the FIRST time? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.87.103.122 (talk) 17:20, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Signpost Policy Report

Responses by Shereth

I'm slightly concerned that my responses may be on the opinionated side - I'm known for having some strong opinions with regards to this policy (and its enforcement) but I'll try my best to be objective here. While the policy itself has been relatively stable since a large overhaul in July that was designed to clarify and streamline the policy; subsequent edits have largely been efforts to further simplify the policy or make minor amendments to the instructions therein. The last major policy shift was probably the Blatant Promotion RFC that tightened up our restrictions on promotional usernames, which have been defined as usernames that contain references to company names, group names, products, and the like. There is a current discussion relating to misleading usernames that could result in another major policy shift if it gains any traction but as no resolution is likely prior to the publication of the Signpost, for all intents and purposes the policy may be considered stable at the moment. The policy itself may have been relatively stable since that point, but there is regularly some confusion as to the interpretation thereof. Discussions have been a common feature at the policy's talk page, as well as at the Usernames for Aministrator Attention noticeboard, which is intimately tied to the username policy. As certain aspects of the policy are subjective in nature, enforecement has been at times uneven. In particular, the nature of "promotional" usernames and the enforcement of the policy tend to be somewhat difficult subjects and have resulted in considerable debate since the RFC. A unique feature to username policy enforcement is the fact that discussion on potential violations is often limited. Typically, an administrator will either dismiss a report at UAA or issue a block without any input from other editors or administrators. This kind of rapid-fire enforcement seems to be a result of the fact that most username violations are fairly straightforward. There has been some concern that spot enforcement of the policy in somewhat more borderline cases does not provide the effected users with sufficient time to respond to warnings prior to the issuance of a block, and that as a result username enforcement is seen by some as inherently bitey to the newcomers. The username policy is something of a specialized niche in Wikipedia and as such it does not often attract attention from a wide audience. It may therefore seem somewhat obscure to the outsider, but let's face it - the policy and its enforcement are hardly the most engaging and exciting aspects of Wikipedia. The volunteers who put their time in to working on the policy and enforcing it are engaged in what is sometimes a thankless and monotonous task that is nevertheless critical to the success of the project, particularly since the username policy is among the first that new users may be exposed to. I would say that, for all of their differences, the various volunteers in this corner of the projet are doing a pretty good job of keeping the gears turning.

Responses by Phantomsteve

I feel that the policy fairly sums up the expectations for usernames, and the kinds of names which are inappropriate (although I must admit that personally I disagree with "If you edit for a group or organization please still use a non-shared name for your editing. A name such as "User:Megawatt Inc., (John)" may be appropriate." - I feel that all users should be registered in a personal name, with no link to an organisation. I know that there is the argument to be made that having this kind of name allowable means that CoI can be detected more easily, but in reality, I'm guessing that in this case if John had been warned about CoI problems, he would register a new account without the Megawatt in it). I think that it is reasonably clear for newbies, though. The section for Dealing with inappropriate usernames is fairly good - but I seldom see much evidence of "talking to the user". I sometimes do new user patrols, and if I come across a possible violation (usually a company name), I will leave a welcome message on the user's talk page, along with a warning about the possible user name violation (along with the reason why I think it is the name of a organisation - a link to the website, or to where the user has done a CoI edit). However, as I said, I don't think this happens too often. I must point out, though, that some admins are very good when they do block a user for a name violation - they make it clear that "your user name is the only reason for this block" - but others just leave a plain "Your user name is against our policy" message, which seems a bit WP:BITEY. The only thing that I would want to add to this is that when I place a user-name warning on the user's talk page - even though it is a custom template which I used (based on {{uw-username}}) - it is put in the Category:Wikipedian usernames editors have expressed concern over. Sometimes I wonder how many admins monitor this category, as sometimes it can be quite a while until one comes along to deal with it! I know I could report it to WP:UAA, but sometimes that would mean reporting a lot of names for users who have not edited yet - so nothing is done until the first edit(s). If the username is blatantly against the policy, then I think it should be dealt with before the editor's first edits - but in a more friendly way - as a non-admin, I can only warn the user, and then leave it to the admins to block if necessary. (Incidently, if anyone's interested, the template that I use (and documentation) is at User:Phantomsteve/company-name). Postscript (added after the summary was prepared) I have also created two other user-name templates: User:Phantomsteve/offensive-name (for a name which may (not too surprisingly) be counted as offensive) and User:Phantomsteve/multi-name (for a name which indicates that the account will be used by more than one person such as User:Bill&John or User:ABC-Team-1). -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 23:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Responses by Beeblebrox

Dealing with potential username violations is an area of admin work with a lot of nuance to it. We get a wide spectrum of violations and potential violations reported by both regular users and HBC NameWatcherBot. Some types of reports are fairly straightforward, either resulting in an immediate block or an outright dismissal, but there are substantial gray areas as well. What exactly constitutes "offensive or disruptive" is virtually impossible to define. There have been some lively debates in recent memory on these topics, one that stands out was wether the word "nipple" in and of itself was enough to warrant a block. Another was more of a discussion regarding the varying attitudes towards the word "spastic" in user names. In the States this is considered fairly harmless, but to our friends in the UK it has a whole different meaning. In the time that I have been responding to UAA reports, I have experienced the unintended side effect of learning a lot about the various ethnic and racial slurs that are used in various parts of the world. As far as promotional names go, this is a somewhat touchy area. We must balance our desire not to bite the newcomers with the need to keep Wikipedia from becoming a tool for search engine optimization and other forms of "guerilla" or "viral" marketing. There is a newer template, Template:Uw-softerblock that is a gentler way of telling the user that they should not edit with a promotional username, but the more forceful Template:Uw-spamblock still sees a lot of use in the case of blatant spamming of Wikipedia. There is significant crossover between username policy enforcement, speedy deletion and new page patrol, and vandal fighting. Sometimes we can't tell just from a username what the intent of the user might be, and often reports are tagged with a "wait till the user edits" message. Another aspect many users may not be aware of is the holding pen. In cases where an immediate course of action may not be clear, the report is moved to the holding pen, where it will sit for up to seven days. If the report is still there in a week, an admin will either go ahead and block the name, or dismiss the report as "unactionable." You might be surprised how many users register an account and never make a single edit with it. One thing that is important for users to understand before making a report is that if there are multiple problems with an account, the username is usually the least of them. If someone is vandalizing or spamming and has what might be an inappropriate name, it's better to report them for the other problem. Also, if the name isn't so bad as to warrant an immediate block, you can always discuss the matter with the user instead of reporting them, either in your own words or using this template There is debate ongoing right now about certain aspects of the policy, and all users are encouraged to offer their input on these potential changes. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:25, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Responses by 7

Answers to select stock questions Can you summarize the page? The page provides guidance for new users on selection of an appropriate username, as well as clarity for existing users and administrators on methods to deal with potentially problematic usernames. Which changes of the past few months have been the most important, and do you think those changes will make the page more stable than it was before? I feel the most productive change in recent months was the clarification on corporate/product names. This change, introduced in August, made it clear that use a company, website, or product name as your username is not allowed. Were the changes easy, or was there some compromising or negotiation involved? As always, change takes time. This has probably been discussed even earlier, but I recall one proposal back in July 2008 [7]. The proposal really gained steam in May 2009 [8]. Would the page work better if it were shorter (or longer)? As a guideline for existing users the page length is fine as-is. However, for new users in the process of creating a login it may make sense move the problem sections (inappropriate usernames, sockpuppetry, etc...) into a separate page to avoid overwhelming new users who find the page from Wikipedia:Request an account. How does this page get enforced, in practice? Are warnings concerning this material usually consistent, timely, and effective? Blatantly offensive or disruptive names are the easiest to spot (often by a bot), and are blocked quickly by a reviewing admin. Good faith editors who have inadvertently chosen an inappropriate name are usually given the {{uw-username}} template notification, and will often change their name voluntarily. Editors whose names are promotional and who are using those accounts for SPAM/COI edits are usually blocked quickly but without prejudice, and are encouraged by the blocking admin to choose a new username representing themselves (not their product or company) and reminded to avoid potential conflicts after they change their name.

Responses by Gigs

I coordinated and helped administer the Blatant Promotion RFC. I think it's a good example of how we can still come together as a community and resolve complex policy issues with consensus. My specific proposal for a new forum to deal with promotional accounts was rejected, but we did gain consensus to slightly strengthen the username policy to more clearly forbid promotional company and shared account names. We also formed a consensus that promotional-only accounts could be reported at Administrator Intervention against Vandalism (AIV), if the account's editing behavior indicated that it was clearly only for promotional purposes. In the realm of communication, many administrators are using {{uw-spamblock}}, which more clearly communicates that the name is only part of the problem when it comes to organization accounts doing promotional editing. As an editor, deciding where to report a promotional account still takes a little judgment. If the account is a constructive editor, or the case is borderline, then neither Usernames for administrator attention (UAA) or AIV are a good choice, something more like Conflict of interest noticeboard is better suited. If the name is the only problem, then use UAA. If the account is a single-purpose promotional account, use AIV. Don't worry too much about picking the wrong venue if you aren't sure which to use, but you are sure that administrative attention is required. Administrators that monitor UAA and AIV are smart enough to use the proper blocking methods and templates, and one of the changes that came from the Blatant Promotion RfC is it seems that administrators are less likely to turn down a request on procedural grounds when an account is clearly promotional.

Responses by rspeer

I've been concerned with the username policy for years now, and the policy has required constant discussion and compromise the whole time. I've generally been on one side of this discussion -- I feel that many Wikipedians are tempted to misuse the username policy as an all-purpose "speedy blocking" process, and I've tried to combat that, because it damages the Wikipedia community when we throw potentially good new users out the door so quickly. When our other policies give new users some leeway and some second chances before we block them, they're doing it for a reason. Things have certainly changed for the better in that time. When I started working with the policy, you could be blocked for all kinds of silly reasons, written or unwritten, such as: if you had seven of the same letter in a row in your username, if your username happened to be a domain name that a domain squatter had registered, if you had a Chinese character in your username, or if someone just thought you looked like you were going to vandalize in the future. In addition to my advocacy against the overuse of username blocks, I coordinated the major rewrite of the username policy we did a couple of months ago. With the help of many other Wikipedians who deal with the username policy, I built a consensus for how to write the page to represent what we considered the current best practices. (And when we couldn't agree on best practices, such as for promotional usernames, we left it vague and then held an RFC, which I think still left it vague.) I had to write clearer versions of rules that I personally disagreed with, in some cases. There are still many things to discuss, but I think we've now got a username policy that -- although it has changed immensely in two years -- most people will agree says mostly the right thing, a situation which you wouldn't find two years ago. My goals in rewriting the policy included to make it more relevant to the new users that it is ostensibly meant to address, to change its tone more than changing its meaning, and (necessarily) to clean up the parts where the policy argued with itself. One large change in the structure of the policy, which I think many people have not noticed, is that the first top-level section ("Choosing an appropriate username") is now explicitly written as advice for new users, not for username patrollers or admins. That section won't tell you how to username-block someone, for example, because new users don't username-block anyone. It does explain why you might be on the receiving end of one of those blocks and what to do then. In the following section on "Dealing with inappropriate usernames", I also made sure to emphasize that you are dealing with actual people who want to edit Wikipedia. The way we enforce the username policy is a part of the new user experience, it's not just a game we play to sort arbitrary strings of text into "good" and "bad" ones. This idea was, thankfully, taking hold among the regulars at WP:UAA even before the rewrite. Again, there are still things to discuss here, but I think we've got a reasonable foundation for that discussion. I encountered people on the Village Pump and AN/I about a year ago who had gripes about how we enforce the username policy over at UAA, but had taken a look at the mess of a policy and quickly given up. I'd like to encourage that kind of person to come back and join the discussion. Things aren't like they used to be.

WP:Username policy will be featured in the Policy Report in next week's Signpost. Tonight's report might give you some ideas what we're looking for. For instance, the readers might want to know what this policy page covers and whether it overlaps other policies and guidelines, which issues are unresolved, whether the policy has been shaped more by day-to-day experiences or by exceptional cases (such as ArbCom handles), and whether the policy tends to document reality, present ideal goals, or something in between. If it helps, a record of monthly changes to this page is available at WP:Update/1/Conduct policy changes, July 2009 to December 2009. Say as much or as little as you like in your response; I'll do my best to work a sentence or two into a summary, and I hope many Signpost readers will follow the link and read everything you said. The summary will be available at least a day before the Signpost deadline so that anyone can edit it. If we don't have enough responses by late Thursday to generate a Policy Report, then I'll start soliciting comments from recent participants on this talk page until we get enough to work with.

A paradox of modern democracies is that voters generally have a low opinion of national politicians, but tend to trust and re-elect their own representatives. I think the same thing goes on with policy pages ... some people distrust policy pages in general but like the pages that they're working on. That's the point of the weekly Policy Report, to let people look at policy pages through the eyes of the people who work on the page.

Signpost summary: [This section will be moved to the proper Signpost page on Monday, around 04:00 UTC] [coming soon] [We'll do the summary this weekend.]

Sorry, I'm confused. How does this work? Why are there a bunch of empty collapse boxes, and what are we supposed to be responding to? Is it the part about "what this policy page covers and whether it overlaps other policies and guidelines, which issues are unresolved", etc., or were there supposed to be questions specific to the username policy? Are those what's "coming soon"? rspεεr (talk) 08:44, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I've added some hidden instructions; thanks for the suggestion. I suggested some questions, but it's really up to you ... we're giving you a forum to say anything that strikes you as interesting about our username policy or the process that has produced it. I can ask questions specific to this page, but I've already got a heavy hand in this process ... I'm writing the summary and the weekly column ... so it would probably be better for you to pick your own questions, but if we don't get responses by late Thursday, then I'll get more proactive. - Dank (push to talk) 14:45, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

[I believe I heard Mark Shields say this, but I can't find it on Google:] The press are like alligators: you can beat 'em, you can mistreat 'em, but you gotta feed 'em. If the regulars don't want to share any insights about the page, then Grr, one of these days I'll learn not to make edits like these when I'm distracted I'll start soliciting everyone who's left a message on the talk page recently for comments, starting tonight. I prefer not to set the agenda, but I'll probably have to suggest some questions if I'm leaving message on talk pages. - Dank (push to talk) 18:39, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't mind sharing insight but I'm pretty bad at answering such broad inquiries. I wouldn't mind a hook of sorts or at least being pointed in a direction. Are you just looking for an "insider" opinion on the policy? Sort of as if I were trying to explain and summarize it to someone who is unfamiliar with it (and who doesn't care to slog through the whole thing)? Shereth 20:09, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

We'll get the best results if this is a completely community-driven process ... that is, look in the archives of this talk page or check out the previous surveys at WT:SOCK#Interview for Signpost and WT:CIVILITY#Policy Report for Signpost and see what questions and answers they thought were interesting. If you want the "short version", I've suggested some questions below, but I'm hoping that sometime in the near future I won't have to suggest questions, because people will understand how this works and they'll be able to learn what they need from previous surveys. - Dank (push to talk) 16:16, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Questions

Here are some typical questions, feel free to add your own. Note that most people who replied for the Policy Report at WT:SOCK#Interview for Signpost and WT:CIVILITY#Policy Report for Signpost didn't answer any of the suggested questions, and that was fine. - Dank (push to talk) 05:04, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• Can you summarize the page?
• Which changes of the past few months have been the most important, and do you think those changes will make the page more stable than it was before?
• Were the changes easy, or was there some compromising or negotiation involved?
• Would the page work better if it were shorter (or longer)?
• How does this page get enforced, in practice? Are warnings concerning this material consistent, timely, and effective?
• How well does this policy deal with day-to-day practice? How well does it deal with exceptional cases, such as ArbCom cases? Does the policy document reality, or present ideal goals for conduct, or something in between?
• Is it clear what this page covers? Does it contradict any other policy or guideline page?
• Has the page changed much in response to questions and criticism from a lot of Wikipedians, including newbies?

Summary

This summary is now available at the The Dec 14, 2009 Signpost

(This is kind of a rough draft, I'm more interested in watching my Harry Potter Blu-Ray disk. Feel free to edit. In general, I'll be taking the policy pages in the same order they appear at WP:Update/1, but I freely admit that I chose WP:SOCK and this page out of order because I expected the quality of the responses would be higher, so they could serve as a guide for future respondents ... and I was right. Since the writing is good, I made an effort to quote everyone, especially for subjective assessments that might change their connotation if I tweaked the words ... but if there's some quote you want to highlight, feel free to insert whatever you think gets your points across best. - Dank (push to talk) 02:31, 13 December 2009 (UTC)) Several contributors shared their thoughts with the Signpost about the evolution of our Username policy page over the past six months. Shereth describes username policy as "something of a specialized niche," generating frequent discussions on the talk page and at Usernames for administrator attention over interpretation and application of the policy. The discussion of the moment, which could conceivably lead to a shift in policy, relates to misleading usernames. For Phantomsteve, the policy page "fairly sums up the expectations for usernames", although he doesn't believe that hybrid names such as "User:Megawatt Inc., (John)" are appropriate, and prefers that blatant violations of the policy be handled before the account's first edit, when possible. Beeblebrox points out that it takes time to learn the many ethnic and racial slurs used around the world that people try to insert into usernames, and to learn how to handle borderline offensive names (a recent example: Nipple37). It also takes experience to spot search engine optimization techniques and other attempts to exploit Wikipedia's dominance on the web, and careful judgment not to step on the unintentionally self-promotional newcomers while blocking the hard-core spammers. Beeblebrox often uses the gentler {{uw-softerblock}} template, as well as the traditional {{uw-spamblock}} block notice. User:7 says that a warning such as {{uw-username}} is more appropriate for inadvertently improper usernames, while editors with promotional usernames who start out with promotional edits tend to be blocked "quickly but without prejudice" and encouraged to start over, following our policies. 7 adds that some discussions last for months or years before finally bearing fruit, such as this summer's Blatant Promotion RFC, which resulted in a prohibition on company, website, or product names as usernames. Gigs coordinated the RFC, and describes it as a "good example of how we can still come together as a community and resolve complex policy issues with consensus." Gigs, like most of the admins active at Usernames for administrator attention, believes that the WP:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard (WP:COIN) is a better venue for username problems when the editing suggests a conflict of interest. Rspeer notes "constant discussion and compromise", year after year. In his view, new users are entitled to the same leeway and second chances for username problems that are afforded for violations of our other policies. The policy has improved over time: "When I started working with the policy, you could be blocked for all kinds of silly reasons, written or unwritten, such as: if you had seven of the same letter in a row in your username, if your username happened to be a domain name that a domain squatter had registered, if you had a Chinese character in your username, or if someone just thought you looked like you were going to vandalize in the future." There's a lot more detail from all the respondents in the full survey. Next week's Policy Report will focus on Edit warring. Please join the discussion.

New template idea

As we all know, a lot of new accounts are reported to UAA one way or another because they have edited (sometimes in their user space) in a way that is a COI. When warning one such account, I decided to amalgamate the COI and username-concern templates to give a better overall warning of what the two real issues are, ie username policy and the COI policy. Maybe with some copyediting, this could be used more often? There's a draft on my userspace for editing, and if/when agreed I'll get it live. NJA (t/c) 19:36, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Why is the "group account" thing so important that it has to come first? The COI and potential promotion is the real problem that risks damaging Wikipedia. Group accounts are just a transgression of our social norms, and aren't even one of the four kinds of inappropriate username on their own. (And it wouldn't make sense for them to be, because the username doesn't relate to how many people are using the account. It's a type error. It's like saying bushels are a bad kind of apple. It's like putting up a NO SNOWING sign in a movie theater.) WP:ORGNAME only says that we often block those names for being promotional, so it all comes back to COI and promotion. rspεεr (talk) 07:34, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

So switch the order? Or we continue to post COI templates only to have it blocked later by another admin or by ourselves for UN policy vio. I figured we could address both issues in on go without a block. NJA (t/c) 09:22, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Such a template already exists, it would probably be better to post your draft there. Triplestop x3 03:09, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Will do in due course. NJA (t/c) 10:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Restriction against "bot"

I was curious as to the origin of the restriction we have against usernames employing the "botXX" suffix. After some digging around, the best I could find is that it was added way back in March of 2006 [9] without any discussion on the talk page that I can find. It appears to have been the idea of a single editor that was never disputed and simply became entrenched in the policy after time. Since I can find no serious discussion as to the value of this restriction I am bringing it up here.

For the first year of its life the "bot" restriction, other terms were included with the restriction: daemon, initialize, and script. These were removed in an attempt to simplify the policy [10], but "bot" was retained. At various times, the justification for this restriction has been described as a restriction agains the use of "Wikipedia terms", because "bot" names were reserved, and simply "misleading" as we have it stated now.

I question the value of this restriction for two reasons. First, I do not find it to be all that misleading at all. To your average "Reader not editor" and neophyte editor, the existence of bot accounts is not likely to be known at all until they have been around long enough to stumble across such a bot and its work. Once someone knows the ropes enough to realize that names ending in "bot" are likely to be automated accounts, they will be familiar enough with the userpage conventions and editing patterns of bot accounts to recognize the difference. No one who knows what a bot account is would ever confuse an account like User:Botbot1945 (the account that got me thinking about this, actually) for an actual bot account, for example.

The second reason is, even if this confusion exists, I have serious doubts as to whether it is a problem to begin with. I understand the restriction against usernames that might imply some kind of authority, such as "Admin" or "Sysop" or the like. As a new user, I would be particularly hesitant to revert an edit made by someone who is purportedly an administrator, and we don't want people creating a false image of authority for any purpose. Bots, however, have no authority and anyone who knows what a bot account is, knows that they have no special authority. Edits made by bot accounts are regularly undone by editors, and warnings on userpages left by bots are often dismissed.

In summary : A new user is not likely to conclude there is any functional difference between User:Botbot1945 and User:Shereth based upon username and thus no confusion is happening; the username is not misleading in this case. Experienced users will realize that the former is not a bot within seconds. And those few who might be mislead into believing that User:Botbot1945 is in fact an automated account will know not to treat edits by them any differently than edits by any other user.

The only argument I can think of for which a "bot" named user might be problematic is the fact that edits made by bots are not patrolled and may not be double-checked by users who trust that bots are not screwing things up. This argument is a weak one at best; for one, edits from accounts that are not flagged as bots still show up on newpages and still fall under a lot of eyes. Anyone misusing an account name ending in "bot" hoping to fly under the radar will be sniffed out pretty quick. Secondly, even legitimate bots that are flagged and whose edits are not patrolled diligently still make mistakes, and editors still catch and report those mistakes to bot operators to repair.

So why all the fuss, anyway? Our current username policy is relatively weak with regards to "bot" accounts; they are not explicitly prohibited and as a result, reports made by users (or, more often, the bots) often get dismissed, or wind up clogging up the holding pen (there are four of them in there at the moment) until we get bored and either block them or dismiss them outright. This is a lot of wasted effort for what seems to not be a problem, at least in my eyes. Granted, it is not a huge drain on our resources - we don't have issues with huge backlogs at UAA, generally - but when the fix is relatively simple, the benefit gained is worth it.

Is there a more valid argument I am missing out on? Please let me know. Otherwise, it seems silly for us to continue enforcing a more or less archaic rule for no reason other than its own sake. Shereth 18:05, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I think the issue with "bot" usernames is not confusing new users (since, as you say, they do not know about the existence of bots), but that experienced users will immediately assume from the username that the account is a bot, since all bot accounts are now required to end with "bot". This may have detrimental effects for the user with that username, such as them being blocked for making unapproved automated edits. I do agree though that some discretion should be used before blocking "bot" names. In particular, in the case of names that have a number after the "bot", or which contain an obvious surname such as Abbot or Talbot, it will often be obvious at first glance that they are not a bot. Draftydoor (talk) 23:33, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

I think bot names that imply they are actually a bot needs to be restricted only. For example, "Killerninjarobot" probably isn't going to cause any confusion but "RedLinkFixingBot" will. Triplestop x3 23:44, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

• Two things:

1. What about this? What do you lot think? I think it's innocent enough, but it was reported to UAA, thus there must be some confusion by the community on policy.
2. Yes, discretion should always be used, but can we really go by a blanket policy on whether the 'b' in bot is capitalised or not, ie blahBot vs blahbot? Things get sticky when you look at the list of approved bots. Some choice examples from my brief scan are User:Botpankonin, User:Alaibot, User:SVnaGBot1. From what's been said above, the first two wouldn't be considered bots at all, whilst the last one has a number after it's name, thus making generalisation in this category more difficult. Nja²⁴⁷ 07:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the problem. We definitely don't need a policy so full of creep that it specifies whether you may or may not capitalize "bot". And people report users to UAA for bogus reasons all the time; that's not anything specific to the "bot" rule. rspεεr (talk) 09:14, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

• I've always thought this particular policy was silly at best, and mostly a waste of time. As has been mentioned, editors can see which edits are made by approved bots. Someone running an unapproved bot is actually less likely to have "bot" in their name, so as to disguise what they are doing. Right now there are two reports sitting at UAA, and no one has seen fit to block or even discuss with them all day. I support the idea of simply scrapping this subsection of policy, it's a waste of time and does not appear to have much support behind it. Beeblebrox (talk) 09:03, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I've left a note at Wikipedia talk:Bot Approvals Group in case there is any objection from bot owners to this idea. Beeblebrox (talk) 09:08, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

admins should be using discretion, when addressing usernames. Abbot or Talbot or similar names should never be blocked just due to username. On the other hand accounts that clearly refer to robotic natures should be. What was standard practice is USERNAMEOFOPERATORbot which is a clear distinction that the account is going ton be used for robotic editing. Nanobot1 should be renamed as it is clearly referring to an automated process. quite often you get operators that run multiple bot accounts and either use roman numerals or just 1,2,3 ect for naming. this should not be removed from policy without a lot wider consensus. β^_command 13:05, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The only real complaint (i.e. besides "I don't like it" or "I don't understand why we have it") here is that reports about bot usernames aren't acted on immediately by admins? I see no reason for supporting this change based on that non-reason. Removing the restriction would also affect WP:BOTPOL: since bot accounts are required to identify themselves as bots (usually by ending with "bot"), allowing users to do the same thing would mean that bot accounts wouldn't really be identifying themselves.

There are also a few mistakes in the posts above: Bots do actually have special "authority", specifically the permission to make edits 24 hours a day at a relatively high rate of speed. And even though bot accounts currently always get the "bot" flag, that was not always the case (old bots may not have ever gotten the flag) and a bot is not required to use the flag on every edit (and, in fact, should not use the flag on edits that shouldn't be hidden from watchlists or recent changes). Anomie⚔ 16:26, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

"I don't like it" is not a valid argument to delete an article, but lack of broad based community support for a policy is a valid reason to change it. The problem is that new users who innocently think up a username and have no idea about bot accounts are having their names challenged and are being threatened with blocks as their first experience on Wikipedia. That is what I don't like about it. Bot accounts are usually identified as such on their user pages, I think it makes more sense to require that than to restrict user names. We say Wikipedia isn't a bureaucracy, yet we expect users to know something obscure like this before they even register an account. As it is now, even User:Imnotabot would be a problem. How silly is that? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:03, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I've added this conversation to WP:CENT in order to solicit broader input. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:12, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I think I'd rather have it stay the way it is -- have the bots utilize "bot" in their username and the people avoid that usage. I'm not saying that it should be explicitly restricted from human use, but as mentioned above, us more experienced editors would generally assume that xyzBot is a bot. I don't see a reason to change the way things are done, it just causes and unnecessary paradigm shift. Useight (talk) 23:19, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Any policy where we have to tell newbies they can't be named "Nanobot1", or even (as some suggest) block them for it, is a broken policy. It violates WP:BITE and fails to use common sense, both of which are more important than the fact that WP:BOTPOL gets a teeny tiny bit more confusing. I am one of the many admins who refuses to enforce this policy. rspεεr (talk) 23:24, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Not trying to be glib, but shouldn't we then work to get the policy changed?  7  00:13, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm all for changing it. rspεεr (talk) 01:29, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

But a policy where we tell newbies they can't be named "JoeSysop", or even (as some suggest) block them for it, is not broken? Anomie⚔ 04:53, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, there's the common sense difference that "bot" shows up more frequently in names or nicknames, while "JoeSysop" is an improbable nickname and more likely someone deliberately trying to appear to have undue authority. The word "Bot" doesn't do that. Is there any realistic, relevant problem that comes from a user named "bot" editing as a human? rspεεr (talk) 08:39, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I remember seeing a case once where someone who's job was a system administrator for some reason wanted their username based on that, so it's not all that improbable. If you don't think that the user being mistaken for a bot or people mistaking bots for human users (more than they already do) is "realistic" or "relevant" I'm not going to be able to convince you, so I'm not going to waste my time trying. Anomie⚔ 18:57, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, you could convince me somewhat that it was realistic by giving me an example. Just provide a link to such a case of mistaken identity. rspεεr (talk) 09:05, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

• I think names which imply they have a role when they don't should not be allowed. "davidwrsteward" should not be allowed, but "Ship's Steward, S.S. Pinafore" would be okay. While most names ending in "bot" imply a wiki-bot, names like "I, Robot" or "Bottoms up" do not. WP:COMMONSENSE should be the guiding factor, not a script. However, to prevent the harm that can come from letting someone register a name then forcing them to change it, names ending in "bot" should not be allowed without review, and users should not be allowed to ask for such a name without first being shown the relevant part of the username policy. Ditto words containing "sysop" or "admin" and the like. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:23, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Policy is fine when applied with common sense, though your example above isn't really good as Steward could easily be a last name, whilst Admin or Sysop is unlikely to be. NJA (t/c) 06:56, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Nobody's suggesting blindly matching substrings as in "Talbot", but there has been a significant gray area of nicknames people have wanted to use that were reported as too bot-like. That's why I'm focusing on "Nanobot1" as a prime example -- I believe it's a perfectly legitimate nickname, but some people want to block the user. rspεεr (talk) 08:39, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not too concerned over Nanobot# either, however this discussion has went from a query on a name or two towards whether or not policy should be scrapped, and if so how to handle the names, etc. NJA (t/c) 08:45, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

If we're okay with names such as Nanobot (and I hope we are), which names are left to handle? That is, can you give a real example of a username someone has used with "bot" in it, where you believe they needed to be blocked or otherwise forced to change their name? No point in having a policy if there are no cases in which we'd want to enforce it. rspεεr (talk) 10:48, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Which is really the crux of my point. Administrators are supposed to use discretion, and that discretion would mean most of us would give Nanobot a pass. I mentioned originally that most "violations" of this nature wind up being removed without action, because in our discretion we've decided that most people with "bot" somewhere in their name are not actually impersonating bots. A rule ceases to be useful when the enforcement thereof becomes the exception rather than the norm. As always, policy should be descriptive, not prescriptive - and if standard operating procedure is to not block these accounts, then the policy should be reflective of that. Shereth 15:48, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Here's how I personally arrived at the conclusion that this is a bad policy: User:Siggydavebot was reported at UAA. I followed standard procedure in these cases and asked him to change his name. He replied saying he would, and then stopped editing. A week later the account was blocked. Where did he go? Did he register a new account, or did he decide Wikipedia was to bureaucratic and leave? Is it worth risking driving away new users to avoid a few seconds of confusion for experienced users? I don't think so. I'm not trying to call out the admin who blocked him, as he was also just following policy, but since then I have been unwilling to enforce this, and I think it is high time we had a serious discussion about not having this policy anymore. It makes much more sense to require that bot accounts clearly identify themselves as such on their userpages. The scenario I described has played out again and again, taking up the time of admins who work UAA and possibly depriving us of new editors for a very questionable purpose. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Restriction against "bot" - possible solutions

How about we have a guideline that says if your username is not likely to be confusing, or you have taken steps in your editing and user pages to eliminate confusion, then you are okay. This means users like Talbot might be required to have a signature and a note at the top of their user and user talk pages saying they are not bots. The edit histories are already clear, you either have a b or you don't. We could also encourage new bots to adopt standard naming schemes to avoid confusion, such as always ending in "-bot." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:59, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Signature would be massive overkill - it's not very useful to have "I am not a bot" showing up time and time again in signatures. By requiring users to make it clear on their userpage that they are indeed not a bot is akin to the restrictions we have on the use of well-known names and is not objectionable and I would consider this approach a potential compromise. Still, I do not think that users having "bot" somewhere in their username is a problem at all and that such users shouldn't be burdened with special userpage disclaimers. The distinction between human users and bots is pretty obvious in almost all cases. Impersonating a bot is for all intents and purposes the same thing as "running an unauthorized bot" and is a behavioral issue, not a username problem. Shereth 19:50, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Note that "you either have a b or you don't" isn't actually true. While all bots these days are given the bot flag, that was not always the case in the past and old bots that have no use for the flag may never have gotten one. And even if a bot is flagged, whether or not the b shows up must be selected by the bot for each edit (i.e. bot edits that should show up in recent changes and in watchlists will not be having the b). And, of course, the b does not show up on Special:Contributions, page history, or diffs, and IIRC it is only stored in the recentchanges table in the database and thus is completely unavailable after $wgRCMaxAge. Anomie⚔ 20:11, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, BTW, we already have a fairly standard naming scheme: bot usernames end with "bot". Which has been encouraged in WP:BOTPOL for a while now. Anomie⚔ 20:11, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I like the declaration on user page idea, also note that whilst all modern bots end with bot, some older ones in fact do not (see the list for names like User:Botpankonin). NJA (t/c) 07:12, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

You think someone named "Talbot" should have to constantly declare that they're not a bot, when this fact is plainly obvious already? Somewhere in this discussion, some people have missed the point that we are not bots. While it is useful for bots to declare that they are bots, we don't need to have any special way for humans to declare that they are human, not even by a rule like "not having the substring 'bot' in their name". Anyone with a few mirror neurons to rub together knows what a human is. rspεεr (talk) 09:05, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of it that way before but it makes abundant sense. Bots are the ones who should be explicitly identifying themselves as such, not vice versa. Shereth 13:17, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

That's more or less what I have been trying to say as well. If bots are identified as such on their user and talk pages, and that is a uniform standard, there is no need for blocks like the one that just got issued here a few minutes ago, to a user that has never even edited or been asked to change their name. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:05, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Statistics

Of the 590 accounts currently in the "bot" user group:

• 1 (User:MediaWiki default) is an account created by a MediaWiki maintenance script to attribute its edits rather than an actual bot.
• 492 end in "bot".
• 49 end in "bot" followed by a number in Arabic or Roman numerals.
• 2 (User:Xenobot Mk V and User:NVS(bot)) end in "bot" in some other reasonable manner.
• 46 do not end in "bot" in a reasonable manner.
  • 13 of the 46 begin with "Bot", "Robo", or "Robot" in some manner that is blatantly unaccidental.
  • 5 of the 46 contain (but not begin with) "Bot" in some manner that is blatantly unaccidental.
  • 7 of the 46 end in "AWB", "Script", or the like.
  • Only 19 of the 46 have edited in 2009. Only 8 of these 19 have potentially confusing usernames.

HTH. Anomie⚔ 13:48, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

It might be worth asking the editors of those 8 active bots to consider changing the account names, and leave messages for any other confusing names of the 46. IMHO Xenobot Mk V is potentially confusing, it sounds like a science-fiction robot. Xenowikibot Mk V or Xeno Mk V bot would be less ambiguous. The same problem can occur with any name that contains "bot" expecially if the rest of the name sounds sci-fi-ish. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:17, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it would hurt, and it would make things a bit more consistent to request them to bring their 'bot' name in line with how bots are currently named. As evidenced above, this would only affect a handful of them, and I doubt there'd be much fuss about it. NJA (t/c) 14:52, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Note that User:Xenobot Mk V belongs to User:Xeno (as does User:Xenobot), so the base name follows the common "{{USERNAME}}bot" pattern. Not sure why it's "Mk V" rather than just "V". Anomie⚔ 21:15, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Mk is short for "Mark", see Mark (designation). I thought this was fairly common knowledge. –xeno^talk 21:16, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Of the 433 user accounts beginning with the letter A and ending with "bot" (optionally followed by a number in Arabic or Roman numerals):

• 55 are flagged bots.
• 216 have an edit count of zero as reported by the API. Note that at least some deleted edits are counted by the API.
• 127 are currently blocked.
• Of the 93 not in the above categories: list
  • 4 are placeholders for a particular user's bot, if they ever decide to run one.
  • 4 have no edits to pages other than their userspace, but are not obvious placeholders.
  • 6 are approved bots without a bot flag (all registered in 2005 or 2006).
  • 28 are bots that either never requested approval or the approval was denied, withdrawn, or expired.
  • 7 are vandalism accounts
  • 33 are apparently one-off accounts not used for blatant vandalism: they edited a few articles once, maybe created an article that was deleted, and never edited again.
  • 11 do not seem to fit in any of the above categories, although none has over 100 edits. 5 of these were created in 2006 or earlier.

Anomie⚔ 18:58, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what these statistics are supposed to tell us, but the one thing I do get out of it is that a vanishingly small number of accounts matching the SomethingBotX pattern are unapproved bots/bot impersonators. It is safe to say that no less than 50% of these accounts never edited and required no action (there might have been more as there is no indication what percentage of the blocked accounts never edited). If that statistic holds, then at least half of the reports of this type to UAA are, for all intents and purposes, a waste of time. Without knowing the circumstances of the blocked accounts, no firm conclusion as to the "success rate" of the restriction can be made, but even if every block was warranted (ie. an administrator reviewed the account, determined that the account could reasonably be mistaken for a bot, and blocked accordingly) then the rule has barely a 1 in 4 success rate. I'd bet dollars to donuts that the majority of those blocks were on-sight blocks (ie. administrator sees the pattern "bot" matched and blocks with no further review), and that only a small percent of the violations of this rule should actually be blocked. The cost to benefit ratio is just too high; too many wasted reports, too many newbie editors getting an upsetting warning over their username for something that appears innocuous to the casual user, too many admins wasting keystrokes/mouseclicks following up on accounts that need no block. Shereth 19:59, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm mainly trying to give us real numbers to argue about instead of people just guessing at how many are this or that.

57 of the blocked accounts have an edit count of 0, which are included in the 216 total accounts with 0 edits. 1 was blocked for "abuse", 1 with a message "Yeah right", 2 for being unapproved bots, 3 for being impostors, 6 as socks, 7 with a message "user...", 8 with a message "please contact an administrator for verification purposes, as described on this page" (possibly also impostors, as 5 are for "AntiVandalBot#" names), and 29 referring to the username. Do note that those 29 include accounts such as User:A self professed vandal bot, and it is always possible that the stated block reason is not the correct or only reason (e.g. "username" may be a convenient excuse).

Of the 127 total blocked users (list): 1 was User:Anybot, 1 was User:AntiAntiVandalBot, 1 was "Yeah right" (looks like an AntiVandalBot impostor block), 4 were impostors, 7 with a message "user...", 8 with a message "please contact an administrator for verification purposes, as described on this page" (possibly also impostors, as 5 are for "AntiVandalBot#" names), 10 as socks, 10 as unapproved bots, 19 for vandalism/spam/etc, and 66 referring to the username.

I'm not sure how you get that "at least half" of the UAA reports are a waste of time from the fact that half of the accounts never edited, since HBC NameWatcherBot waits until the account actually edits before reporting it. Or that there is "barely a 1 in 4 success rate" from an assumption that every block was legitimate. Or that 38 out of 93 accounts (41%) is "vanishingly small". Or the unsupported assertions that there are "too many" reports or "too many" newbies getting warned for their usernames. Also, remember to assume good faith: you're accusing admins of not taking the appropriate care in issuing blocks without any evidence. Anomie⚔ 21:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not failing to assume good faith : for a long time the policy was very explicit in stating that usernames with "bot" in them get a block, so therefore the expected response was to block, no research required. I'm not faulting administrators for this deficiency, but rather targeting the policy itself; it may do you well to not be presumptive about the faith of my statements as well. As to my unsupported assertion taht there are too many newbies being given unecessary warnings, just once is too many times. I understand that ona project the size of Wikipedia, unecessary reports/blocks/warnings and the like are an inevitability. What is not acceptable are these mistakes being generated by a rule of limited value. I am not sure where you are getting a "success rate" of 41%, perhaps you have a different definition of success. To me the success of a rule is measured by comparing how many of times a rule is actually applicable out of how many times it is potentially applicable; of 433 potential violations per the bot rule, I count 24 that that were actually unapproved bots/bot impostors. That's barely 5% of the accounts with "bot" names that should be blocked due to potential/intentional confusion with a bot. A rule that gets it right one time in twenty is not a good rule in my book (that ~30 were blocked for other reasons is not material to this debate as there is no indication that having "bot" in their name is what got them caught). Shereth 21:32, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I didn't say there was a "success rate" of 41%, I said that 41% of the 93 accounts examined were unapproved bots or bot impersonators. You also seem to be wildly miscalculating your own definition of "success rate", but without knowing where your "24" came from I can only guess where your error lies. But it seems you're using some definition along the lines of "everything is potentially a violation, even actual approved bots, but only cases where someone is blatantly pretending to be a bot are actually violations" which doesn't seem to match the spirit of the rule at all. I consider that the rule only "fails" when a human user runs into the Scunthorpe problem; not when a bot (approved or not) is named ending in "bot", and not when a user is wanting to be taken for a bot. This means that the "nanobot" example being bandied about above is the same as "Samuel Steward", "Lazy bureaucrat", or "Neutron moderator" as far as WP:U goes. Anomie⚔ 00:24, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for compiling this data, Anomie. It really does help to be able to look at all the cases that actually occur. Now I think it becomes more feasible to ask this question: of the names on that list who were blocked under the username policy, are there any who we would want to block today under the policy we're discussing? Many of the blocked users, for example, were blocked under previous, much more restrictive policies; the ones with the summary of "user..." were in fact blocked when the username policy was enforced by Curps and his pattern-matching adminbot, false positives be damned.

The only examples that I think we'd want to block today are:

• The 9 or so accounts that were impostors of particular bots (which can be blocked for impersonation)
• "A self professed vandal bot" (which can be blocked under the "disruptive username" rule)

Which doesn't seem to leave a need for a special rule about blocking bot names. So are there any examples where we actually needed this rule? rspεεr (talk) 01:15, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

By that definition, we don't need a rule prohibiting "admin", "sysop", and the like either unless someone is actually trying to impersonate someone. Anomie⚔ 13:20, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea, to me (no rule prohibiting). I know you don't agree, but it's normally better to take care of problems like this manually, on a case by case basis, rather then imposing an indiscriminate rule on everyone.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:51, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. A blanket prohibition against impersonation makes more sense than breaking it down to prohibited keywords and phrases. Shereth 14:45, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

If the whole paragraph in question were removed, I could live with that. But it does leave the question open over what is "impersonation" in this context and what isn't; some here seem to think any name containing "admin" is impersonation while the only way to impersonate a bot is to violate WP:U#Similar usernames. Anomie⚔ 18:28, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. The original gist of the restriction was a prohibition on "misleading" usernames. In retrospect, however, I doubt that anyone is going to be misled into believing that someone with phrases like "bot", "bureaucrat", "admin" and so on actually are what their username claims. We may do well to completly remove the restrictions on so-called "misleading" usernames, as attempting to mislead someone is ultimately a behavioral issue rather than a username issue. "Impersonation" should probably me clarified to be understood as using a name identical to/significantly similar to either a well-known person or an existing Wikipedia username. Shereth 18:38, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

that seems not to be the case. New users tend very much to get confused about who is or isnt an administrator, or whether someone who sent them a message is a machine or a human. bot in most cases should be restricted to bots, and bots must be required to use it. DGG ( talk ) 16:11, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Other access levels

In the above section, The Anome Anomie compared the name "Nanobot1" to some other examples. This is what happens if you try to register any of his examples:

The user name "Samuel Steward" has been blacklisted from creation. Wikipedia username policy
does not allow names that are misleading, promotional, offensive or disruptive. Please select
another username that complies with policy, or if you want to seek approval for a username, you can
do so by filing a request at Wikipedia:Request an account.

The user name "Lazy bureaucrat" has been blacklisted from creation. Wikipedia username policy
does not allow names that are misleading, promotional, offensive or disruptive. Please select
another username that complies with policy, or if you want to seek approval for a username, you can
do so by filing a request at Wikipedia:Request an account.

The user name "Neutron moderator" has been blacklisted from creation. Wikipedia username policy
does not allow names that are misleading, promotional, offensive or disruptive. Please select
another username that complies with policy, or if you want to seek approval for a username, you can
do so by filing a request at Wikipedia:Request an account.

So it does seem that it is current practice to disallow usernames containing Wikipedia access levels. It looks like this discussion is more than just a discussion on "bot": instead, we should discuss whether all access levels should be disallowed. To me, it does not make any sense to disallow "steward" but allow "bot", since these are both innocuous words that happen to have a special meaning on Wikipedia. I think the same arguments apply to all categories of names containing access levels. Draftydoor (talk) 12:29, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Hope you don't mind, I corrected your attribution. Anomie⚔ 13:17, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I think the prohibition against 'steward' is actually kind of redundant as there are currently none on en-wiki, and it's a surname in the British Isles and likely elsewhere. NJA (t/c) 18:21, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Not to mention the fact that anyone who actually knows that a "steward" is a fairly important position in the WMF heierarchy is not going to be fooled by someone with "steward" in their name. Same goes for "bureaucrat" and some of the others ... Shereth 18:34, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Policy addendum to handle deliberately confusing usernames

Shereth raised the issue of impersonation. I recommend inserting this text as a new paragraph at the end of Confusing usernames:

“ Usernames which would lead a reasonable editor to mistakenly assume the user has position within Wikipedia or with the Wikipedia foundation are not allowed without a clear disclaimer on the user or user talk page. The same applies to usernames with a history of confusion. This specifically includes usernames likely to imply the editor has administrator, bot, or other advanced rights. It does not include clearly non-confusing usernames that merely happen to include words like administrator or bot, such as Windows 2000 Administrator or Francis Talbot. Likewise, usernames which would lead a reasonable editor to falsely assume the user has a connection to a real person, organization, internet identity, or other identity also require a disclaimer. Obviously false names like "United States President" or "Jimbo Wales's Mommy" do not need a disclaimer unless the editor's history indicates confusion is likely without one. ”

This phrasing puts the burden on users to be non-confusing for wiki-role-soundalike names like "Talbot" or "NASA Administrator" but has a slightly lesser burden for associations with off-wiki people, organizations, etc. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:51, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Impersonation is pretty well covered in the policy, specifically the sections dealing with "Real names" and "Similar user names"; there is no need to reiterate this fact. I would instead prefer to see changes to the section titled "Choosing an appropriate user name". Specifically, I would like to see the fifth paragraph modified to something along the following lines :

• As part of the rule against misleading usernames, your username must not give the impression that your account has permissions which it does not have. Usernames that imply a position of authority at Wikipedia are not allowed. Your username should also not create the impression that your account is a bot account, a type of automated account with special editing privileges, and should not contain references to automated Wikipedia tasks or processes.

I prefer leaving things simple and open. The typical triggers such as "bot", "admin", "sysop" and the like can still be reported by the namewatcher bot, but watering down the policy so as not to specifically prohibit these types of phrases should allow adminitrators more leeway with applying common sense without having to worry about enforcing a policy by word. Shereth 20:03, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

What about the edit filter prohibiting steward? I think it should be adjusted to simply be reported by the namewatcher bot at UAA rather than restricted completely. Again, there are no stewards at all on en-wiki, and most people haven't a clue what one is anyhow. This way innocent ole John Steward can have the name he's always wanted, whilst Wiki Steward would be blocked on site by an admin. NJA (t/c) 21:20, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

The filter should most definitely be altered - prohibiting the word "steward" is probably the most nonsensical of them all, given that it is a real name and that the "steward" position is pretty arcane by Wikipedia standards ... Shereth 21:26, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I guess the only issue is that I believe steward is blocked by the global blacklist, thus it would be more effort to accomplish this completely sensible proposal. We have our local whitelist, but I'm thinking the global blacklist would ignore out whitelist? NJA (t/c) 22:00, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Now what?

The conversation seems to have largely died down. I'm not sure if it's enough to constitute any consensus to change, but it does seem like an awful lot of constructive discussion to simply fade away into the archives with no result. Ideas on what to do now, if anything? Shereth 20:01, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I believe it was overshadowed by the policy discussion thread below. I think (and I believe consensus is) that the restriction on 'Steward' is daft on en-wiki, but we have technical barriers. Essentially we have control over the namewatcherbot, but that's redundant as we can't edit the global blacklist which restricts Steward altogether. I'm unsure of the technical capabilities of en-wiki's white-list, ie whether white-listing something here overrides the global blacklist. I'm guessing it would not, and I'm unsure of how well the proposal to allow Steward globally would go, as it appears to be widely used on other wiki's, e.g. meta. NJA (t/c) 22:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm a bit frustrated with what happened here. The only issue I had intended to discuss in this thread was if we should retain the restriction on "bot." That conversation has become lost in a pile of statistics and other username issues. I would like to kind of re-initiate this whole thing, and keep the individual issues separate this time. Although I agree there is already widespread agreement about the "steward" thing. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:18, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

It did get lost in the clutter and unfortunately I swallowed the bait (note : I am not implying that anyone did any intentional baiting here!). I would like to refocus on the core issue that I originally brought upand would like to see the initial question brought to some kind of real conclusion. Shereth 19:48, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

In order to discuss the restriction on "bot", it was necessary to discuss the wider issue of restrictions on names implying special Wikipedia status in general. Anomie⚔ 00:49, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Let's sort it then

As Anomie (basically) said above: if we're going to address oddities in the policy, then let's do it all in one go. My original query on Steward wasn't meant to derail any conclusion to the conversation that seemed to have a general view that 'bot' is handled poorly by some admins who block on sight. I also think that the view here was that the Steward restriction is redundant, though without some comment from someone with knowledge of the black and whitelists, I think we're stuck on that for now. See my last post about Steward to know where we're at on that as of now.

Okay, so returning to bot -- let's make it clear straight away what relevant bits of bot account policy says:

• a bot account is to have bot in its username at the beginning or end;
• a bot must identify itself on its userpage with {{bot}}.

Thus in terms of username policy, aside from the discrepancy noted above (ie 'bot' being at beginning or end of the name), I don't think it could be watered done anymore than it is. In fact, we may need to be a little more descriptive. A lot of people argue to keep it to a minimum, but all that's done is left us with confusion. Essentially, we need admins to do some investigative work and to use common sense rather than to block the hell out of a name with bot in it. How to deal with admin attitude I think is another thread altogether, but what we can do is make policy clear on how to handle names that are questionable to admins who do use common sense. A recent one I came acrossed was PersonalBot. So how should similar ones be handled in future, aside from the basic warning that the name may be against policy (which is what I did)? Do we use an expanded warn template to explain the policy, and then tell them to either change the name or create a new account with the threat that continuing to edit without addressing the concern on their talk page would lead to a block? Assuming they respond, and make clear that they understand the policy, but want to keep their name (and you're confident they won't be a nuisance), do we then ask them to place a template on their user page noting that they're not a bot? Again, real bot's will likely make first edits to WP:BOTPOL and will be required to display a template saying they are a bot on their user page. NJA (t/c) 15:17, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Drive-by answers to some of the questions posed and other opinions:

• Inclusion of the character sequence "bot" in usernames should not be prohibited
• Impersonating a bot (operating an unapproved bot account) is a behavioral problem, not a username problem
• Bots should be required to self-identify (which they are); human users should not

My rationale for the above has been stated in abundance previously. Shereth 15:39, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed with Shereth. We should keep the rule that bots have to self-identify as bots, including in the username, but there's no compelling reason to make humans self-identify as human. So let's keep the "bots must be named bot" in the bot policy, while taking the "humans must not be named bot" out of the username policy. rspεεr (talk) 18:17, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, now we're talking. That is exactly what I think we should do, and like Shereth, I believe I have already articulated numerous reasons, including actual examples, in the previous conversation. I don't mean to get all sci-fi geeky here, but shouldn't human editors rights come first? Make the bots self identify, and leave anyone who isn't running an unauthorized bot alone. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:32, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

While the string "BOT" is not a big problem by itself, it should still be disallowed if it gives actually the impression that it is an actual automated Wikipedia process unless it is actually intended to be a bot. Such usernames could include the usernames of other editors with the string "bot" somehow incorporated (where the account is associated with that user), or usernames with "bot" that imply a specific task. Triplestop x3 20:12, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I still find it unlikely that someone will impersonate a bot via name but not edit patterns; someone named User:StubCategoryFixerBot who performs mundane, obviously manual edits isn't really causing a problem except to cause a few editors to scratch their heads. On the other hand, if User:StubCategoryFixerBot is running around making rapid, similar edits to the categories in stub articles, they are either running an unauthorized bot or at least pretending to. In either case, the problem is more behavioral than a problem with the actual username. I see no issues with having the namewatcher bot continue to report them so they can be checked on, but unless a user is actually impersonating a bot I don't see the problem. Similarly, if someone creates an account User:TriplestopBot, the real issue is not that they are impersonating a bot but rather that they are impersonating you by extension ... Shereth 20:25, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I have no other concerns besides that and I would support repealing the restriction. Triplestop x3 21:54, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Just to reiterate, I support Shereth's, etc al, view as outlined above. I'm speaking from the "peanut gallery" (I don't have this page watchlisted or anything. I think someone posted a note about this discussion on the Village Pump a little while ago), so take that for what it's worth.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 01:22, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Just to reiterate, I disagree with those views for the reasons discussed the first time around. Is restarting the whole discussion with nothing new really productive? Anomie⚔ 04:54, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, it seems we are forming a consensus to change the policy, and you haven't elaborated any further on your reasons why you're against it. Can we make the change, then? rspεεr (talk) 07:22, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

No objections from me. Might not hurt to give it a little more time to have a few additional supporters though.  7  07:31, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

• I like Triplestops idea from above. It's more of a loosening of the restriction than a removal of it. So "Beeblebroxbot" or "redlinkremovalbot" would still be disallowed as implying a bot account, but harmless false positives like "ninjabot" or even "imnotabot" could remain without being hassled. Seems like a fair compromise. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:02, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Sure I have. You just didn't agree, and I gave up trying to talk to you. Anomie⚔ 01:50, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

I understand the concern here, I just worry that loosening it in this fashion will only make the rule more complex. Right now the rule is just "no 'bot' in your username". We may not like it, but at least it is simple both to new users and to those enforcing the rule. Loosening it to something like "You can't have 'bot' in your username if the other part has some kind of Wikipedia process in it, or if it has another user's name in it ..." adds, in my opinion, unecessary layers of complexity. The rule should be simple and straightforward : "Your user name should not imply that your account is a bot account." Those of us enforcing the rule aren't going to have problems differentiating what does and does not imply bot status, and I can pretty much guarantee no newbie user is going to accidentally sign up as "redlinkremovalbot" ... these types of issues can be handled with existing policies, rather than having to write them in to the username policy. Shereth 20:35, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Or let me put it this way : someone who signs up as "Beeblebroxbot" or "redlinkremovalbot" most assuredly knows that they are implying bot status, so what point is there in codifying this? Shereth 20:40, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

That's an interesting point. What if we swung the other way, just remove the restriction altogether, and only block if someone actually is running an unauthorized bot, or explicitly claiming to be a bot when they are not, rather than merely implying that they are? Isn't that the real problem? The behavior of impersonating a bot or running an unauthorized bot is a bigger problem than having a name with bot in it by far. The username policy suggests that we block for the bigger problem and not the smaller one, but it seems flip-flopped in this case. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:16, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

No, I think there is no blocking of people involved just of accounts. There are a whole bunch of bots that have no bot flag (because they run slowly, and are manually supervised, or because they should appear in watch lists and RC, for example), and these are identified only by "bot" as a suffix or near suffix in general. If we followed the process for moderators etc, then bot owners wouldn't be able to create accounts - unless we had a MediaWiki fix allowing accounts to create their own bot-derivative account names "UserBot and UserBot n". Rich Farmbrough, 14:41, 21 December 2009 (UTC).

Someone asked if people were ever mistaken for bots. Boten Anna should answer that. Rich Farmbrough, 14:32, 21 December 2009 (UTC).

• Moreover if someone registers "Fred Bloggs Bot" and there is no User:Fred Blogs, there is no guarantee that Fred might not arrive shortly, and want not to get messages about the behaviour of User:Fred Bloggs Bot. Rich Farmbrough, 14:46, 21 December 2009 (UTC).

Thank you

This is a quick thank-you note for the good work on the Signpost survey. Also: is anyone interested in switching this page from the conduct policy subcat to deletion policy? The rule of thumb is: if someone browsing through the other policies in the subcat won't get the whole picture if they don't see this page, then this page probably belongs in that subcat. This page doesn't do a lot to enlighten readers of the other conduct policies, but personally, I always found that understanding usernames went hand-in-hand with G11 work. Not sure if this is a consideration, but I'm going to stop following changes to Conduct policy at WP:Update/1 from January on ... hopefully someone else will step in, but it would be nice to continue to track this page. - Dank (push to talk) 13:42, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

You know way more about policy cats than I do, but it seems intuitively wrong to have the username policy in the deletion policy section. Why are you dropping conduct policies from update? Gigs (talk) 14:25, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

In geek-speak, one of the things I really like about Wikipedia is that a lot of information exists in a quantum state ... partly right and partly wrong at the same time, and very dependent on the observer. This observer has put a lot of effort into understanding and promoting understanding of the conduct policies and it's not working, or not in the way I hoped and imagined it would. It may be that it's not the right time, or not the right observer, or it may be that I've realized something about my proper role on Wikipedia, or ... and these would be my two favorite guesses ... I don't have enough practical experience with the conduct policies, or else the same kind of magic that drives the constant improvement of content and deletion policies doesn't work on conduct policies. - Dank (push to talk) 14:36, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Moving this into deletion policy seems really wrong to me... I already think people think of the username policy too much like deletion. rspεεr (talk) 19:15, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

It could go in both sub-cats if it would help someone. Rich Farmbrough, 14:50, 21 December 2009 (UTC).

E-mail addresses

Why are e-mail addresses not permitted as a username? I understand it is a possible privacy concern, but it is not much worse than a real name (and one can abandon an email address if targeted for harassment). I have seen a user who is mandated by ArbCom to have a username that is the same as their email address. Intelligentsium 17:30, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I think the main concern is that it would almost always be a form of promotion. If I were [email protected] then that's kind of an implicit ad for my web site at www.gigs.com (I don't actually own that domain) Gigs (talk) 22:51, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

But then that would fall under promotional names, and could be blocked for that; a personal email address (such as [email protected]) would not be promotional, would it? Intelligentsium 17:23, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

E-mail addresses and web sites are very often unrelated; while I receive e-mail through both Gmail and the MIT Alumni Association, I have no control over the content of either Web site nor any reason to promote them. I thought the reason to ban e-mail addresses was the possibility that it's someone else's e-mail address, as a form of harassment or a spam trap. MediaWiki can confirm e-mail addresses, but it has no reason to think of the username as an e-mail address. Because e-mail addresses are commonly used as usernames elsewhere on the Web, it would create a large burden for us if we wanted to let people use e-mail usernames but prevent them from abusing them. It's easier for us to just prevent them in software. That's my attempt at an explanation, anyway. rspεεr (talk) 04:23, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Never mind; from further research I have seen that usernames involving the @ character, as do all email addresses, make administrative action extremely difficult. Thanks anyway. Intelligentsium 20:06, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Redirects from misspelled usernames

The policy currently indicates:

If your username is commonly misspelled, consider helping people by adding a redirect from the misspelled username to your actual username. (Any user page can be created by any contributor, whether an associated account exists or not.)

Should not this guidance be accompanied by advice to create a dopplegänger account at the misspelled username in order to minimise the risk of impersonation? I am aware that the software has some built-in restrictions on account creation to address this issue, but will that catch all instances of attempted impersonation (e.g., User:Exampel or User:ExampIe ("I" instead of "l") trying to impersonate User:Example)? Thank you, –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 22:36, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. I've gone ahead and put some wording in to that effect. Shereth 22:53, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Shereth's addition looks good to me. Gigs (talk) 23:10, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Likewise. –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 07:36, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Back in the saddle

Yay. Lately, we've had a surge in tagging clear spam in userspace, and I'm trying to run through it as efficiently as I can. I know people have concerns about soft-blocking stale accounts, but it would save me some time if I didn't have to check the deleted contribs on User:BuyMyStuffNow! before hitting my AutoHotKey macro to uw-softerblock his ass. Can I at least get a temporary injunction that it's okay to block accounts without checking date of last activity, as long as the template is using the "Please create a new account" language (i.e. softerblock). I've done thousands of these in the past and don't recall a problem. - Dank (push to talk) 13:52, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

As long as it is unquestionably blatant like that it should't be a problem. For what it is worth there is no injunction against blocking stale violations, I believe the intent was to discourage the reporting of them to save admins the time and effort of having to deal with clearly inactive accounts. Shereth 14:03, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks much. - Dank (push to talk) 14:16, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I, for one, am not reporting -- at least not deliberately -- "stale" accounts, though the definition of "stale" seems to change weekly around here. Not to mention I came across a "stale" -- well, already-blocked a couple of months ago, at least -- account just today who had resumed the spamming on their User-talk page. --Calton | Talk 14:32, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

To be sure, I haven't seen an increase of stale reports - in fact, I haven't seen a stale report myself for a little while. Shereth 14:39, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Yep, good work. I'm not checking the reports at UAA, I'm checking the userspace db-spam pages. - Dank (push to talk) 14:41, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

(talk) included in a username

Don't think this is a huge problem, but should there be some restriction against someone adding (talk) as part of their username? Not sure why I am just now thinking of this, but at one point a vandal tried to get me blocked by creating an account that matched my username but included "(talk)" at the end in an apparent (unsuccessful) effort to get me blocked. Account here. The account was quickly blocked as a vandalism-only account.

It is pretty clear that any such username could also quickly be blocked under the "confusing" category (as intentionally created to be confused with another editor), so perhaps rather than a WP:U policy change this would be better served as filter in the new account creation interface. Any thoughts?  7  04:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I scanned some of the username lists (first few thousand listings) and I didn't see a lot of this. It doesn't seem to be common enough to worry about, yet at least. Gigs (talk) 19:50, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Shared accounts

I wonder if the restriction against shared accounts is only here at the username policy because it doesn't seem to belong anywhere else? I don't see it as being strictly a username issue as much as a generic conduct issue. Granted, the username can often be the first clue that an account is being shared but this is not universal - User:RenAndStimpy could look like a shared account at first glance but merely be a fan of the show, whereas User:Shereth looks innocuous enough but could be used by fifty different people (not that it is!) If there really is nowhere else for this particular restriction I suppose it can stay where it is, the only reason I ask is a couple of recent WP:RFCN discussions that touched on shared accounts and I realized that judging by the username alone is insufficient to judge whether an account is a shared account or not. Thanks, Shereth 15:08, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

There is a copyright concern as well, our licenses require attribution, so each username should represent one person. I think it's enough of a username related issue that it should stay here. Gigs (talk) 19:52, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Company names as part of a username?

I can't find anything in the talk archive, so I'm going to ask. The policy prohibits using a company name as a username, but what about using the company name as part of the username?

Clearly some usages are confusing and would be disallowed. For well-known company Cadbury, usernames like Cadbury Webmaster or Cadbury Marketing would be misleading/confusing. What about names like Cadbury Fan or Cadbury Lover? Are those sufficiently distanced from the company name to be allowable usernames, or are they disallowed because the Cadbury company name is clearly identifiable in them? —C.Fred (talk) 07:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

That's where admin discretion truly needs to come into play. Thus if there are no edits we should wait for editing so that we can see whether the person simply chose the name of a brand they like and aren't truly the company or affiliated. The issue is in policy that accounts should be for an individual. I've found that using the generic username concern {{uw-username}} or an expanded (for COI) template {{uw-coi-username}} do the trick just fine without blocks. We should avoid blocking unless we're positive it's for the good of preventing future disruption to Wikipedia, as we don't want to scare away newbs who may end up being valuable contributors. Hope this is helpful? And in case it was missed I do not believe an expansion of the scope of policy would be hlepful or beneficial, we need admins who can think rationally about what the purpose of the policy is. NJA (t/c) 08:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed with NJA. Company name something else (e.g. firstname) is probably almost always fine, and not against WP:U. I feel that the main reason for prohibiting company names outright is from the "group account" perspective, not the "promotional account" perspective. Person name Company name does not indicate a group account, so as long as it's not promotional it's not a problem.  7  09:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

This is something that had confused me as well...should (could?) we maybe be a little more specific in the policy to show the difference between something like "McDonald's *insert something non-promotional here*" and "McDonald's *insert something promotional here*"? Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 13:13, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

My thought is that it may be tough to clearly identify when something goes over that fine line between non-promotional and promotional, and this may be something that is better left to the gut feel of the reviewing admin. I think that perfect clarity in the policy would be nice to have, but if the policy becomes TLDR because we have been overly detailed then it becomes counterproductive.  7  00:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Unless the policy is confusing—which it is as currently written. Another user said that the use of a company name in any form is against the guideline, which is why I came here for clarification. (The discussion in question is at User talk:Woolworths Monitor, where I've reached the point of, if you can't find a good username that uses "Woolworths" in it, maybe it's easier to find something that doesn't use it.) —C.Fred (talk) 00:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

(←) I agree with your comments in that conversation. The bigger issue with that user is the likely COI that exists if all they wish to do is to clarify facts on Woolworths related pages. The username itself isn't the problem. This user, regardless of their username, needs to be fully aware of COI and NPOV. The policy as written uses the phrase "explicit use" - which to me means use of a company name (and only a company name) as your username. It does not mention use of a company name as part of your username. The first point brought up in WP:CORPNAME is the point of shared accounts: Accounts are for an individual; should represent you; should not be shared. To be honest, the name Woolworths Monitor didn't sound at all strange to me until the user stated their intentions. I think the group/shared issue is the primary concern, and the promotional/COI issues come next. If this username only edited non-Woolworths related articles I would have zero concern with the name. I actually wondered, does Woolworth make monitors now? Shall we invite User:Bidgee to join this side of the conversation?  7  01:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Reading my rambling above it may sound like I am saying that group account issues are more serious than spam or COI and I just want to make it clear that quite the opposite is true. Spam, COI, NPOV, etc... are all much more important policies for the protection of project, but what I am referring to is this specific section - WP:CORPNAME, and that it's primary purpose for being singled out is for Group issues first and foremost, and for SPAM/COI as a second potential problem.  7  01:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

In that Woolworths example, the use of monitor with it implies (to me) some type of COI, whether positive or negative for the company. It doesn't imply a group account. This is where an evaluation of their edits and admin discretion becomes crucial, because if they didn't edit the Woolworths article then what's the real issue? However as they did edit that article, it becomes a potential COI issue (not really a username policy issue, ie it doesn't imply use as a group, nor is it necessarily promotional). I think in this case, the best course of action would have been to bring up any questionable edits made to the Woolworths article at WP:COIN.

What that said, when in doubt it really doesn't hurt to push for a change of name (as was done here), possibly by use of the generic template, or the possibly more suited to this case {{uw-coi-username}} template. Even though I don't see an obvious shared name vio in this example, the template suffices in warning about COI and gives instructions on how to change the name w/o blocks. NJA (t/c) 09:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)