Wikipedia talk:Username policy/Archive 23

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How to edit your username?

I need to know how to edit the username of the account I made. Forgot to add spaces and capital letters. Hadi bin Arshad 02:37, 26 September 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hadibinarshad (talk • contribs)

@
open channel
) 02:40, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

RFC: Promotional user names

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is no consensus to implement the proposal. Firstly, I would like to thank everyone who participated in this discussion. This was a complicated discussion with many different perspectives, but one that, I believe, needed to be had. The purpose was to consider whether to amend the username policy to allow edits from usernames that are the names of companies or groups, which are currently prohibited by both the
hard block
is used, preventing them from creating a new account on their own. The focus of this discussion is the soft block cases.)
Supporters argued that allowing such usernames to edit would make it easier for the community to identify and manage promotional editing, since such usernames have the benefit of declaring the users’
conflict of interest
(COI) directly and honestly. Current practice, on the other hand, encourages users to come back with new usernames that no longer have anything to do with their COI, making it ultimately more difficult for the community to detect their COI edits. Supporters also argued that it would be easier for the community to keep track of the edits of one shared corporate account, rather than many several smaller employee accounts that may or may not be linked together. Another argument is that the proposal would place more emphasis on the contributions themselves, rather than the username, which is comparably trivial.
Opponents argued that the benefit from the proposal would be limited because such corporate accounts would already be strongly discouraged from editing their own company articles, and if they were a shared account for their company, they would have no motivation to make contributions to articles unrelated to their company or otherwise incorporate themselves into this community. The current practice of blocking with a message like {{uw-softerblock}} allows the community to educate companies upfront and directly that promotional editing is not allowed under any username. Additionally, some companies – especially paid editing firms – would continue to create new, nondescript usernames anyway to evade scrutiny, defeating the purpose of the proposal. Finally, the kind of companies who would most likely create such shared, role accounts are non-notable and unsuitable for inclusion in Wikipedia, making it pointless for them to continue editing here.
One potential area to move forward on is improving the connection between soft-blocked usernames that imply shared use and the new usernames that are created as a result of those blocks. A few proposed suggestions include a software change that forces a user to change their username on their next login (supported by WereSpielChequers and MER-C) and creating a policy of coming back under a account like “John123 (WidgetsInc)” (a brainstormed suggestion by Ks0stm). This would allow us to continue the goal of educating users about COI editing while eliminating the need for shared accounts. I would encourage further discussion along those lines if this is something that we want.
Respectfully submitted, Mz7 (talk) 19:30, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Should we allow users to edit with promotional user names that imply shared use instead of soft blocking them and instructing them to change their usernames? agtx 17:56, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Proposal

I'm bringing this as an RFC straight away, because this is a change to longstanding policy that needs broad community input if it is going to be adopted. I get that this seems crazy, but hear me out. First, it's pretty clear that we have a problem with undisclosed paid editing here, as recent events have made clear. I don't know what to do about the socks, but this proposal deals with users who have already told us that they have

WP:COI
. The current policy prohibits promotional usernames, probably because they encourage promotional edits and are generally spammy. We also prohibit shared-use usernames to enforce our policy that one person should have one account. I agree that shared accounts are bad, but paid editing is way, way worse. We should change the policy to make it easier to identify promotional edits, even if it comes at the expense of having some shared accounts.

Right now, when a user has a promotional user name but isn't making promotional edits, we soft block them and tell them to come back as some other user name. But that doesn't achieve the goal of prohibiting promotional edits and undisclosed COI edits. When they had the promotional name, the user had effectively declared their conflict. But after their softblock, that person can come back as anyone and start editing anywhere. Without assuming bad faith, we can't assume that "MaryQ" who comes back and edits the company page is the same as the "WidgetsInc" account that got blocked. The policy encourages paid editors to do their paid editing in a manner that makes it more difficult for us to detect and handle appropriately.

So let's try a radically different solution: Let them edit under their company's name. Seriously. They obviously want to tell us who they are, or they wouldn't have called their account "WidgetsInc." We obviously don't have a problem with company names in usernames, since that's what we suggest that the promotional users call themselves when we block them (

WP:OUTING
problem. If the edits aren't problematic, then they can stay.

I discussed something similar last year and had a whole policy proposal drawn up, but it's just too complicated, and I've come to believe it's fighting a losing battle. Yes, there is the problem that companies might think they own the user account and try to get access. We can tell them they're out of luck. Yes, there could be impersonators. But there can be impersonators now too. Nothing stops me from creating the account "Joe at WidgetsInc." I think that we're going to have to concede a little bit of ground to help us tackle the larger problem. agtx 17:56, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Survey

  • Support as proposer. agtx 17:56, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose I really don't see the benefit here. Whether or not a person is conducting COI edits has no connection to their username. It might be easier to detect, but that's all. Any good editor would be able to detect problematic edits by following long standing practice in constructing good articles. I also fail to see what benefit this brings if we allow "Widgets, Inc." to be an account name when we're generally not going to allow them to edit the article on their company anyway. Given that we're not going to allow it, the ones that would have created a separate, seemingly unconnected, account are going to do it anyway. This is just a shell game. I'm sorry. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:07, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
      • I just want to clarify; this really doesn't make any sense. If we were to allow a corporate account to be so named, such as User:WidgetsInc, we're not going to just allow the name to exist; we'll ask for confirmation that the company really set that account up for their use. So, the company goes through the trouble of doing that...and then finds that lo and behold they can't edit their Widgets, Inc. article anyway. So what, that corporate account is now gong to work on some random articles having nothing to do with their company? I'm sorry, but this just doesn't make any sense. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:58, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
They may well want to edit articles on Widget, on Widget pollution, on Not-widgets, Inc. ... it will help if we can see where these edits are coming from: Noyster (talk), 12:38, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
    • I have to disagree with "any good editor." Orangemoody should have taught us that. agtx 22:14, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose per Hammersoft. One person + one account = transparent trail. I think shared accounts reduce transparency by not having a one-to-one relationship with a specific person. The name of an account does not matter. –BoBoMisiu (talk) 20:20, 5 October 2016 (UTC)
We allow unregistered users (IPs) to freely edit most existing articles, and there could well be more than one person behind an IP: Noyster (talk), 19:31, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
@James Allison: I'm going to push back a little bit here. Do you understand the promotional user names policy? Why is "WidgetsInc" promotional but "Bob from WidgetsInc" not promotional? They both sound equally promotional to me, and they both sound like accounts that shouldn't be editing the Widgets Inc page. Problem is, it's intuitive to name your account WidgetsInc, so that's what people do—what's the reason to fight it? Frankly, I don't think that we're going to get WMF to do a software fix for this anytime soon. What's wrong with trying a policy fix? agtx 14:49, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Support My main work here at WP is removing promotional edits. This would make such work much easier, first in explaining to the users what they ought to do, and second, in identifying very easily edits that need looking at. The idea of educating promotional users is much simplified if one doesn't have to explain what strikes them as arcane details, but can concentrate on the principal problem, which is the nature of the edits. My experience is that the ones who use corporate usernames are not fools, but usually relatively well meaning people who do not yet understand WP. Starting off by blocking someone is not the way to encourage understanding. DGG ( talk ) 23:35, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Support due to the excellent points given by User:DGG. 92.111.26.150 (talk) 09:08, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Support getting rid of one of numerous arcane policies that don't work... so we might as well try doing something different. However noble the principles "one person – one account" and "all users should conform to NPOV", they are unenforceable in practice, the first one in particular. The practical effects of our COI approach is that good-faith COI users very soon find themselves warned, softblocked, uv-blocked, hardblocked, or bitten in a number of ways, so a) those more determined to skew our coverage soon get underground and hide their trails, or b) those less determined either give up or engage a PR-agency that does a). DGG's points are particularly salient: "Starting off by blocking someone is not the way to encourage understanding" – I don't see we're "educating" them about anything. As long as I'm dealing with a moniker
    No such user (talk
    ) 11:26, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Support - We WANT to be able to find COI edits so that they may be carefully scrutinized. Why the HELL would we want to drive obvious COI editors underground with an ill-considered names policy? Carrite (talk) 04:57, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose for all the same reasons that this was rejected
    WP:PEREN
    .
There may be the occasional User:Bigcorp from a notable company who is willing to be User:Robert at Bigcorp and make suggestions for factual changes, but the vast majority of the accounts with company usernames are here only to advertise non-notable startups and small companies. If we allow them to edit, volunteer time will be wasted coaching them to de-peacock their contributions and look for references, only to find that when the puffery is removed there is nothing notable there.
What would you allow on user pages of company accounts? What they will want to put there is marketing fluff: "Our intellectual professionally well managed team here aids to turn budding organizations into Business Reality. That’s where we act as a gateway towards realizing your dream" etc. If the account is allowed to continue after we find that the company is non-notable, at best the user page will be a FAKEARTICLE about a NN company, and it is highly likely that they will regularly return to try to re-puff it.
It is much better to make it clear at once that Wikipedia is not for what they want to do. I routinely add to the username-block notices the sentence "Wikipedia is an
tell the world about themselves", and that is the message they need to get. JohnCD (talk
) 09:11, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
  • @
    WP:PEREN, this is not appropriate for that page. Three RFCs in three years, all with different proposals, does not make this a perennially rejected proposal of the likes of "restrict IP editing." As far as your substantive point, I think you're exaggerating what this would do. Can you explain to me how the allowing the accounts "Joe at WidgetsInc" or "Joe at Widgets PR Agency" sends a different or better message than allowing "WidgetsInc"? Because those accounts are allowed today, right now. agtx
    16:34, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Same question for you
    Jackninja5. How does allowing "WidgetsInc" pose more of an impersonation problem than allowing "Joe at WidgetsInc"? agtx
    16:35, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
Differences between User:Joe at WidgetsInc and User:WidgetsInc:
  • We don't have the shared-use problem. We are dealing with, and can try to educate, an individual.
  • I think it not impossible that as "Joe", an individual contributor, knowing that we are dealing with him as an individual, may come to feel at least partly a member of the WP community, not just someone here to plug the company line.
  • We can insist that Joe's user page is about him and his Wikipedia work, not about the company. It is more difficult to prevent a company account's user page being about the company. Blatant puffery can be deleted, but the line between promotion and description ("just telling the world the facts") is not easily drawn - what about a list of the company's products? A history of their growth? A list of awards they have received? Many non-notable companies, denied an article, would be happy to settle for a neutrally-written account on their company user page, and would see that as "Our Wikipedia page", but do we want to allow that kind of FAKEARTICLE about NN companies? and do we want to do the necessary patrolling to prevent them being refilled with puffery every time someone new takes over the WP job within the company?
The main problem I see with company accounts is not with notable companies, where we need to prevent them getting too spammy, but where a properly educated company user can help with accuracy; it is with the far more numerous non-notable companies, who want to "be in Wikipedia" but have in fact nothing to contribute that we want. JohnCD (talk) 21:03, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Support per DGG, but on the condition that their connection to the company is verified in some way. ---- Patar knight - chat/contributions 19:18, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Per other opposes. -
    open channel
    )     21:19, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose --SI 01:20, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose — I'm not sure what this is trying to accomplish; there's rarely an issue with identifying SPAs. They practically scream SPA through their actions. We also don't want to be in the business of "proving" the person operating the Some Corp account is truly a representative of Some Corp. On top of that, allowing them to edit with their faceless "Company Name" account flies in the face of being able to associate 1 account to 1 person and is an implicit violation of
    WP:SOCK. Furthermore, it muddies the waters of what, exactly, a block means. Our blocks mean anyone using the account, past, present, and future—not "only that one person who used the account that one time." We don't outsource our block enforcement to the "supervisor" on the other end of the account who'll claim the "offending employee has been terminated for their awful behavior." Finally, if someone creates an account and spams their non-notable company—and that's almost always the case—it should be blocked immediately so volunteers don't have to keep monitoring it. Ditto goes for SPAs that come to "maintain their brand image." It's frustrating for normal editors to deal with faceless role accounts, and they shouldn't have to. What role and what weight will these accounts have in RfCs? Will it be fine for someone to use the main account as well as their personal one at home to !vote? We're not corporate friendly, because that's not, in the slightest, the point of the site. Neutrality is independent of what the corporation thinks or what those representing it think. --slakr\ talk
     / 02:02, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose If someone does have their username changed, it's recorded in a public log what username the account was moved to. (For example, here's the log entry for when my account was renamed.) If a user instead just creates a new account after getting blocked, that can easily go to
    WP:SPI. — Gestrid (talk
    ) 16:02, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Reluctant oppose I really appreciate the efforts to resolve this problem, and as a side-effect to reduce the ever-long backlog at
    WP:UAA. The proposal makes sense but my concern would be how to stop somebody setting up an account in the name of a corporate entity whose real intention is to disparage or parody that entity; such accounts would need to be subject to the same process as usernames that resemble names of famous people. In other words, they would need to be blocked until they prove they are who they say they are - the net effect being that (unverified) corporate accounts still get blocked on sight. Once through that process (assuming they don't just go away and create a new account with a completely unrelated user name as now), we'd have verified corporate accounts, and I can foresee a proposal further down the line allowing such accounts to be considered reliable sources in their own right. I can see it reaching the stage where Wikipedia is primarily edited by paid PR bods rather than independent volunteer editors. Let's not forget, as the proposal stands, these users would have the same rights to participate in discussions, apply for administrator tools, etc. as anybody else. While such transparency could be good, it could also backfire: an uninvolved editor might approach a dispute between User:Bob_from_Haringey and User:Geoff_from_Highbury fairly but have some inherent bias in a dispute between User:Tottenham_Hotspur_FC and User:Arsenal_FC. Then there's the problem of an individual user who is (wrongly, of course) being judged in an RfA on their low edit count but has previously carried out thousands of good edits using shared corporate accounts. In short, there are just too many potential issues this could generate, many of which we probably can't predict right now. I do agree that our current system is far from ideal, but allowing shared corporate accounts would open a can of worms. WaggersTALK
    14:49, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
  • oppose "promotional user names" is impossibly vague Jytdog (talk) 23:18, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Oppose per the points outlined by
    HALP!: I dropped the bass?
    ) 14:46, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

This seems like it would work okay for users we just give {{uw-softerblock}} to. However, there's a lot of users we hit with {{uw-spamublock}} without having to go through the 4 steps of warnings first. I worry that if this passes as-is, we'll no longer have a policy that allows us to block a bunch of users that obviously need to be blocked. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:36, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't think this would change that policy. If your actions are spammy, you'll still get hard-blocked. agtx 16:42, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

I see concern in some of the oppose votes that doing it this way doesn't allow us to educate new users. That doesn't make much sense to me. No matter what a user's name is, we can explain to them what kind of edits are promotional and what kinds aren't. But when a user doesn't have a username that indicates a COI, we run into problems with both

WP:OUTING if we try to do the same thing. Again, they're telling us that they have a conflict. Why not use that opportunity to help them learn, not tell them to go away and come back with a sneakier user name? agtx
00:19, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

So much depends upon the ethics of the company concerned. A member of Grabbit & Scarper Inc would do exactly as you say, indeed they may be up to sneaky trick already. However the press and publicity department of Megabucks International PLC may well be happy to toe the line and edit in talk space. After all the whole point of COI rules is to ensure we know about the COI and can apply due weight. If Jane@Megabucks clarifies the size of the widgets that the company make, then we should thank them. If she is adding a claim that Megabucks make better widgets than WidgetsRus SA then we treat it with due suspicion. [All company names are invented and believed not to exist] Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:36, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Both options presented are poor choices Please consider policies at other wikis as described at
    wheel warring and a strain in institutional partnerships that are desired, like collaborations with museums. At this time I do not have an opinion whether these accounts names should be allowed or prohibited, but I would like more awareness of the confusion around this issue. Also, both options - allowing them and prohibiting them - have negatives and both options are terrible choices. I do not know what choice is less harmful or more tolerable, but each of them cause significant problems that prevent better relationships with good organizations. Blue Rasberry (talk)
    20:24, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
the material at meta:Role account seems to deal with a different situation: usernames for WP functional groups or offices such as , in enWP, User:Oversight or User:WMF Legal. But if "both..,allowing them and prohibiting them...are terrible choices", what less terrible alternative is there? We can't do both at the same time, and we can't do neither. DGG ( talk ) 23:51, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
  • Needed topic - recommend a specific wording for policy. I think it's heading in the right direction and an area that needs, NEEDS more, but have to have something more specific to discuss effects and say aye or nay to. I'll also offer:
(1) I'd prefer positive forms of guidance e.g. a 'how to' paid should play rather than tweaking of 'shall nots' or a lack of any guidance;
(2) guidance say what to do based re company name (giving examples such as WatsonAtIBM or IBM1, IBM2, etcetera) but avoid exact company name, also giving explanations that the account and edits are
WP:MISLEADNAME
concerns of spoofers or ambiguity with other company of the same or similar name;
(3) this topic may be better suited for village pump and paired with other policy edits - such as
WP:PAID
could have said a paid edit should have "#paid" in the Edit summary of the edit, and the editor should have a userpage entry mention of their being paid for some edits and the area of payment. I could imagine paid editors getting a paid barnstar for sustained quality and responsible edits - and wanting that for their own marketing being a force to drive good practice.)
Cheers Markbassett (talk) 16:20, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
I might agree with you about the advantages of an overall solution, except that I do not think there is going to be agreement on a general policy. The community is divided between those who would like to encourage it if done right, those who would like discourage it--but provide a legitimate pathway for those who go ahead anyway, and those who would ban it completely (except for the impossibility of enforcing a total ban)--and would therefore like to make it as restricted as possible. Given the disagreement over this very simple and to me obvious change, I cannot think of anything positive to suggest. We shall presumably have to continue case by case removing the worst of it. DGG ( talk ) 05:22, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
  • "Should we allow users to edit with promotional user names that imply shared use instead of soft blocking them and instructing them to change their usernames? agtx 17:56, 5 October 2016 (UTC)".
Users with promotional names should be allowed to edit, though not encouraged, and maybe only in the short term, depending more on the edits than the username.
Users with promotional names should not be blocked as an immediate reaction. Doing so is so obviously counterproductive. It is overly assertive. It shames the user, declares to them and the world that they were caught doing bad things, and if they happen to be the least bit sneaky, they will see that easiest thing is to abandon their account and do their promotion more subtly.
Instead, they should be thanked for contributing, thanked for declaring their affiliation openly an honestly, and encouraged to to more fully introduce themselves on their main userpage.
Should the account be an apparent or actual shared account (eg User:CompanyName), encourage the creation of unique derivative accounts, such as User:CompanyName_Person#1. But don't treat it like some disgusting taboo violation that there was a little bit of account sharing, in mild cases it is easily sorted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:51, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
  • The RfC is badly framed, as "promotional usernames" is a huge bucket. I have opposed solely on that basis. I've considered the pros/cons of allowing corporate/organization usernames (which would be shared accounts) and I come down that the cons outweigh the pros (pros: people editing under that account would probably be much more careful, as it is the actually the company's name at stake; makes COI disclosure much more transparent and easy; if they act badly and get indeffed that means anybody from the company is indeffed - more simple. cons: at its core, WP is created and maintained by a community of flesh and blood people, and this would go against that deep-in-the-guts thing about WP which means a) it is likely to have many unintended consequences and b) it is unlikely to get consensus so is a waste of time; related to that, I don't want to talk to some "company" on a talk page; what does it even mean to indef a company from WP?; are we going to get in all kinds of MEAT mess with people from the company under non-company accounts supporting the corporate account? etc... ) Jytdog (talk) 23:17, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

Move to close

  • After 25 days, comments are running about two to one againstg the proposal, with many of those who support it self-identifying their support as weak. The result seems clear.
    talk
    ) 00:13, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Emoji

Please see WP:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_151#Emoji_usernames. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 00:49, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

There is also an open
talk
) 00:47, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

"Official" accounts representing individuals as opposed to groups

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result of this discussion was that there appears to be a clear consensus in against presumed or automatic blocking of user names for "official" individual names. Continued reporting at UAA, however, and individual consideration also appears to have consensus. (non-admin closure) Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:59, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

We seem to have an ongoing issue with certain types of names being reported at

WP:UAA
. They generally fall into one of the following categories:

  • Some random non-notable persons name paired with "official" or "productions"
  • Some non-notable YouTube channel or blog name

These are reported as being promotional usernames, both by the bot and by users. They are usually tagged as promotional usernames. The current wording of

WP:CORPNAME
does not appear to support blocking these names as they represent individuals, not organizations. Yes, they are usually engaging in editing that is not desirable, such as creating social media style "profile" user pages or trying to write an article on their personal YouTube channel. But is it the editing or the username that administrators should be concerned with? Can we, as a matter of policy, block these names? If we can, should we? If we cannot or should not should we actively discourage users from reporting these names? 21:57, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Discussion

  • Please note that what is being looked for here is an open discussion of these issues, there's no need for bolded !vote statements at this time as there is no specific proposal and I don't think we need one, I am just not aware of this specific issue being discussed in the past and it has become an "all day, every day" thing at UAA.
In my experience, these users usually make their page, either a
talk
) 21:57, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
Mwa. The CORPNAME-guide reads "Usernames that unambiguously represent the name of a company, group, institution or product [...]". I believe that in case of the blogs and youtube channels, at least, a strong case could be made for it being the representation of a product/group (technically, 'brand' would be the closest fit, but that's not in the letter of the rules), presuming the broad sense of the word product is used. In regards to the personal names + productions/official/etc., it becomes a bit more case-to-case depending on exactly what they're promoting/how their name is used outside the wiki environment. (E.g. 'Calvin Klein Official' = blatant vio of letter and spirit of the rules. 'Random Dude Official' where Random Dude is also the name of [his solo music project/the thingamajigs he's selling through ebay/his blog] = vio of spirit of the rules and a good case could be made for letter of the rules. 'My Name Official' where the main thing being promoted is Book I Wrote or whatever and 'My Name' isn't basically used as brand gets a lot more iffy under the current rules, though.
So basically, I'd say that as things stand, one-(wo)man vlog/blog/youtube projects under the username of their project do count as a blatant vio but it wouldn't hurt to add 'brand' to the CORPNAME policy if there's consensus for it. One-(wo)man projects under the username of the involved person depend on whether their name is also (significant part of) their project's names, at least as far as current policy goes. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 22:20, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
What I've been seeing mostly with he "official" pages is that a large portion of them represent an individual promoting themselves, as if this were a social media website, and is if there is some possibility that there could be a fake page about some non-notable person you never heard of out there, so they're making sure you now this one's the real deal. It's extremely silly, but seems to fall more under
talk
) 22:27, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
Ah, stuff that's mostly along the same lines as adding 'The REAL' in front of the username. No, I don't really think the current policy does cover those cases. If anything, they'd fall under 'misguiding' in that it suggests some kind of official-ness that doesn't quite exist (outside the user's mind, anyway), but I suspect reporting with a reasoning along the lines of 'Misguiding username: user pretends to be notable enough there may be unofficial accounts with their name floating around' won't fly. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 22:33, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
  • I was hoping more than one other user would have something to say about this....
    talk
    ) 21:05, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
Examples needed. In my opinion if someone does something where we need to bother if they're official or not, they fall under the REALNAME section of the policy. Let's take some examples from at the time this RfC was started.[1][2] Usernames like "Fred Official", "Som official", "Bob official" (there's quite a few more) I really don't have a problem with. Barack Obama (official) I would. Someone with "Productions" in their name fails the group name and promotional parts of the policy. More tricky is where someone uses their Youtube name. In some more famous cases I would have an issue with it. If it's just someone boring then I won't. For example, zzuuzz could also be my Youtube channel and you'd never know, or if you did you might not care. Or my username could also be zzuuzz_at_blog.example.com and that's within policy. I can understand why "official" usernames are reported, especially by the UAA bot, but I think most can normally be dismissed. -- zzuuzz (talk) 21:32, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
  • From a few months of observations over at ANI, UAA, and related noticeboards, it appears as though most of these "official" accounts are only here to promote themselves or whatever they're representing, but are dealt with in a manner similar to SPAs or COI editors, which are discouraged, but not expressly forbidden. I think looking in that particular direction may be helpful in resolving the issue.
If accounts that expressly belong to one person but represent their own interests are banned, however, I think that you'd have to unilaterally apply it to each and any person who does paid editing/raises concerns about content on behalf of the subject (like edit requests), which is perhaps a step too far. Obviously, the extent to which they represent themselves is a factor here (like having a neutrally worded COI disclosure vs blatant PR fluff & legal threats), but username bans solely for this reason is, in my opinion, not covered by precedent or current community policy. No comment on whether or not they should be reported, since i don't think the same goes for SPAs, but does for COI editors.
talk ⋅ contribs
) Ping me with {{SUBST:reply to|Zupotachyon}} 16:41, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Dubious info re. Deleting, merging accounts, right to disappear and vanishing.
  • The policy also makes the claim that "Editors seeking privacy per WP:Courtesy vanishing / right to vanish can usually have their accounts renamed and their user pages (and in exceptional cases user talk pages) deleted." IIRC, recent bureaucrat discussions indicate we don't allow this any more. What gives? Shouldn't the policy be honest? --Elvey(t•c) 21:41, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
That account wasn't deleted, it was renamed. –xenotalk 21:47, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
  • Yes, I see that, but it wasn't renamed in the normal sense. A normal rename leaves far more footprints, no? No sign of a rename at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Rennix. The user page is a redlink. The talk page was deleted and not fully restored. How often did this kind of rename happen, say, last month? If stopped happening after SUL, I'm not troubled by it.
  • And there's the vanishing issue, which IIRC, you're quite aware of. --Elvey(t•c) 01:19, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Non-script characters in usernames (not in signatures)

That is some sort of following to a discussion at

WP:RFCUN, see here (the last one)
. It was decided there that a certain username, composed of a single Unicode character "☈", should not be allowed.

I feel that a clarification of policy is needed, be it to allow or forbid nonscript Unicode in usernames. The outcome at that thread was fairly consensual, and arguments could apply to pretty much any other username that includes non-script characters; but a good deal of them also work for script non-Latin characters, which are currently allowed per

WP:CANVASS
disclosure: I will not ping the 10+ others from the RFCUN thread for now, but will do so if the discussion here develops beyond someone pointing me to a relevant past discussion that settled the issue.

In my opinion, the only restriction difference between usernames with nonscript characters and usernames with nonlatin script characters should be the

MOS:ACCESS
concerns that all users should be able to easily read others' UN, or concerns that a username should be easily typed (I assume for the purpose of pinging), but these arguments apply equally well to nonlatin scripts read or typed by en-keyboard users (or the other way around, but this is en-wikipedia). The only argument for differentiation that in my view can hold water is that of lookalike symbols

Also, I think "nonlatin" should be clarified somewhere to "any character outside Basic_Latin_(Unicode_block)" since that is the lowest common denominator of en-keyboards, so diacritics (à, É), ligatures (ß), and others from Latin_script#As_used_by_various_languages should be treated the same way as katakana. Of course, for a native English speaker, it is easier to imagine on the fly an English pronounciation for Søren or Étienne than for כהן (Cohen) or 김 (Kim), but that is a matter for the signature; if you have to copy the username to ping because there is a character that you cannot reproduce, it does not matter if it is close to a basic Latin symbol.

Any thoughts? Any former threads that I should be aware of? TigraanClick here to contact me 13:15, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Banning "non-script characters", OK, but I don't think it would be at all acceptable to prevent an editor who is not a native English speaker from using his or her real name, or some other name that has meaning for him or her, just because it contains a letter that is not used in English. As for banning non-Latin script, what would we do about editors who mainly edit on other Wikipedias? Would we require them to have a separate account for editing on English Wikipedia? We used to have separate accounts for different projects, but we have moved on to having unified accounts, and the various disadvantages of moving back would outweigh the advantages. I do agree that non-Latin-alphabet names are somewhat more difficult to follow for editors who are familiar only with the Latin alphabet, but personally I don't find it a major problem. If I see an editor taking part in a discussion and signing "כהן" I can just think of it as "the editor with a that Hebrew name", or in the case of an alphabet that I don't recognise "that editor with the funny squiggly user name". Certainly more cumbersome than a name which I can actually read, but not a major problem and neither serious enough or common enough to justify the disadvantages that would be produced. The editor who uses the pseudonym "
talk
) 10:00, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Broadly agree that disallowing all non-Latin/English characters is not a good idea as we would be preventing people from using their real names, presented in the way that they were given. Our tireless username patrollers are fairly good at detecting and translating it when someone tries to slip an actual username violation in in a foreign script. On the other hand, there is no such cost to preventing emojis or unicode characters, they are not anyone's name and I believe not all browsers render them properly. Most do, but we need to be cognizant of the fact that some users are using older machines and sftware and we still want them to participate and know who it is they are speaking to. The one recent case we've had of this was an admin seemingly doing it as a test case. (The only other case I can recall was
    talk
    ) 08:15, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
  • Unless there are particular reasons local to the English Wikipedia for banning certain names, I'd rather see it done globally on Meta to help avoid situations where a username that's usable on one wiki isn't on another. Anomie⚔ 21:10, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
That's a good point, anyone care to open a discussion at meta?
talk
) 01:02, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
@
Beeblebrox: I'd be willing to, but I'll leave it to User:Anomie for now to avoid potentially duplicating the discussion at meta (in case Anomie decides to make one soon). If not, I'd be happy to. --JustBerry (talk
) 01:08, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
@JustBerry: Go ahead. To clarify: I don't see much point in blocking emoji usernames, but if people want it done I'd rather it be done at Meta. Anomie⚔ 01:10, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
@
Beeblebrox: @Anomie:  Done here. Feel free to make modifications to or propose modifications for the RfC filing. --JustBerry (talk
) 01:46, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
Update: RfC now reflects here under the subsection 'Open RfCs' also. --JustBerry (talk) 02:03, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I would say disallowing non-script characters, which those on older computers may not be able to render, is fine. However, disallowing all non-Latin/English characters may be a stretch, as such a policy would unfairly force users of other wikis to chose a name in English on the meta level (even if they do not contribute to the English Wikipedia) or may discourage meta users from contributing to the English Wikipedia if they had to manage multiple accounts (or ruin the purpose of a unified login system). In an age of copy and paste, it's not all that difficult (or time consuming for that matter) to copy the username of a user from their signature (or user talk page title) and paste it, for instance, into the ping template's parameter when replying to that user's message. --JustBerry (talk) 21:37, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
  • I also think this should be done globally if at all, although I also think it shouldn't be done. BethNaught (talk) 18:55, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Need a quick close

Resolved

There is a discussion at

talk
) 19:22, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

@
Linguisttalk|contribs
19:45, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
Meh. The editor in question isn't editing much right now, with just two edits in the last four days (and both of those to
WP:INVOLVED is very likely to stir up less problems. --Hammersoft (talk
) 19:53, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
If I had just commented I think I'd be ok closing it, but given that I opened the discussion it's probably better if someone else does it.
talk
) 00:12, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Merge
WT:UAA
here?

  checkY Merger complete. Wikipedia talk:Usernames for administrator attention

This may seem a little nuts, given the long history of that page, but I think it might be for the best for the following reasons:

  • The two pages are obviously closely related and anyone with an interest in UAA is also likely to be keeping an eye on this page as well.
  • But if they are not it would be a simple thing to add some sort of notification to UAA and
    WP:UAAI
    as well.
  • The main UAA page is busy all day, every day. Reporting users, reviewing admins, and the helperbot make for a basically never ending flurry of activity. Because talk pages cannot be watchlisted separately from the pages they are attached to, this makes it difficult to get much. input on that talk page.
  • Links to the UAA talk archives can easily be added here so that all past discussions are also accessible from one place.

Thoughts?

talk
) 03:53, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

A good point and one I think equally applicable to the talk pages of other high-use boards, like
WT:RPP. Narrowly construed, these should be only for discussing improvements to the *** page, for example "it should have a purple background" or "new posts should be at the bottom/top"; but in practice most of the entries fall outside these limits and are either policy-related discussions that belong better on WT:Username policy, WT:Vandalism or WT:Protection policy, or they are misplaced reports or discussions of particular cases that should probably be raised with particular editors or on an admin noticeboard: Noyster (talk),
13:40, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
Now that I look at it the same applies to
talk
) 00:55, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
Makes sense to me. Beeblebrox makes a good point. -- Alexf(talk) 13:41, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

talk
) 00:29, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Aaand  Done
talk
) 00:47, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Misleading/Disruptive?

If a user registers a username that appears to be a "fan" of a topic, but then uses it to "cleanup" through deletion and disruption (and claims that people who comment on their changes on the topic articles are "fanboys" -- leading to a "misleading" indication by username that this user is a fan but is not actually so by comments written), is this a misleading or disruptive username, or does it fall outside that clause? -- 65.94.168.229 (talk) 06:12, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

In my opinion, that is not a username issue. We shouldn't be in the business of fact checking the accuracy of what are essentially subjective claims within a username. If there are behavior issues related to the disruptive editing, those can be handled independently of username policy. -- Ed (Edgar181) 13:25, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
No, that does not fit the definitions given at Wikipedia:Username policy#Misleading usernames or Wikipedia:Username policy#Disruptive or offensive usernames. Anomie⚔ 13:54, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Can we talk about the UAA|a response to UAA reports?

This guy: a

This is an exemption to the username policy that doesn't actually exist. It was made up by an admin who used to be very active here and just kind fo crept in to the process. The one time it was seriously discussed is

talk
) 21:26, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

This is n't really the subject under discussion, but actually, the policy explicitly says "except in extreme cases, it is probably not worth taking action unless the user has made at least one recent edit", and
talk
) 17:15, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Just to clarify; Yes, I know. The point is that "extreme cases" in this case are of the structure Widgets, Inc.. Blatant cases of corporate names are routinely blocked without any warnings or even any edits. Not performing edits or having been warned is not a valid exception from that. Recent example; User:VaultTechnologiesLtd. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:56, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Remove exemption. Consensus exists to remove it. Admins should use discretion when applying the policy; they may choose to exempt specific accounts temporarily if they don't want to
    talk
    ) 11:51, 12 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Remove hard exemption and rely on administrator discretion. — Train2104 (t • c) 18:07, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Remove little to no reason for it. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 18:57, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Remove exemption and leave it up to the admin's discretion. Herostratus (talk) 22:05, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

@

talk
) 23:08, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

 Done [3], but you will also need to update {{UAA}} — MusikAnimal talk 23:37, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks!
talk
) 19:35, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Deleting users

I see that the policy states that it is not currently possible to delete user accounts. However, Special:Version shows that the UserMerge extension is enabled on Wikipedia. This extension allows authorized users to merge user accounts into a default technical account and then delete the original account. Currently, it appears that no user groups have the 'usermerge' permission on Wikipedia, which is required for the extension to work. Here is what I propose:

  • Assign the appropriate permission to the bureaucrat group, or only to Jimbo Wales and global Stewards. Local administrators should not have the ability.
  • Create the default technical account, but the username should be blocked and hidden from the public by an oversighter. At the discretion of a steward, it can also be globally locked to prevent access.
  • Draft a policy regarding use of the extension. There should be a set of regulations regarding use of the tool.
  • Update the appropriate subsection.

If deleting accounts is not something that Wikipedia wants to do, I would suggest removing the extension. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.114.34.42 (talk) 19:58, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

  • A couple things:
  • This doesn't really pertain to the username policy per se and I would suggest that if you want to have a serious discussion about this that arrives at an actionable consensus, you should open a formal
    WP:VPP
    or some other appropriate venue
  • I would guess that the reason this is there is just in case the
    back office
    needs to use it for legal reasons and it probably isn't intended to ever be used by the volunteer community
  • Deleting accounts is a
    perrenial proposal
    that has been repeatedly rejected, you might want to read up on why if you plan to pursue this further.

Hope that helps.

talk
) 21:18, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Looking through the configuration history, it appears that UserMerge was enabled on enwiki (and other non-WikiVoyage wikis) per phab:T70844, which says that it's only enabled because GlobalUserMerge needed to reuse some of its code (and GlobalUserMerge was needed during the SUL finalization so stewards could fix peoples' accounts). Anomie⚔ 21:50, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Question

I was reading Samtar's admin request and he received a question asking if he would block a username saying "Alt-right supporter". Samtar, now an administrator, said that this username would be considered "disruptive or offensive". Is a username mentioning support for the alt-right blockable? CatcherStorm talk 16:10, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

To me, yes. Any support of hate groups is, and trying not to get political here, but "Alt-Right" is their cutesy name for White Supremacists. -- Alexf(talk) 16:18, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
Advocacy of any political position in a username is inherintly divisive.
talk
) 18:36, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

user:Vote again to coincide with the general election.

talk
) 00:36, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

  • Meh. There might be a case based on username length, but I do not see that as political advocacy. I am not even sure what it means (is it an encouragement to vote at the next election? a suprise that voting coincides with election?) TigraanClick here to contact me 08:36, 22 February 2017 (UTC)
I agree, if we can't tell exactly what the name is advocating, it probably isn't a problem. They've been blocked as a sock anyway.
talk
) 20:05, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Bot reports based upon special characters

Is this really useful, especially when it is triggered by a single enya or dollar sign or any other single special character? It seems to me that this creates more work to keep the log cleared, without a clear benefit. I am willing to be convinced otherwise, if people can give me good examples of the utility of this bot reporting rule. LadyofShalott 16:56, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm afraid iI agree. Every single user who creates an account with non-English characters is getting reported, it feels bad-faith and could encourage actual users to over-report others, which is already bad enough. I don't think I've seen a single report based not his that has actually detected a violation. pinging @
talk
) 22:58, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
@
Amanda (aka DQ)
16:25, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
OK, well, I don't know the first thing about editing a bot's tasks. I would request that item be removed. Thank you, DeltaQuad! LadyofShalott 16:50, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, I also wouldn't have a clue where to even look to change this, which I have just proven to myself by looking and coming back empty handed.
talk
) 19:12, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
I've long been irritated by this feature, but have too much awareness of my own limitations to even try to remove it myself. Pinging @RexxS: not an admin but a template editor, would that do? Bishonen | talk 19:17, 12 March 2017 (UTC).
@
WP:UTRS lately, but I'm sure she'll get back to us when she has time. --RexxS (talk
) 19:50, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
RexxS, Amanda said above that she has stepped back from what should/should not be included on the list. What makes you think I don't want you to hack the toolserver? Do! Bishonen | talk 19:55, 12 March 2017 (UTC).

Toolserver no longer exist. -

open channel
) 20:00, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

That's true. The program deltaquad-bots currently runs on tools-exec-1411 on Wikimedia Tool Labs, but the point remains the same. I guess that once there's a clear consensus among the admins who patrol Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention/Bot that the bot isn't flagging enough true positives, then Amanda will be willing to disable the job. My opinion doesn't count, but I'd say that I wouldn't be too worried by usernames like Stpatsrevenge (matched 'revenge'); BunduJundu ('bund = ass'); Dr Merkwürdigeliebe ('multiple similiar charecters') - actually Dr Strangelove; JPacilio ('paci ~= paki'); CéliaRemaut ('multiple similiar charecters' ???) and Spoofmok ('poof ~= pooph ~= poop'). Although I agree it might be worth keeping an eye on Trollwizard, just in case he's not merely a World of Warcraft fan. --Rexxnog (Dwarf Paladin) (talk)
Ok lets slow it down for a minute. It is true that I said I don't handle what is and isn't on the blacklist, whitelist, and similar list. I'm just simply not active enough in the area to have an informed opinion on what should/shouldn't be on the list, and trying to keep that this is a community bot and not
mine alone
. That does not mean that I will not change it upon request, nor does it mean i've stopped maintaining the code. So there is no need for the bot to be shut down.
Looking at the specifics of this request the other day, I found 2 solutions that should help. 1) The bot kept flagging on the same letter being used throughout the similar list, artificially inflating the number of hits. I've changed that so it only takes it once per letter. I've also increased the number of required similar matches to 3 before the bot will flag it. This should decrease your FP hits, but this also means that if someone puts in something like $e><y in there username, that it most likely won't hit. 2) There has always been the ability for people to add "NO_SIM_MATCH" to a certain blacklisted item, which means the similar characters matching check never gets ran for that username. This still effectively works if you get too many false positives on that. Please note that the fix I made was only to LadyOfShalott's original request, and things like paci ~= paki still need to be added with NO_SIM_MATCH if you don't want them, which any template editor can do, and can be requested on the talkpage which multiple users watch.
As for how often the bot runs, due to the size of the blacklist and holding usernames for 7 days to see if they edit, otherwise not report them, the bot can only run safely every 20 minutes. --
Amanda (aka DQ)
05:36, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
I believe LadyOfShalott's original request is related to the filter called "Attempting to skip filters using multiple similiar charecters" (sic). This filter appears to be hardcoded in the bot's source code and reports all usernames that contain characters other than A-Z, a-z, 0-9 and spaces. See Rexxnog's examples of spurious hits involving this filter. 176.11.197.232 (talk) 16:08, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
  • Personally I'd rather that instead of tightening it up, this filter was just removed entirely. If I understand correctly, it would still report users who have three or more non-Latin characters in their username. So every single Cyrillic or Mandarin, or even Turkic username is going to still be reported. I'm not OK with that.
    talk
    ) 19:17, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
  • No opinion on specific filters, but I want to echo Amanda's request to slow down. This bot is obviously useful. If false positives are too high, we can adjust the filters, but we don't really want to take this out entirely. If a bot operator isn't maintaining code, that's a problem, but that's not what's happened here. The bot operator has just turned over the judgement of what filters should/shouldn't be active to the community, which is an approach I wish far more bot operators took. ~ Rob13Talk 21:51, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
The bot is generally helpful. It has always produced a lot of false positives because it is impossible, or at least very difficult, to explain context to a bot, so it just looks for strings that might represent an issue and reports them. That's usually fine and I certainly wasn't suggesting the bot be de-activated enirely, just the specifc task where it reports usernames with special characters as it floods the bot list with obvious false positives and pretty much never catches an actual violation.
talk
) 22:16, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Are all usernames that contain a (potentially) profane word "such blatant and serious problems that they need to be immediately blocked"?

Going of a recent discussion at my talk page, I am wondering, whether there is some need for clarification in the username policy and/or UAA. The "casus belli" (so to speak) in this case was Ohhfuckyeahahh (talk · contribs) which I did not consider a blatant and serious enough violation to warrant a block without discussion based on its usual meaning. I know that some admins consider any username with the word "fuck" in it enough to warrant a block (such as Widr in this case, who I am pinging but this thread is not about this case in particular but all similar cases in general), which is why I wanted to discuss this here. I can't find any previous substantial discussions about this topic (last ones seem to be from 2008 and 2009, here and here). Personally, I believe we should only block such names on sight if the username or the editing demonstrate that the word is used to disparage others but more importantly I believe there should be a clear consensus how to handle usernames that contain certain words without directly disparaging others. Regards SoWhy 11:46, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Regarding the specifics,[4] to properly decline a report it should be removed from the board. Leaving it there only encourages review by another admin. I take the view that usernames which cannot be acceptable can be dealt with humanely by a softblock which invites them to choose another username. It can be polite to ask them to change their username without blocking, but it's only delaying the inevitable as they should not be littering edit histories any further. I think a softblock is not much different to a notice demanding a rename, and I think another username is the only option for a username like this one. I also take this approach for users like MyAss2518 (talk · contribs · block log), Porkipaki (talk · contribs · block log), Fuckinhellijustwantausernamefuckinhel (talk · contribs · block log), and Lloyds bank. (talk · contribs · block log). Honestly, I can't think of one suitable username containing the word 'fuck' in its usual meaning. We could debate whether it's become more acceptable over time, but I think it's indisputable that it's still one of the most offensive words, and well covered by policy. -- zzuuzz (talk) 12:45, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
Shouldn't the decline be left on UAA for a while so the reporting user notices it? Per
WP:RAAA another admin shouldn't take action anyway once a decline has been issued. But back on point, I was not asking whether such names should or should not be blocked but whether UAA is the correct venue to handle them, seeing that the disclaimer says that non-blatant violations shouldn't be reported there. Any opinion on that? Regards SoWhy
08:39, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
Well, as I said I think any username containing 'fuck' is a blatant (though not necessarily malicious) violation of the policy, and fair game for a block. Any username containing 'cunt' would also get an immediate block from me on similar grounds. I've no complaints about such UAA reports. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:20, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
  • This is a sticky one. I find I am substantially harder to offend than many, so when I see these I tend to leave them for others to review. That being said, as always, context is important. If someone wants to use "whatthefuck" as their username that doesn't bother me at all, the phrase has become basically embedded in pop culture and isn't particularly offensive anymore. On the eh other hand "fuck<someone's name or a group of people> is the sort of thing I would block on sight. The trick is, different people from different places are offended by different things. In the States "cunt" is basically the worst thing you can call someone, and it is pretty much always directed at a woman. My impression is that in the U.K. it is more of a mild form of slang and not specifically targeting women. And then we have "bitch" . This word has gotten so genericized it now gets a pass to be spoken on network TV. I wouldn't block a name containing it unless it was used in a way that targeted someone.
    talk
    ) 19:15, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
I think
open channel
) 19:20, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
Speaking from a UK perspective, the three most offensive words in the English language are always listed as cunt, motherfucker, and fuck (in that order).[5][6][7] They don't need to be aimed at anyone to be offensive. -- zzuuzz (talk) 19:44, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
Interesting. I guess I was a little off in my perception there.
talk
) 20:04, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
I see how even when not aimed at a specific noun,
open channel
) 20:17, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
The more important issue here, I think, is whether such usernames should be hardblocked. If they are harmlessly offensive (like that ButtHole user) then I've no issue with a UAA report, a softblock, and an invitation to have another attempt to create an acceptable username. If they are intentionally offensive, then a UAA report and a hardblock. But I maintain that some profanities are inherently offensive and suitable for UAA. -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:26, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
Any name that attacks someone, profane or not, should get the hardblock as it is a manifest indication of bad faith. Names that merely contain a profane word, I would say we should at least wait until they edit, otherwise there's no problem to be solved and we'll be creating a user talk page with a profane word in it for no good reason.
talk
) 20:54, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

monitor usernames listed at Filter...

WP:UAA
makes the request:

Patrollers are kindly asked to monitor usernames listed at Filter 102, Filter 148, Filter 149, Filter 354 (tags),
CAT:UAA
.
Filters 102 & 354 are private filters and so can't be monitored. Should the request to monitor them still be kept? Cabayi (talk) 12:45, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

'sup with the holding pen?

I just noticed that

talk
) 21:01, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Ok something's not right here, either everyone decided we weren't using this anymore and I didn't get the memo, or reports that normally would go there are just being removed. I know I tagged a request with "wait" a few days ago and it never made it to the HP. Nothing's landed there since the 16th of last month.
talk
) 20:48, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
@
Beeblebrox: I can't tell if it's the case, but see my response (2) in the thread immediately below. DQBot has done a partial runner. -- zzuuzz (talk)
20:52, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

The bot listing already-blocked accounts

I just noticed the bot listing a couple of accounts that had already been blocked some time earlier: Ks0stm DELETED Ponyo HDD Master Boot Record and Sro023 GOT INVOLVED Ks0stm. Oshwah deleted the former 10 hours before the bot listed it, and I blocked the latter 14 hours before it was listed. I see there's something (for me hard to understand) about a filter in both reports, but still. They're blocked, why report them? They're still on the UAA page as I type. PS, when I post here, I see a pretty aggressive template telling me my post will be deleted if it's not directly related to discussion of Wikipedia's username policy. Really? The talkpage for Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention redirects to this page, so it doesn't seem right to make people wanting to ask about UAA feel unwelcome. Remove the bad-tempered template? Bishonen | talk 15:11, 2 April 2017 (UTC).

I'll address your 3 points: 1) The delay in reporting usernames is due to a technical glitch with that particular reporting bot (in technical terms, the bot is finding the usernames later than normal). The bot-op is aware, and this has only happened once before, but I don't think there's a current fix. 2) The reason the usernames remain on the board despite being blocked is due to another bot, the one that removes blocked users as well as reporting them, having some other technical problems. The bot hasn't worked for several weeks;
The bot-op might be aware, or might not, but they seem like a busy person. 3) The big notice for the page can be found and edited here. Frankly it needs to be quite in your face because of all the misplaced edits from newbies on this page. Wording for a concise update currently eludes me, but if you have the words please update it. -- zzuuzz (talk)
16:26, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
Thank you,
Beeblebrox) is that newbies will post requests for usernames and all sorts here. I believe it would be helpful if they were told where to go instead, and I thought I'd try to put that into the template, but I don't really know myself, since their queries will be quite varied. The Teahouse, perhaps? What do you think? I absolutely do not want to post a whole list of "if you want this, do that", but keep it extremely concise. No edit notice creep. The Teahouse could perhaps function as a clearing-house, and send them on? Bishonen | talk
20:32, 2 April 2017 (UTC).
I took a shot; see what you think, change if you like. I know this is also the talkpage for Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User names, but I didn't reckon that needs to be specifically mentioned in the template, as it is closely related to the username policy (besides being a profoundly obscure page). Bishonen | talk 20:53, 2 April 2017 (UTC).

exemption to "stale/no recent edits" for impersonation accounts?

A recent case has brought to my attention hat I think is a flaw in the way we handle some username reports. A user was using a name that suggested they were a well-known living person. (in this specific case it was a close adviser to the President) They had edited content related to this person. Even worse, the press had picked up on it and was reporting it as possible whitewashing by the actual person in question.

Here's the twist: the press was just picking up on it now, but the account was active four months ago, so when it was reported at UAA it got declined as Stale: This account has not been used in the last 2–3 weeks.. I generally like that rule as it cuts down on useless reports, but I think we should

talk
) 21:46, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree. Beyond using IAR to close that loophole, perhaps there is a way we could add an exception to the stale criterion, involving BLP coverage in external sources or what have you. Andrevan@ 21:51, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
Well, I had hoped for a bit more input, but per
talk
) 19:17, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

"Real name"

Is there an established consensus for how the policy applies to stage names? I've seen a few reports declined where a stage name is a variation on the person's real name (eg. User:SIMO-ICE). Today we have User:BLVCK LAG00N, which has been reported as a promotional name (and their user page has been deleted as blatant advertising); this is someone's stage name. What's the consensus on how to handle these? GoldenRing (talk) 15:52, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

I believe the current interpretation there is that if they aren't really notable and just trying to get some free publicity it's functionally the same as using their actual name. We had a discussion a few months back about all the "official" accounts and YouTube names we've been seeing and that was pretty much how it shook out, this is basically the same thing.
talk
) 18:53, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
Okay, thanks, though it seems a bit wrong-way-'round. Essentially we're saying that if there was any possibility that what they contribute about themselves might be notable enough to keep in the encyclopaedia, we'll block them; if all they're ever going to contribute is a non-notable social media profile that's going to get tagged with G11 in seconds, we'll let them carry on. I can sort of see the sense in it, in that it's only the notable cases where COI is then going to become a problem, but it looks pretty counter-intuitive at first sight. GoldenRing (talk) 12:45, 15 April 2017 (UTC)
The general idea is to keep UAA from getting backlogged with reports that aren't really about usernames but rather editing. If they keep posting the same spam, they can certainly be blocked for that alone regardless of their username, but in my experience the majority of such users go quiet once it is made clear to them that Wikipedia is not social media or a place for self-promotion.
talk
) 17:01, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

"Poop/shit" usernames - always blatant vios?

It occurs to me that "poop" and "shit" usernames may not always be blatant UPOL violations. Sure, usernames like "IEatPoop" or "EatShit" are obvious vios, but I remember one instance when I reported a username which was something like "Poo01234", and an admin declined it. They explained to me that "poo" is not always offensive per se. Meanwhile, in a more recent RfA discussion, an admin opposed because the candidate had recently reported a "POOOOO" username to UAA, which they said was not a blatant violation. Nevertheless, a different admin had blocked the user, deeming the username a blatant violation. A third admin stated that it has, for a long time, been standard practice to block all "poo/poop" usernames on sight as obvious references to faeces. However, I'm also not too sure if this is right.

For example, my mum and dad say "I am poop/pooped!" quite frequently (it means "tired" or "exhausted"). Also, in Disney's

grows very large during her trial and is attacked by the Queen of Hearts' card guards, she exclaims in disdain, "Oh, poo! I'm not afraid of you! Why, you're nothing but a pack of cards!" The character Winnie-the-Pooh
's name is generally not considered offensive either. As far as "shit" usernames go, the issue with personal names containing the string "shit" is easily dealt with, but apart from that, "shit" is usually considered offensive. But in phrases like "Shit happens", it's not as offensive.

This got me thinking that if it is true that it is practice to block all "poop" and "shit" usernames on sight, it may be time to relax this guideline a little, limiting only to obvious references to faeces and not blocking borderline ones immediately, or at least, generate a clear consensus on what generally falls into which category.

Linguisttalk|contribs
00:34, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

That sounds about right. As always, context is important, but I would add that in my experience "poop" is a very good indicator that someone is up to no good. That being said, I don't think a block is in order in most cases where there are no edits, unless it is extremely egregious.
talk
) 19:31, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Don't forget "shit" is very common part of surnames for India, these type of instances can not be penalized. -
open channel
) 20:01, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Yeah, that's a constant thing at UAA. Unless I see a clear reference to defecation in the name I usually decline these without further review.
talk
) 20:45, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
There is no string which we need to block all accounts containing. I once found a legitimate account with the word "troll" on the list, for example. Human common sense is essential - which is why we don't have a bot blocking usernames here, only reporting. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:08, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
We don't even have that lately...
talk
) 19:12, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
  • When I was young, the main meaning of English "poop" was "the stern of a ship", likeliest via French or Mediterranean languages from Latin "puppis" la:puppis. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:44, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Is this the right place to ask about an addition to the word filter?

Having seen a violating username appear here recently (which turned out to be an LTA), I was wondering if the word "autistic" could be included in the word filter. Whilst I appreciate that some users who use this string may well be on the autism spectrum (like myself), the word could be used with offensive undertones, particularly by trolls, or long-term abusers. I was thinking DQB could flag these names with a comment along the lines of "do be aware that some users who use this string may genuinely be autistic - please be careful and make sure you are dealing with a vandal/LTA first". I am unsure if this is the correct place to ask, however. Some thoughts on this would be appreciated. Thanks, Patient Zerotalk 10:37, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

@
Linguisttalk|contribs
14:20, 3 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks,
Linguist111. I am going to ping DeltaQuad here, as I think she may be able to help. :-) Patient Zerotalk
10:11, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
Edit filters are sufficiently more expensive than an entry on the username blacklist or my bots blacklist. That said, I haven't managed what's on the blacklist for a long time now, and usually happens at
Amanda (aka DQ)
17:58, 4 May 2017 (UTC)
 Done. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:06, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
Thanks DeltaQuad and Od Mishehu. :-) Patient Zerotalk 09:00, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Template message for UAA reviewers

In a recent discussion I stalked,

WP:UAA message for when users with no edits are brought to UAA. I've seen stuff like this used over the years, so I thought it might have been an actual template. Turns out it's not, but if there's general support Beeblebrox could most it to template space for general use. Thoughts? Primefac (talk
) 01:13, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm fully behind this. I've used his boilerplate message a number of times after realizing that it does a better job of explaining things than I could ever hope to do, but I do sometimes have trouble recalling the name of the subpage. Everything the notice says is supported by policy or established protocol, and spurious reports of inactive accounts are a common problem, so I can't imagine there would be any objections. – Juliancolton | Talk 03:47, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
I'll be supportive of this for general use. There is a template for dealing with possible ORGNAME vios with no edits ({{UAA|np}} = Not a blatant violation of the username policy. For a username to be blatantly promotional, there must be a link between the username and the user's edits. Consider re-reporting if a connection becomes clear through the user's edits.), and this one will take care of the rest.
Linguisttalk|contribs
04:02, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
Looks like
no edits}} which transcludes the message. I'll work on cleaning it up to make it a "proper" template. Primefac (talk
) 18:38, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
I'm not 100% on the last sentence. The message, yes, but the wording is a bit clunky.
talk
) 18:56, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Our just-established local consensus may be overridden by a change in global policy

As some of you may know, there was two recent entries

talk
) 16:23, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

On the contrary, I think it might have been noce for the folks at Meta to let us know they were having a discussion that, given the timing, seems to be a direct response to a decision here. I did it anyway though, even though I can't find a meta equivalent to our policy on canvassing.
talk
) 16:36, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
The emoji username issue was discussed on the global renamers mailing list since April 26. Since emojis in usernames are blacklisted by the software, global renamers are not sure that they should be taking it upon themselves to override the blacklist upon request. Since renames are global they might fall afoul of one project (e.g. plwiki) in processing the request even if enwiki decided that such usernames are okay. So I would say that the proper consensus enwiki or the global community would need to establish to really 'allow' emoji usernames would be to remove them from the blacklist. Otherwise global renamers do need direction on if these requests are acceptable. –xenotalk 16:48, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
  • As a general point of note, the recent closure at RFCN was not that "all emoji names are allowed." It was that particular rename that was allowed. The close specifically mentioned that this wouldn't affect en-wiki entirely, and that a new RFC would be needed to "officially" allow/disallow emoji usernames. Primefac (talk) 17:13, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
  •  Comment: - The recent RFCN did not allow all emoji names. It called for further discussion. Since all names are global it is logical the discussion continues on meta. If all projects decide individually the users who have these names may be blocked on half the projects very soon. This is not a situation you should want. Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 05:07, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Is having a similar username to a real person offensive?

Champion kept reporting me for supposed libel and threats against a real person named Donald Trump despite the fact that I actually use the names "Donny" and "Donald" in real life, and my surname is Trung. I have never claimed to be D.J. Trump, though I joked about being his Vietnamese cousin, this was then noted by the above user as "an attack page", the police (s)he noted for speedily deleting my page didn't name false familiar relationships or harmless jokes are reasons, are there rules that only admins can read that I'm missing out on somewhere here? Donald Trung (talk) 15:06, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Yes, this is a policy related question as I can't find a single policy that states that my username is not permitted. Donald Trung (talk) 15:06, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
The only relevant policy is the one forbidding names which seem to be calculated to be mistaken for a real notable person's name. When you name looks like it could be a fake/joke name riffing on a real one, jokes about that very person can easily give a vigilant editor the wrong idea. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:05, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
A bureaucrat has given their opinion at Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention. Combined with the answers above this should be sufficient answer. Further discussion is not needed and this discussion can be closed. Sincerely, Taketa (talk) 05:26, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Global names need a global policy

This policy still says that in "most cases" your username can also be used on other Wikipedias. However, all accounts have been global since the 22nd of April 2015. As of that date, there are no more local accounts on English or any other Wikipedia. This means every username must now simultaneously comply with all 65-ish existing local Wikipedia username policies. Clearly, this is not a reasonable situation. It would make more sense to abolish the local policies and have a central username policy coordinated on Meta-Wiki (where it should be a translatable page). Comments? – McDutchie (talk) 23:34, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

You don't have to be compliant with every site, just the ones you actually edit. Strongly opposed to a global policy on this, projects should be able to determine their own standards.
talk
) 23:44, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Current practice is that an account is automatically created locally on another Wikipedia the moment you even read a page there while logged in. Anyone could be unwittingly in violation of a Wikipedia's policy simply by visiting it. How is that a desirable situation? – McDutchie (talk) 23:48, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
What exactly is the problem? Worse-case, you get softblocked on a few Wikipedias that you never wanted to edit anyways (if you want to, you will have to pick a compliant username). TigraanClick here to contact me 16:14, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
Just another reason to wait until the user edits in most cases. — Gestrid (talk) 15:59, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Stage names

In the discussion

WT:CSD#Requested clarification of G11
an editor suggested that a user posting under his (apparently) stage name was promotional because it referenced commercial performances under that stag name. There is no sugestio9n that the state name does not uniquely identify a single individual, or that there is any shared use of the account, actual or implied.

I believe that such a sugestion is already contrary to this policy, but I would like, for the avoidance of doubt or confusion, to make this explicit.

I propose to add, under the Promotional names section, the following text:

Users may use their stage name, pen name, or other nickname as their username, provided that it uniquely identifies a single person. This is not considered promotional, even if commercial performances or publications are made under such a name. However, a user may not use someone else's stage name as a username, as per the § Real names section of this page.

Does anyone object to such an addition, or want to suggest alternate text for it? DES (talk) 21:23, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

DES, my very consistent experience is that an account under a name like User:DJ Slimy Slim or worse yet, User:DJ Slimy Slim Official, almost inevitably has been created so that Fred Kroebler, a/k/a "DJ Slimy Slim" in his YouTube videos and self-released iTunes singles, can publicize himself: create articles about himself and all his mixtapes, link himself to everybody who ever recorded in the same studio as he, etc. User:Fred Kroebler is a perfectly cromulent name; but stage names are a very strong sign that they are here to publicize, not to contribute to the project. We exist, alas, in a hypercapitalist environment where shameless "personal branding" is urged upon creative workers of all kinds (don't get me started on new writers who get onto panels at science fiction conventions to pimp their books, because some clueless mundane agent misinformed them that this was acceptable practice). --Orange Mike | Talk 01:15, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Beeblebrox and GoldenRing might have something to add on this. --Orange Mike | Talk
01:21, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
I don't object. I don't think we can go around blocking people just for using their psuedonyms. A stage name is often just someone's nickname. As far as I understand the username policy narrative, the main problem with promotional username, promotional edits cases is either that they have web addresses and phone numbers in them or that they imply shared use. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 19:03, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

One of the rules is ambiguous and needs examples

The category "confusing names" leaves the reader with no understanding of what a confusing user name is, other than a real long one might be confusing. But it doesn't define "too long", and I'm sure short ones might be confusing too, like a string of random letters.

It needs examples of confusing user names.

I don't want to change my username or create another account; I'm just curious about what illegal user names are.(Note: the tilde key on my keybd doesn't work so I can't sign this, but I'm verdana bold. Maybe the sine bot will sign it for me) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Verdana Bold (talk • contribs) 2017-06-06T00:13:31 (UTC).

A litte off topic @Verdana Bold: but in the edit box there is a button you can use to "sign and datestamp" for the future. — xaosflux Talk 02:16, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, Xao!  :-) Unfortunately, you can't use the visual editor on talk pages. I'd love to know why someday! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Verdana Bold (talk • contribs) 13:21, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
@Verdana Bold: On the line immediately below the edit box I'm using now, there is the text "Sign your posts on talk pages:" with a button showing the four tildes. : Noyster (talk), 10:23, 9 June 2017 (UTC) There, just used it
AHH! THANK YOU, @Noyster:-)  :-)  :-)  :-)  :-) Verdana♥Bold 11:03, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

RfC at Wikipedia talk:Changing username

I invite you to

usurpation requests. Please comment there. Thanks. --George Ho (talk
) 00:05, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Promotional usernames

A discussion at AN has made it clear that there is a difference of interpretation between admins of the section of the username policy dealing with promotional usernames. The parts of the text in question are these:

The following types of usernames are not permitted because they are considered promotional:

  • Usernames that unambiguously represent the name of a company, group, institution or product ...

A user who both adopts a promotional username and also engages in inappropriately promotional behaviors in articles about the company, group, or product, can be blocked.

And further down:

Remember that blocking a new user is not actually something we want to do, it is something we do when it is needed to protect Wikipedia from harm. Generally, editors whose usernames are a technical or borderline violation of the Username policy should be given an opportunity to discuss the username and how they may register a new username. However, users who are reluctant to register a new username and are otherwise showing a positive history of contributions to Wikipedia should be allowed to continue editing in a positive fashion and the matter should be dropped. But this exemption does not apply to editors who have a clearly offensive username, disruptive or vandalizing edits, or edits that show a history of problematic bias or conflict of interest.

I have interpreted this to mean that an editor with an unambiguously promotional username who has not yet edited can not yet be blocked according to this policy - and the proliferation of Wait until the user edits responses at UAA seems to show this is a common interpretation. However, others have clearly interpreted it to mean that, since those usernames are "not permitted", they can be soft-blocked to require them to obtain another username. The interpretation that others have put on this seems to me more reasonable, but not in line with the letter of policy. Can others clarify or give an opinion, please?

Pinging @

Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi: and @RickinBaltimore: as those mainly involved in the other discussion. GoldenRing (talk
) 11:59, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the ping. #7 below is what I referred to on AN; whether I agree with it or not, this is a pretty bald statement with no wriggle room regarding soft-/hard-blocks. Bearing in mind this is advice for the ordinary editor, who has probably has little interest in the sort of block the account is subject too- that, frankly, is admin arcanery  ;) and of little interest to an editor who just wants spam removed and isn't particularly concerned with / involved in the processes that achieve that end. No offence to admins or their arcanery of course  :) —
    velut luna
    12:08, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
En~wiki UAA instructions
(ec)Thanks for the ping GoldenRing (I'm a poet and didn't even know it). I've read the policy with regards to promotional names as this: promotional name and no edits = soft block to allow a name change, as the name is going to need to be changed regardless. Promotional name and promo edits = hard block. RickinBaltimore (talk) 12:10, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
  • GoldenRing, the issue is that there are hundreds of thousands of accounts registered that are never used to edit. If editors were to report every potential violation to UAA, admins might not have time for anything other than (soft-)blocking (as yet) unused, potentially promotional accounts. –xenotalk 12:34, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
Ah- but what's promotional- the username, or the account? —
velut luna
12:39, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
A wikipedia username, not being used to edit, has next to zero promotional value. –xenotalk 12:46, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
So what if it has a promotional username but edits in a different area- does that devalue the promotionalism? —
velut luna
12:53, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
In that case I would definitely try to avoid
over-zealous enforcement and at most gently suggest they change their name. (If they are contributing good edits, I personally care rather little what their username is, save for offensive/abusive things.) –xenotalk
12:58, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
(
velut luna
13:04, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
Personally I think the use of "promotional username" falls into the same bracket as "deliberately triggering the edit filter" - a nonsense block reason used in the block dropdown and therefore used by many admins. Sure it can happen, but it's extremely rare. I consider a username such as "ACME offer the best widgets!" as promotional. A username of "ACME" is not promotional unless they are making promotional edits. Instead it merely indicates a shared account, and a claim of representation which we can hardly endorse. All this is not permitted and they may all be blocked of course, but admins like to differentiate an account which is actively spamming from an account which is shared. In any case it is polite (non-bitey) to make the users aware of the problem with their behaviour, which they're very unlikely to be, before blocking. Policy is fairly clear about that. I think it's also relevant to point out that certain rules exist at both AIV and UAA to prevent violations being dumped onto admins, when they can probably be dealt with in other ways. This is so that admins don't have to deal with stuff that they don't have to deal with. -- zzuuzz (talk) 13:01, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
  • "Don't report to UAA" =/= "Don't block". Just like AIV is for obvious vandalism, not all disruption, admins can (and sometimes should) block for things that shouldn't be reported to the streamlined noticeboards. This is also a matter of conserving admin time; if an account never edits, there's really no point in reporting the account. Still, the username is against policy and a soft block is warranted. ~ Rob13Talk 14:32, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

I do a lot of reporting of corporate/organization names. Some years back there was a dispute about whether we should even warn corp/org usernames who had not edited. A section of an RfC on the matter supported warning them even in the absence of edits. Continuing from that, I routinely warn obvious corp/org names, and then wait to see if they edit. If they edit promotionally, I report them. I don't think a soft block does any harm per se. Some admins prefer to wait to see if they edit, others prefer to block. I think I'd prefer waiting to see what they do, Either way, in obvious cases they can't continue under that username. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:40, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh come on, a block is a block. Even a soft block, if it's undeserved, is one of the most bitey things we can possibly do. --Bongwarrior (talk) 20:10, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Not necessarily. I said I prefer to wait, and would if it were my call (which it isn't). That said, I can understand why an administrator would block an obviously promotional account under a soft block. If an editor were to make User:HSBC Holdings, and subsequently be soft blocked from editing before they started editing, we are doing a few things that are favorable; (1) preventing edits that stand an extremely high chance of being reverted anyway, thus reducing work, (2) preventing an obviously biased account from introducing edits that might never be reverted, (3) making the holder(s) of that account aware of our conflict of interest guidelines and paid editing, (4) preventing them from doing things that harm wikipedia and then subsequently being blocked for those harmful things (which happens quite a lot actually), and (5) since we never rename such blocked accounts to avoid public scrutiny, we prevent leaving a mark for all the world to see about how the company behaved badly here. Again, I'm not saying I agree with it. I'm just saying I can understand why. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:49, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Pop quiz time. Which of these usernames should be immediately blocked as promotional, even if they haven't edited?

  • Vandelay Industries
  • Oceanic Airlines
  • Cyberdyne Systems
  • Wayne Enterprises
  • Pendant Publishing
  • Initech
  • Prestige Worldwide
  • Aperture Science Laboratories

The answer, of course, is none. All are fictional companies, and anyone choosing to use one as their username is probably just a fan of the television show, film, book, or video game in question, but that might not be readily apparent if we happen to be unfamiliar with the television show, film, book, or video game in question. That is one reason why it is usually a bad idea to warn, block, or report a "promotional" username that hasn't promoted or edited. A long time ago, someone reported Vandelay Industries to UAA. I don't think the user had edited yet. I had to politely point out the Seinfeld connection - if I hadn't, I suspect the user would have been blocked. --Bongwarrior (talk) 20:10, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

  • I would think any administrator would check to see if the company exists first before taking any action. I know I check promotional usernames for the existence of a company before giving them a warning. I think admins would do the same. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:49, 23 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Personally I prefer that admins would soft-block all promo and hard block all egregious violations regardless of activity. When I can be psychic enough to look at the username creation log, and determin who will be indeffed as a VOA within 6 hours something is wrong. L3X1 (distænt write) )evidence( 03:20, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
Aperture Science really? Chell03:24, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Echoing a lot of the above, I originally added #7
    to explain
    ) 13:19, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Excuse me, I'm lost. Is the discussion centered on reporting or blocking? Tiderolls 19:17, 25 July 2017 (UTC)
    • I think it's covering both, given
      to explain
      ) 08:02, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

"Royal_Society_Biologist"

I have almost no contact with this aspect of policy. I find Royal Society Biologist to be a misleading/confusing username, and potentially promotional, but it doesn't seem to neatly fit into the outlined examples of usernames that should change, so I'm not making a formal administrative report about it. The user's page self-declares that the editor is a high-school aged person, who clearly is not a Royal Society biologist, but the user has been requesting taxonomic template changes as if a professional in this field, e.g. here. Due to prior experience in the area, I had the sense to go ask Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life if this change made sense (and the answer was no), but other TemplateEditors or Admins might not, and might assume that an actual biologist was requesting the change.

Anyway, I'm more concerned about the gaps in the username policy than this particular username; this sort of case seems to fall into a grey area, though maybe it seems less grey to people who spend a lot of time here.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  18:59, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

This username makes me think of the Royal Society of Biology. Lotje (talk) 06:05, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

RFC about disallowing non-language characters in usernames

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
This proposal is successful. There is broad support for adding the proposed text to the username policy, and in my view, the
general exceptions to the username policy. Mz7 (talk
) 00:56, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Should emoji and non-language unicode characters be acceptable as a username? Primefac (talk) 18:26, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Proposal

We have had three recent cases where a username with an emoji/unicode username has been brought before

WP:RFCN (Special:PermaLink/778328432 and Special:PermaLink/803943220
(updated to permalink now that discussion has ended)).

Each time the core issue came down to the fact that we simply don't have a rule regarding this; the closest

WP:IU
has is "confusing usernames" and "seem intended to provoke emotional reaction" neither of which really encapsulates the issue. Other arguments were ones of accessibility (actually seeing the emoji), convenience (hard to type and/or copypaste), intention (it's essentially a trollface), etc.

Thus, I think we should determine a consensus on whether to allow emoji/unicode usernames, and propose we put the following in a subsection of

WP:IU
:

Non-script usernames

Due to the difficulty with some web browsers in viewing non-language unicode characters and emoji, as well as concerns regarding the suitability of these characters as names, users are not allowed to have the following usernames:

  • Usernames containing emoji
  • Usernames that are considered to be emoticons or otherwise "decorative" usernames
  • Usernames that use any non-language symbols. This includes:
    • Symbols and characters unrelated to the list of writing systems
    • Symbols and characters that are the block lists at
      Unicode symbols

Users with such names should be offered the opportunity for renaming their account or creating a new one (see #Dealing with inappropriate usernames below). Before blocking, disagreements as to whether a particular username is acceptable should be discussed at WP:Requests for comment/User names.

Note that this restriction does not affect signatures, which are governed by Wikipedia:Signatures.

I am amenable to minor changes being made to the language/wording if something is not clear (or could be more succinct).

Please note that per the exceptions listed at USERNAME, if this proposal is accepted existing usernames will be grandfathered in, but if the name has not been brought for discussion it's fair game. Primefac (talk) 18:26, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Survey

  • Support as nominator. My browser can handle about 85% of emojis, but every once in a while I just get a box. We have a relatively small
    set of users using emojis/unicode and I'd like to see it kept that way, if only so I don't have to start questioning who or what is talking to me. Primefac (talk
    ) 18:26, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per my thoughts at this RFC. Multi-character versions of these names make pinging next to impossible on either your mobile or your desktop depending on what the specific character is. That is disruptive to a collaborative project. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:34, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support I don't think we need this kind of flare to exist within the user account names themselves, as @Primefac has stated, the signatures will suffice for fulfilling this function of personal expression. The two systems are indeed distinct. - Wiz9999 (talk) 18:39, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support. We should always aim for making usernames unambiguous and functional/legible. postdlf (talk) 18:48, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    • Your rationale sounds like support for User:♥︎player, who likes to play the card game Hearts and whose username will be unambiguous and legible for almost everyone, and a ban for User:ᚱᚢᚾᛟ, who likes to write about ancient writing systems, but whose username will look like square boxes for most editors. That is the opposite of the proposal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:19, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support largely per the accessibility concerns. Emoji and whatnot in signatures is fine, but as a username shouldn't be allowed. ansh666 18:48, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support. This project needs to promote conventions that aid communication. Tiderolls 18:50, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Qualified support for the first point only (no emojis), because they are not universally supported and many are rendered as vastly different icons on different systems (see this discussion for a related example). These have the effect of making a user possibly appear as multiple users to users on different systems, or who (like me) frequently switch back and forth. Yes you can copy-paste a username for pings or whatever, the problem is it's visually difficult to track a conversation with users whose username appearance changes unexpectedly. However I strongly oppose all of the other proposed changes as a solution in search of a problem. We already allow usernames in non-Latin language scripts which means that at least some of us have to copy-paste usernames anyway, so these arbitrary restrictions don't solve anything. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:52, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    Ivanvector, I specifically worded it so that non-Latin language scripts are acceptable. I'm not talking about things like 雲‍水, I'm talking about things like ℞ or ⨁. Primefac (talk) 18:58, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
Yes that is how I read the proposal, but I'm against that point. As long as a username uniquely identifies a user and has a reliable appearance across platforms, I see no reason to impose restrictions, and "language vs. non-language" is fairly arbitrary. To me, 雲‍水 is nonsense moreso than ℞⨁: the latter two have the appearance of stylized Latin characters whereas the former two are just random shapes which convey no information to me. I imagine you could make sense out of a username like Ivanvect⨁℞ even if you can't easily type it. I̡̡͜͡͞v̶̴̶̡͠a̡̡͘͞ń͘͟͟͡v̴̷̛͘҉e̕͢c̕͢͞t̢͘͝҉ǫ̵̛͡r̛͠͏̷ (T̨a̢̕͟lk/E͡͞d̸i͜t̸s̴̵̡) 19:24, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
So you're saying a username of I̡̡͜͡͞v̶̴̶̡͠a̡̡͘͞ń͘͟͟͡v̴̷̛͘҉e̕͢c̕͢͞t̢͘͝҉ǫ̵̛͡r̛͠͏̷ should be allowed? That's of benefit to Wikipedia? That looks less like nonsense to you than 雲‍水 which is merely in another language? Foreign languages don't strike me as nonsense. In fact there's nothing at all disharmonious or confusing to me about strings of letters/glyphs/whatever in a foreign language but garbled scribbles are definitely confusing. Writing systems are designed to clearly convey information, they intrinsically have a legibility to them. I'd rather deal with an emoticon than the chicken scratch version of your name. —DIYeditor (talk) 15:28, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but the statement above just cracks me up so much... @DIYeditor that nonsense in Ivan's username should not exist anywhere! let alone in a username. It is such an extreme eyesore. I certainly hope I never have to deal with an actual user that has that garbled nonsense as their username. Foreign language scripts are so much more legible than that nonsense chicken scratching around the text. - Wiz9999 (talk) 16:44, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
The constructive observation is that you could tell whose signature that was even though it was mangled with non-language characters - it still conveys information. Other than being kind of displeasing to look at (a matter of opinion) it's less disruptive probably than the other two Latin-ish O and R symbols which mess with line height in the editor. Yes, the foreign language characters have a meaning in the foreign language, and I could plug them into Google Translate to determine their meaning (Google insists these are Indonesian and won't translate them), but so what? If I'm to refer to an editor with this username in conversation, I'm going to be copying and pasting their username anyway because I can't type these characters, and if I'm doing that anyway then it doesn't matter one tiny little bit that these are language or not. The set of characters uniquely identifies this user account (the same way that the arrangement of characters in "Ivanvector" uniquely identifies mine) and everything beyond that is decoration. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:25, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Note to closer - in reviewing this discussion, please review whether they many bolded "support" comments are in support of excluding all of the types of usernames listed in the proposal, or in support of excluding only emoji from usernames. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 12:18, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose with a question One, I think username policy should be determined on global level given that we don't have separate accounts for this project and the global one. Second, I don't see a point in singling out emojis or other icons - names in other alphabets have the same issues and "but they are in an actual language" has nothing to do with any problem. I think that emojis are a bad idea as usernames but not one that needs a policy to fix. I am not sure how widespread the "different display" problem is, though. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:57, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    Jo-Jo Eumerus, a Vice article gives some pretty good examples of how one emoji can look wildly different. There was also discussed (in the first RFCN I linked to) the issues with "crying face" and "crying laughing face" and "laughing face" potentially being confused.
    The main reason I set aside language things like Kanji / Arabic is because some users use them as their usernames (because they edit in multiple languages) and it's not fair to prevent someone from editing en-wiki simply because they're (for example) Japanese. Primefac (talk) 19:01, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    To reply to your last point, which I missed, the entire reason I created this RFC is because there is no policy. At the original RFCN that I closed the consensus was essentially "we don't have a rule for this, so why not". You're not alone in thinking that emojis are a bad idea as a username, but if we don't have a rule/reason/consensus on it, we'll just end up debating in circles about it. This way, whichever way the consensus goes, we can point to it and say "see, we (do/don't) allow these usernames". Primefac (talk) 19:06, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    But does that matter? The fact that the emoji that I always see on my Mac is different from the one that some other editor always sees on his Windows box is not going to stop me from recognizing it on my Mac, or stop him from recognizing it on his PC. And if you choose to switch back and forth between systems, then you are already aware of the limitations of the systems you use, and you can adjust for it (in just the same way that you will adjust for the fact that you will be able to read User:ᚱᚢᚾᛟ on some computers and not on others). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    Probably not, but I was answering the question posed. Primefac (talk) 19:20, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    Take 🙄 for example: What can look like a slightly annoyed look, with rolling eyes, will look like happy face on some devices and a confused face on others (check the Emojipedia entry for examples). Now you are switching devices and don't know that manufacturers implement Unicode differently: How will you know that this is the same user as this or this? Regards SoWhy 14:32, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
    I see an empty square. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:36, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
    Check the link for how it should look like. But then you see the problem, no? I see the emoticon but you don't, so how can you identify a user with such a name? Regards SoWhy 12:33, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
    Yes, I was meaning to illustrate the problem. On systems where these are variably supported readers all see different things, but on what is still the vast majority of systems which don't support these character sets at all, all of the characters look exactly the same. Every character in this set is the same empty box. You can't differentiate between different characters in the set, and by extension one cannot differentiate between different users who use characters in this set to compose their usernames. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 12:35, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support (
    velut luna
    19:03, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - Honestly, I have no idea how to ping someone who's name is an emoji, and if I found myself in a situation where I needed to, I would probably just post on their talk with a link rather than trying to figure it out. I wouldn't have any serious misgivings about grandfathering people into the system, if those who already had one of these names feels strongly about retaining it, since AFAIK the overall number is very small. But I think it's constructive at least to keep that number from growing large. GMGtalk 19:10, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support, purely for technical reasons. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 21:01, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support One of the most fundamental purposes to have designated user names on any online medium is to facilitate communication between users. If there are any technological barriers that prevent such communication, the lack of universal rendering and lack of screen-reader compliance are two such examples, then the user name fails in this purpose. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:05, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per nom's well-reasoned case. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:28, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - These appear in histories and logs and are commonly part of URLs when using tools and links. For technical reasons and because this is en-Wikipedia, it would even be best if they were restricted to ASCII alpha+numeric in my opinion, but I understand that this would now be problematic with unified user names and that it is out of the question. One thing that has not been addressed above is how many users would now receive a rename notice (to evaluate and time the effort of fixing existing names). Another is if the user creation code will enforce this in the future instead of constantly needing community attention. —PaleoNeonate – 21:52, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose because what's written is too sweeping, and because of the number of people this could harm. Did you know that one of the Wikipedias has a history of blocking people for having numbers in their usernames? You don't even have to make an edit there. All you need is a username like
    Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi|'s. IMO we need less of this in the movement, not more. We should not have a policy of banning usernames that aren't actually hurting anyone. When and if an individual username becomes a problem – maybe if the editor actually sticks around, unlike 99% of newly created accounts – then we could talk about it on a case-by-case basis, but let's not waste time pre-emptively policing the artistic style of usernames. WhatamIdoing (talk
    ) 22:17, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support – These usernames are already borderline on several parts of the username policy, including the "emotional reaction", "disruptive", and "confusing" clauses. I'm generally opposed to non-latin characters being in usernames for decoration only, as the intent of
    WP:NONLATIN always seemed to be to allow names and words in non-English languages, and it talks about "usernames that are not spelled using the Latin alphabet", not "usernames that user characters outside the Latin alphabet". I would clarify that the policy does not prohibit the use of punctuation from the "Basic Latin" character block (other than # < > [ ] | { } / @, which are banned for technical reasons). --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE
    ) 22:19, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support Wikipedia relies on collaboration and I am one of a significant number of editors who find it difficult to think about or communicate with someone using squiggles for their name. The motivation of an emoticon editor is not relevant, but the fact remains that such names often come across as trolling. If you are
    here for the encyclopedia, please do not use a decorative name. Johnuniq (talk
    ) 00:07, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support. I don't think it's helpful when a username shows up as a string of boxes on something that does not support emoji. —
    Help!
    00:23, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support, they also should be allowed in signatures. Kaldari (talk) 01:34, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
Should be allowed, or should not be allowed? Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 01:44, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose. No point in singling out emojis compared to other non-Latin characters. Emojis are Unicode characters and can thus be typed just like any other language character. Side note: I am appalled by the short length of
    WP:BIAS. feminist
    02:56, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
    @
    WP:BIAS problem. Regards SoWhy
    12:37, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support The allowance of non-Latin character is necessary, because of global user names--a person who edits primarily on a non-Latin-alphabet WP will have a name in the characters of that language, and the name will therefore be the same here as on their home wiki. There is no WP written in emoji. There is thus no necessity for these names. Many users and editors find them confusing, and they add nothing helpful. DGG ( talk ) 05:10, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • support this is a working community and being able to cite someone's username is an essential part of communicating. Jytdog (talk) 05:32, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support: Emoji usernames are an issue for computers that don't support emojis. KGirl (Wanna chat?) 12:04, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per most of what was said above, especially the points about a11y, making it harder for collaboration to happen and problems with output on different devices. Regards SoWhy 14:24, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per GMG, DGG, and others. shoy (reactions) 14:35, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support It's great for users to have an opportunity to be creative with their names but ultimately they are used for identification by and communication with other editors. We are here to build an encyclopedia. The reason for allowing Unicode characters in general should be to provide for other languages which is a no brainer. Extending that to purely graphical (or entirely nonsense) usernames doesn't make sense - seeing ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡o) come up in my watchlist, with its punctuation marks, is annoying and confusing unlike purely foreign language names - which are a series of language characters and not annoying or confusing at all. And what of someone who wants to make an even longer string of characters as an emoticon or worse as pure nonsense? Perhaps added to "emoticon" should be "or nonsense jumbles of punctuation or symbols". Users can make their signature whatever they wish anything that is not confusing; they are free to put emojis or other characters there which is fine. We shouldn't be forced to deal with decoration in usernames themselves. Please nip this problem in the bud. —DIYeditor (talk) 14:43, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support on technical grounds - While I understand that there are people who want to have some fun with their usernames, it could pose technical problems, both to readers (who may be unable to see symbols), and to the users themselves (wouldn't it be hard to log-in using such usernames?) As a compromise, maybe in the future, the use of emojis could instead be directed at user signatures instead (and indeed, many users already do so).
    csdnew
    16:12, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose If characters are going to be arbitrarily banned from usernames just because people
    WP:DONTLIKEIT, this should be a global user name policy on Meta rather than a local policy to trip up anyone who comes here after establishing their name on another wiki. Anomie⚔
    17:21, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
    • +1. We need a global policy to address DONTLIKEIT problems. "Your username is okay at your home wiki, but you'll get blocked if you go to this other one" is not okay. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:50, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
      • How is that different from a circumstance where "Administrator" or some such has been accepted on a foreign language Wikipedia because they didn't recognize the problem but it can't be allowed here? A global policy would be great but this is a start. —DIYeditor (talk) 18:29, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
    • I'm also somewhat amused by the support reasons that complain about usernames that would be allowed by this proposal, e.g. "I̡̡͜͡͞v̶̴̶̡͠a̡̡͘͞ń͘͟͟͡v̴̷̛͘҉e̕͢c̕͢͞t̢͘͝҉ǫ̵̛͡r̛͠͏̷ " that abuses diacritics (which are language symbols) or "( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡o)" where the only characters that might be considered non-"language symbols" are parentheses and a tilde. Anomie⚔ 17:21, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
      • ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡o) has no natural language meaning even if it does have language characters. I think common sense would win the day here. 比萨 (pizza), بيتزا (pizza) or any other username that was meant to convey something in an actual language would still be allowed, while (<ت.ت>), a face I randomly pieced together by copying one section of the Google translate of pizza in Arabic above would not be. Any usernames that were created on other wikis and are in line with their naming policies should obviously be exempted. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:02, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
      • ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡o) would be disallowed as an emoticon by the second criterion and I̡̡͜͡͞v̶̴̶̡͠a̡̡͘͞ń͘͟͟͡v̴̷̛͘҉e̕͢c̕͢͞t̢͘͝҉ǫ̵̛͡r̛͠͏̷ might fail decorative although as I said the wording could use some expansion to include general abuse of language symbols. If the proposal doesn't go quite far enough that can be further amended once it's clear if there is support for the basic idea. —DIYeditor (talk) 18:29, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
(edit conflict) What do you mean it has no natural meaning? It's clearly a set of winking eyes and a nose, and intended to represent that. I don't think anyone with any language background is going to see that set of characters and think it's a dump truck or something. It's 比萨 that conveys no natural meaning, unless you are familiar with that language or someone tells you that it's pizza. I also don't get a face out of the characters you picked together without you telling me that's what it is, I thought it was a boat. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:36, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
I suppose it might be better to say whatever the face is can't be vocalized in any language without being gibberish. Its a face, but it doesn't serve the essential purpose of names (whether IRL or on the internet) of allowing us to have something we can easily and recognizably call someone by, unless we are told what to call them. That's the difference between it and a made up name like "FlubsterWubster". The latter conveys no meaning at all, other than something thats easy for anyone who speaks English to pronounce and recall.
The pizza characters don't have meaning for someone who doesn't know those languages, but we can pretty readily assume that it means something in a language that is/was spoken and that they're likely trying to contribute on zh.wiki. My boat/face/whatever was more of a point to common sense: it has language characters in it, but if it was created by someone on en.wiki we'd likely know it was meant as an illustration, not as a name from a language that uses a non-Latin script. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:13, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - emoji etc names are confusing, hard to communicate with, and generally not conducive to collaborative work here. I also agree with Anomie, that this would be better implemented at the global level, but at least something can be done about it here. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 17:24, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support as long as non-latin alphabet names that are global, and come from other wikis are allowed. Emojis, "cute" characters or Ivan's extreme example obviously should not be allowed. -- Alexf(talk) 17:26, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
    • What if another wiki says that "User:🏈fan" is a perfectly fine username? Are you going to block that user for daring to edit the English Wikipedia without first requesting a global name change? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:50, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
      • That is using a cutre emoji type character. What I said is non-latin alphabet. That is not alphabet but cute emoji characters. Not the same as thew 比萨 example above. -- Alexf(talk) 18:43, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - Not all emojis work on various browsers and then we have I̡̡͜͡͞v̶̴̶̡͠a̡̡͘͞ń͘͟͟͡v̴̷̛͘҉e̕͢c̕͢͞t̢͘͝҉ǫ̵̛͡r̛͠͏̷ which for me looks like an utter mess, in short if you want to contribute here in a helpful manner then you can pick a username like the other 20 million people on here, Non-latin usernames should be exempt as not everyone is English. –Davey2010Talk 18:51, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - Per nominator, collaboration hurrdles and my previous comments here and here - FlightTime (open channel) 18:58, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - A solution in search of a problem and another example of
    instruction creep. Anne drew Andrew and Drew
    20:42, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Johnuniq, I think my comment above might be what is being referred to. I am 100% opposed to any prohibition on non-English language characters. The point I was trying to make is even if the language in this proposal is ambiguous, it is easy to determine through looking at something whether or not it is decorative or language. Clearly we shouldn't be prohibiting non-Latin usernames that are the standard script system in other language Wikimedia projects. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:02, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support The proposal in its entirety.
    talk
    ) 23:07, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support For mentioned reasons plus....it should not be a complex technical task to just write a user name. Wikipedia's misguided effort to make itself more technically user friendly consists of dumbing down the level "2" stuff to level '1" while ignoring that it has piled on level 8 stuff to basic editors. We should avoid making that worse. North8000 (talk) 00:24, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support ASCII is enough for English. I get that Unicode exists to represent other alphabets, and a certain amount of disruption is necessary for encouraging unified usernames cross-project, but things that aren't valid usernames in any computer system elsewhere shouldn't be encouraged at Wikipedia, either. Jclemens (talk) 04:52, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support. Can't see legitimate uses for such names. (But what about users who may have registered such names on other projects and are being migrated here?)  Sandstein  10:09, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support as they can't be pronounced or in some cases easily written. Signatures are a different story. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:37, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support. Names that cannot be displayed consistently can cause a variety of confusions, and there are plenty of options for conforming usernames in a wide variety of languages. --RL0919 (talk) 17:28, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support Names that cannot be easily typed/used cause an unnecessary complexity to the entire community for the sake of satisfying one editor's vanity. In particular I'm thinking about a certain prolific editor who name changed to a specific symbol that caused so much problems that people had to set up convienence templates that they could converse with the editor. Unfortunately that editor would be grandfathered in, but that doesn't prevent us from trying to prevent others from doing silly things. Hasteur (talk) 18:06, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support the rule against usernames that may be difficult to enter or render. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:43, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per Jclemens and DIYeditor. I was not swayed by the opposers' arguments. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:45, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per every "support" reason above. —
    talk
    ) 21:26, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per nomination, mainly to avoid difficulty copying/writing usernames with unusual characters. Name goes here (talk | contribs) 23:59, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per nomination. Names like these are disruptive and makes things difficult if one wants to mention or discuss with the user. I'd even go as far as to getting rid of the grandfather clause for this, but that would (currently) be against consensus.
    SkyWarrior
    03:27, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support. We are happy to adapt, to cut and paste characters in language, so that all editors may use any reasonable name in their native tongue. Emojis are not a language, so there isn't any expectation of a right to use them. The unusual characters are not universally supported on all platforms, making collaboration more difficult. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 10:55, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support all as written. Having emoji, emoticons, or symbols with no linguistic properties is very unhelpful. Emoji are also fairly recent, and may not be supported on older systems. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 15:20, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support To hell with emojis. Those are a technical nightmare / impossible to even type on any keyboard or pronounce in any language. I'd extend this to
    b
    } 22:12, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support. There are literally billions of billions of usernames that can be made with just numbers and the 26 letters of the English alphabet. Any potential editor should be clever enough to figure out a username from that selection. bd2412 T 22:22, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - [There is no point if] non-Latin characters are still to be allowed, and it would be silly to disallow other language characters because of the Single Unified Login system. Foreign language characters pose all the same problems as symbols/emojis etc. [(i.e. non-language characters; e.g. I cannot pronounce or type Japonic, Sino Tibetan, or Eastern Slavic language characters any better than the most arcane symbols/emojis)]. Furthermore, this would only ban [symbols/emojis etc.] locally. If a contributor who creates an account [with symbols/emojis etc. in their username to edit another language Wikipedia] after this request for comment were to close as successful and becomes well established there, then begins editing here, they would be forced to change their username or receive a block. That is not right. This should either be implemented as a policy for all language versions of Wikipedia or none. It does not make sense to just implement it locally. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 04:14, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Note: this is not about non-latin characters but about specific unicode ranges like emojis, which are not part of language scripts. —PaleoNeonate – 05:42, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
  • That oppose is not relevant for this proposal which happily permits user names such as קיפודנחש (from my example above of a user active at hewiki and enwiki). This proposal prohbits non-language symbols such as 😈 + 🙏🏻 + ⚱. Johnuniq (talk) 06:51, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
@PaleoNeonate and Johnuniq: It is highly relevant. I merely did not state it clearly which led to misinterpretation. I've clarified with brackets. Regards, — Godsy (TALKCONT) 15:52, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
Godsy, as I mentioned above, blocking is the last course of action to take in your hypothetical "other wikis first" scenario. You discuss with the editor, then go to RFCN, and then block if necessary. It could very well be that the issue is resolved in steps one or two. Primefac (talk) 15:59, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
If, for example, User:👽 creates an account at and makes a few thousand edits to de:Wikipedia over a year or so then begins contributing here they should never asked/forced to change their username (because it affects the identity they have built there) or be blocked (because it is unjust). I cannot support a proposal where either of those things is a possible outcome. On a side note, there would be no grounds to ask, for example, User:靑瓷陽印刻ისნაირებისა草象嵌牡丹ორებლებ文銀釦대접, which is actually egregious, to change their username. — Godsy (TALKCONT) 16:18, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
One could absolutely ask the latter to change their name. That's what
WP:RFCN is for (never mind the fact that you've mashed up Chinese and Georgian in a rather pointy/gibberish example). It might not be technically covered under this proposal, but as far as "disruptive" or "confusing" usernames go it's certainly up there (and those two are covered by existing policy). Primefac (talk
) 16:23, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
@Primefac: Gibberish perhaps, but not pointy. There is no need for characterizations like that which only serve to drain civility from a discussion. I certainly hope we would not discriminate against Korean-Georgians (or vice versa) wishing to use characters from both languages in their username (as long as we allow foreign language characters). — Godsy (TALKCONT) 16:35, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support, per the support arguments above. I too suffer from the emoji-as-box problem and would rather forestall the possibility of running into a discussion between two users with two different emoji usernames that both render as a box for me. What a nightmare. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 01:58, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose - "confusing username" is often confused. This bit of policy was created to prevent users creating names such as "AdminBob" or "BotAnna". A username is not confusing in itself - otherwise we'd have to ban non-latin usernames. We really don't need to police usernames so heavily. There are enough policies to prevent names that are problematic, and if a name is created in order to cause problems it is the behaviour, not the name, that needs to be addressed. I need to stress how unfriendly the username policing is. Imagine you sign up for a username, make some good faith edits, and then get a warning about your username posting you to a meta discussion board where you'll have to defend your name. It's incredibly hostile to new users, and it's ridiculously bureaucratic. DanBCDanBC (talk) 11:37, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
  • It wouldn't be asking much to get rid of emojis from names. We would certainly welcome, say, writing out what each emoji in the name is and using that as a username instead. That being said, I can see an argument, though I still disagree with it, for having a name that's mostly not emojis, with maybe one or two thrown in - as long as the rest can be used to identify the user such that if just that portion or even a nickname based on it were used in a wiki conversation it would be very clear to whom the speaker is referring. The policy might have been made for the exact cause you describe, but it also goes a long way toward clarifying discussion and making fellow users easier to refer to. e.g. Just plucking a random user out of the air here, but it might be kind of touchy for Stifle to log on and see someone calling his or herself "The Real Stifle" and commenting in the same discussions as the aforementioned Stifle. Perhaps case-by-case would be useful. Zeke, the Mad Horrorist (Speak quickly) (Follow my trail) 02:41, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose as a solution looking for a problem. If passed, I would expect a grandfather clause for usernames previously existing. Full disclosure: I occasionally use the alternative account User:✄. Stifle (talk) 16:00, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
    Given that the last sentence of the proposal is that existing usernames would be grandfathered, I'd say your expectation has been met. As for the "solution looking for a problem" - I brought this discussion up because at least three times now "we don't have a policy on this" was part of the reason username discussions resulted in no consensus/no change results. Primefac (talk) 16:04, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Strongly Oppose — Only unambiguously hostile usernames should be disallowed. That some people's computers don't work well with non-letter symbols is their computer's problem. We don't erase everything written in Arabic in the encyclopedia because some ancient Window$ 95 doesn't show it right, instead we link to information about the problem. —{{u|
    T/C
    |☮️|John15:12|🍂     23:06, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
    Genuinely out of curiosity, does that mean you're opposed to
    WP:ISU? Because none of those fit your description either. Primefac (talk
    ) 23:33, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
    T/C
    |☮️|John15:12|🍂 20:14, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support the spirit of this proposal, though given some of the examples given above (e.g. emoticons created with only language characters), perhaps minor revisions may be necessary to make its letter coincide with its spirit. (For one thing, what exactly is a "decorative" username? Would anyone have much of a problem with User:*^* Double sharp *^*, since it is rather easy to type despite its slight silliness?) Double sharp (talk) 05:21, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support it's sensible and hard to type out. jcc (tea and biscuits) 16:38, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support. Emojis rendering as boxes in particular is extremely disruptive. Having two or more people like that in a discussion would be unreadable, and trying to identify one of them across different discussions would be prohibitively difficult. I also welcome attempts to establish common ground for global usernames at Metawiki. Alsee (talk) 08:52, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support: Actually any responsible/prospective editor who is here to really help build encyclopedia will surely choose decent, meaningful and readable username. --Ammarpad (talk) 11:28, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per many of the above reasons and my past explanations on the topic. These usernames make communication harder. ~ Rob13Talk 13:31, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support Not allowing emojis will improve accessibility. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:44, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The proposal seems a bit too open-ended and I don't see good justification overall. Yeah, it seems like there could be problems down the line but that's not a reason to stamp out creativity, no matter how reflexive that may be nowadays. The creativity might not be needed if we didn't have a huge number of dead usernames no one ever used... If need be, the type specimen (͡ ͜ʖ͡o) may suggest a less restrictive alternative - format altering characters ("combining" characters, RTL and so forth) potentially could be an issue in a way that ordinary "emojis" may not be. I could also certainly see recommending plain language usernames without requiring them. Doc James' argument comes closest to being persuasive but I would need to hear someone with those issues actually tell us it is a significant problem - AFAIK there are a lot of issues with screen readers and I don't know if this rates top billing. Wnt (talk) 10:39, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support While I do not see an aggravated usage of such usernames and not even that their use are disruptive, I agree with the points stated here, also if an user were to have their homewiki with a different username local policy which allowed such, I'd oppose any sanctions on them. --QEDK (愛 • 海) 07:33, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - the user name exists partly to allow reference to the user; use a name which isn't readable to most local users, and you're disrupting the user interaction system here. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:39, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose for the simple fact that since
    WP:SUL exists, consensus for such an issue cannot be delegated by one sole Wikimedia project. Steel1943 (talk
    ) 05:21, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose. In light of
    WP:SUL being a thing, local username policies relating to character sets and so forth are generally problematic and difficult to enforce. FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY [u+1F602]
     18:20, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Meh Even if this becomes policy, I could jump onto the French Wikipedia, make a new username filled with everyone's favorite blank boxes and come back here under
    WP:SUL, without any problems. I have a non-english username, but don't have to resort to fancy script in doing so, understandably some people do, although editors with Chinese characters are often unpingable on old versions of firefox. Emoji is proably not an offical langauge anywhere yet, although people do like them and use them as a kind of communication. apprantly they are not going to become a languge soon either. I use old computers some of the time and can't see whatever all these fancy things are most the time, I agree that it makes it harder to ping people or see their username, but I wouldn't say that bothers me, I can still copy/paste whatever the blank or numbered little boxes are to do the deed. Dysklyver
    20:29, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support It's evasive. What's next, a username consisting of only whitespace? They're impossible to ping, and it comes off as purposely difficult to reach. Drewmutt (^ᴥ^) talk 22:55, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose We have no business trying to tell other wikis that their username policies are unacceptable here, unless there's a problem with the content of the username as well as its expression. This is different from content objections, e.g. how we prohibit offensive usernames or how de:wp permits "User:Acme Company" and we prohibit it — we prohibit it because we don't allow role accounts or promotional usernames regardless of the specific characters, not because we oppose having "C" and "O" and "M" next to each other in usernames. In saying that this is an expression problem, I doubt anyone would mind having a user called "FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY", even though that's the same as 😂, which typifies the subject of this prohibition proposal. If any characters cause technical problems, we already ban them (this would fall under WP:UNCONF), but aside from that, we should permit any characters, or combinations of characters, that aren't objectionable for content reasons and that don't cause technical problems for reasons such as length. Nyttend (talk) 23:57, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
    Nyttend, you might want to double-check that; de Wikipedia specifically gives examples of unacceptable names, including "company" names. Primefac (talk) 16:44, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
    Maybe they changed their policies? I'm talking about the issue discussed in the first section of Wikipedia talk:Username policy/Archive 21. At the time (early 2014), someone said Allowing role usernames does raise the concern of someone suggesting an affiliation that they do not have. This is handled in the German Wikipedia by OTRS verification of role usernames, similar to the way we currently handle real names of high profile individuals. Also see the comments in the "Libraries, archives, partnerships" section of C:Commons talk:Username policy. Regardless of whether this is currently permitted, my point stands — one Wikipedia might permit a username because of what it is (e.g. a company name) that would fall afoul of our standards, and with that situation I'm fine, unlike what's proposed here. Nyttend (talk) 22:57, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support – Per
    Talk
    17:32, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support: including emoticons not only impedes accountability of/communications with the user (as others have mentioned, they may be hard to ping/link), but undermines the seriousness of the project. Nobody should come here and immediately think of how to add 'fun' to their experience—we should all be here to build an encyclopaedia. Signatures are the place to add funny graphics (if one so wishes). –Sb2001 01:17, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose due to the proposal being too strict. As currently written, it technically bans numbers and most punctuation due to their not being part of any alphabet (and would also ban a majority of the characters typable on a macOS English-language keyboard layout). If you want an emoji/dingbat ban write it as an emoji/dingbat ban, there's no point in banning the en dash and the pound sign along with the rest of them. Also, it would be very confusing to have 100 different local username policies; this belongs on Meta. Jc86035 (talk) 15:46, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
    Numbers are directly related to a writing system (most of them, actually), as are most punctuation. If you have a better way to phrase it, then I'm all ears. Primefac (talk) 15:56, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
    @Jc86035: Numbers, en-dashes, and pound signs are part of the "Basic Latin" character block, and are therefore related to a listed writing system and not in the symbol block. This policy shouldn't disallow those names, although it might be worth clarifying. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 17:00, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
    @
    'Phags-pa
    for which no widely-supported keyboard layouts exist). It's also probably a bad idea to use real live Wikipedia articles as part of the policy.
    In addition, what are the current blacklists for new account usernames? Neither MediaWiki:Titleblacklist nor meta:Title blacklist include emoji so I'm not sure how 😂 would have been banned (this info should probably be at the top of the section to indicate current practice). Jc86035 (talk) 11:07, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
    I was going to say "So something referencing '
    Spın̈al Tap' wouldn't be an allowed user name?", but it turns out n̈ actually is used in a few uncommon orthographies (according to our article). I suppose the point still holds if someone wanted to reference it by putting metal umlauts over other̈ l̈etter̈s. 😂̈ Anomie⚔
    14:54, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
    @Anomie: I was trying to be brief but I meant, basically, that only real combinations of diacritic modifier characters would be allowed, regardless of whether they would actually appear on the letter in question in a real script (e.g. since ¨̌ is used in ǚ, any letter which can be modified with diacritics would be allowed to have that combination of diacritics). This would allow people to use arbitrary metal umlauts on the letters and stuff like that but prohibit overusing diacritics and using them on random symbols. Jc86035 (talk) 16:22, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support I particularly like DIYeditor's reasoning: "ultimately they are used for identification by and communication with other editors. We are here to build an encyclopedia". I think we need a relatively easy way to remember an account name, and these are definitely not. Doug Weller talk 12:36, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Partial support Full support for the third clause (non-language symbols) as reasonable enough. Sort-of supporting the first (emojis), but as a subclause of the third clause explicitly excluding emoji Unicode points (per browser rendering issues etc.) from language symbols, not as a ban on "funny usernames"; said otherwise, ☺ is forbidden but ":-)" is allowed (barring technical restrictions etc.). Oppose the second clause (emoticons and decorative usernames) per that reasoning. TigraanClick here to contact me 15:49, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support per Od Mishehu and Drewmutt. Pinging should not be difficult, especially on mobile devices. James (talk/contribs) 16:03, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support, mostly per bd2412. Enterprisey (talk!) 01:43, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support, as non-language characters are not properly supported. The Banner talk 20:04, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Oppose, as too broad. If the proposal was limited to merely emoji (which can differ considerably in appearance over different platforms), I could support. Lankiveil (speak to me) 05:37, 23 October 2017 (UTC).
  • Support - the technical limitations of emojis and other non-language usernames make this a very easy decision for me. I have nothing against emojis, just usernames that incorporate them. Kurtis (talk) 06:47, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support – There is no reason anyone should need a username that breaks these rules, and plenty of space to express yourself with language characters, so any possible technical or confusion issue with emoji in usernames, even an unlikely or rare one, is enough of a reason to say no to allowing them. —swpbT go beyond 17:42, 27 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support limiting emojis, emoticons, and Unicode characters that are not letters/numbers/punctuation in any script. These usernames serve no practical purpose besides annoying other users who want to talk to them, and I find DIYeditor's rationale especially compelling in this matter. For instance, notational systems, braille, music, shorthand, emoji, alchemical symbols, and game symbols should be all disallowed in usernames, with no restriction on using them in signatures. I feel like it would be more effective as a global policy, though. epicgenius (talk) 22:56, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Support - it aids communication. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:19, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

  • For what it's worth, there was also a discussion on meta that had general support for the proposal, but I do not intend on this being a meta RFC; it's just for en-wiki (for now). Primefac (talk) 18:26, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    • The discussion there seems rather different. The idea was to ban changing an existing username to an emoji-only username. So creating new accounts with emojis would be fine, and changing usernames to something like "User:🏈fan" (because that's emoji-plus-letters) would be fine, but they would refuse to change an existing username to just "User:🏈" . Your proposal is much more sweeping. In fact, I'm not even sure that your proposal, as written, permits punctuation in usernames (e.g., @Kralizec!:, @Tim!:, @Marine 69-71: or **dave**), although I hope that's not your intention. Maybe you should provide some examples of usernames that exist and that you think should be banned. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:59, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    @
    velut luna
    22:10, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    @WhatamIdoing: !, -, and * are part of the "Basic Latin" character block, and are therefore related to a listed writing system and not in the symbol block. This policy shouldn't disallow those names, although it might be worth clarifying. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 22:19, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    (edit conflict) Which would doubtless create a lot of problems with fairness ("He can have that name, which is much worse than yours, but you can't, because he created his account two days before you did, and we changed the policy in the meantime"), but doesn't answer the questions at hand:
    1. Where is the evidence that there is an existing problem with usernames? We don't normally write policies for
      WP:CREEPy
      reasons.
    2. What kinds of usernames are intended to be banned, and what kind of usernames are intended to be kept? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:21, 4 October 2017 (UTC)
    WhatamIdoing, this is a genuine question: did you read through the discussions linked in the nomination? There's a huge amount of concern about emoji usernames mixed in with the support/indifference towards them. And yes, this is preventative, because it's better to decide we don't want emoji usernames when there are only two dozen, then try to retroactively realize that fact when we're awash with hundreds of accounts.
    Of course, this is a consensus-building opportunity, so if the consensus is "let's wait and see" then we would wait and see. But there have been more than one heated discussion about this topic, and the outcome so far has been "we don't have any rules so we cannot do anything", so... let's make some rules? Primefac (talk) 00:00, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
    I didn't read it, and I don't expect any enforcing admins to dig through the archives to read it before they start hassling people for having the "wrong" kind of characters in their usernames. The change you want to make to this policy needs to contain all of the necessary information, without referring to previous discussions, and it doesn't. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:53, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
    I may not be remembering things correctly here, but as I understand it emoji names are de-facto banned for new users by entries in the title blacklist. The reason the meta discussion was for renaming to emoji names is because stewards/renamers can bypass the title blacklist when performing renames. That said, we should have a global user naming policy, but there would be enough "but muh local project rights@@" stuff going on that I don't imagine the discussion would go anywhere. -- Ajraddatz (talk) 17:29, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Could this RfC be renamed to something more descriptive, like "RFC about disallowing non-language characters in usernames"? --Pipetricker (talk) 14:34, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
No-one objected, so I'm changing it. --Pipetricker (talk) 08:07, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
  • I see a lot of people complaining about emojis being untypeable, unrecognizable, unpronounceable, or rendering as boxes. But all that applies just as well for many English speakers to names in obscure non-Latin-based writing systems. For example, do "𑨢𑨆𑨏𑨳𑨋𑨆𑨬𑨳", "𑩴𑩖𑪌𑩜𑩖𑪒", and "𛆁𛈬" show up for everyone, and does everyone else know how to type them and pronounce them? Assuming I didn't make any typos and whoever made the linked images didn't either, those are all words in languages. I can see characters there for the first two (the last shows up as boxes with numbers for me), but I don't know how to type, recognize, or pronounce any of them. Anomie⚔ 13:29, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
    • I think there may be support for a software fix here: allowing per-project nicknames as mostly proposed in phab:T154177. — xaosflux Talk 14:46, 13 October 2017 (UTC)
      • If you're talking here about users from other language Wikipedias, even if they occasionally stop by here, it's something we must tolerate on grounds that on their local wikis these names are certainly readable. Any non-language symbols or emoji are different in that they are not written in a language of an other Wikipedia (or other sister project), so the user can't say that "my user name is more readable where I come from than the user name type you want me to use". עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:45, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
        • While it's probably tongue-in-cheek, I see http://😃.duolingo.com/ offers to teach the Emoji language in 5 minutes per day. ;) More seriously, I'm trying to point out that certain arguments being frequently repeated here apply as aptly to things those people do support keeping. Even as names created locally and not just as coming from another wiki. (And yes, I'm aware from previous discussions that you personally would support banning all non-English characters in user names.) Anomie⚔ 19:02, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
          • As I said, for users from other wikis, non-English characters something we must tolerate - which means that I clearly do not like the idea. The comment you linked to was explicitly about some local admins. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:52, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
    • @Anomie:; No!. All I see is "", "" and "". I didn't realise your examples even had content until I went to edit mode. I now feel like I am missing out. :( (Currently viewing on an iPad). ClubOranjeT 10:20, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
  • I see 8 identical empty squares, 6 identical empty squares, and 2 identical empty squares (the squares across all three sets are identical; there's just one square repeated 16 times). I do know how to type them: Ctrl+C Ctrl+V. I know in theory how to type them natively, but I don't know which characters they are. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 21:01, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment: I have no opinion at this time, but If I recall, there's an editor named 😂. Steel1943 (talk) 03:54, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
    Update. Steel1943 (talk) 05:21, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment I feel that this RFC should have taken place on Meta, not enwiki. Biggest reason is that usernames are now global, and as a global renamer, I greatly desire having a global username policy instead of having the hodgepodge mess we have now of individual wikis setting their own username policies when usernames are now global. It is entirely possible for a username that is acceptable on one wiki to be a blockable offense on another. A proposal to set another local policy here would contribute to that mess. —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 13:26, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
    I will be pursuing that shortly. Primefac (talk) 13:35, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
    Is there even a global username policy on Meta? There is a global rename policy, but it doesn't apply to initial names chosen at account creation. What you're proposing is creating a Global Username Policy from scratch, which I think is going to meet a lot of resistance. --Ahecht (TALK
    PAGE    ) 19:22, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
    Ahecht, as far as I am aware there is none, but due mainly to k6ka's concerns I would like to start one fairly soon (as soon as I find time to write up a comprehensive plan with all angles covered). I don't necessarily think that having a general policy will be met with resistance, because I plan on basing the meta policy on what the majority of other wikis give as their policies (see my reply above regarding the de-wiki's username policy and its similarity to our own). Besides, the question of "should we have a global username policy" is not the same as "what should be in a global username policy", so the specific details can always be worked out later (though I do want to start off with the common items). But I guess we'll see. Primefac (talk) 20:59, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
    As someone who thinks UPOL is the most boring part of en.wiki and am only here because I think these types of usernames make communication harder, no, this did not need to be done on meta first. Local policies of any sort can always be made stronger than global policies, so the objection that we have SUL now is about as useful as saying We have a global CU policy, we can't make our CU policy more stringent. Global policies are the minimum. They can be strengthened locally, and when not existing, local projects can set them. Even if a global policy allowed the characters explicitly, we would be able to prohibit them locally on en.wiki if the account originated here. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:48, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
    A stronger CU policy here doesn't interfere with the use of CU on other wikis. A ban on certain characters here does mean that someone with an established history elsewhere might find themselves blocked here unless they abandon that history in favor of a new name. Anomie⚔ 18:56, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
    An editor with an established history elsewhere might also find themselves able to keep their username. Blocking is the absolute last option, and it might end up that this hypothetical user gets to be an exception to the rule because of their established history. Primefac (talk) 18:58, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
    I personally really don't like relying on vague or unwritten exceptions to rules to avoid negative effects of the rules as written. That tends to lead to too many arguments over whether person XYZ should be granted an exception with arguments tending to come down on whether people like the person or not. Anomie⚔ 19:25, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
    Fair enough. The "discuss first" option was written in mainly to handle the "they don't know" situations (much like borderline spam-un users), but I'd like to think there would be some AGF as far as simply asking if the hypothetical user would mind changing their names. Primefac (talk) 21:19, 30 October 2017 (UTC)
  • Possible solution which covers not only emoji, but provides options for easier communication with non-latin character sets proposed at Village pump proposals. ClubOranjeT 20:32, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Closing this

Anybody up to close this?Winged Blades of GodricOn leave 10:28, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Sure, I'll get right on it......oh wait...never mind...carry on... Primefac (talk) 13:56, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
Hmm...This looks kinda interesting, if we don't mind the dampening spirits after being given a rousing reception at AN, soon after...:) Winged Blades of GodricOn leave 14:53, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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