MEpedia talk:Username policy

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For review/approval
I just realized that, as a policy page, this new page needs to be reviewed/approved by MEAction. User:JaimeS Please review and edit at your "leisure". Not urgent. At all. :) Pyrrhus (talk) 14:30, August 13, 2019 (EDT)

New suggestion
No dots or website names in user names (spammers do this), and no including the name of other people or organizations perhaps?

It's possible to prevent certain characters being used in LocalSettings.php, so that could be used too. notjusttired (talk) 12:12, August 14, 2019 (EDT)
 * I have added two sentences: "don't use someone else's name, or the name of an organization that you don't belong to" and "don't include the name or URL of any commercial website"
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 15:20, August 14, 2019 (EDT)
 * Looks good, and nicely polite :-) Have you seen that 3 user accounts have been created to market websites very recently? notjusttired (talk) 20:03, August 14, 2019 (EDT)
 * I saw that! Let’s hope these are rare occurrences...
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 20:46, August 14, 2019 (EDT)

Restrictions on user account names
Anti-spam suggestion: I would like to avoid having a dot in user names to avoid .com, .org, .net names. I am not sure if most of these accounts are created robots, if they are it may prevent them being created at all. I previously suggested banning the phrase "visit our website" although User:Pyrrhus thought it might be used elsewhere. I think if genuine it should be rephrased to say just "website" since links saying "click here", "visit" are bad practice. Possibly this could be explained in any error message so non-automated users know what to do. I believe these both would need developer changes. notjusttired (talk) 08:29, September 18, 2019 (EDT)
 * We considered this when creating MEpedia:Username policy, but quickly realized that many people like to have dots in their user names. “john.smith”, for example.
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 12:17, September 18, 2019 (EDT)
 * (text above copied from Moderation and Banning talk) - it's now common to see .com or .org etc - if this is automated it might prevent account creation of they can't use that name. Also I'm sure

people can adapt to john-smith, johnsmith etc instead. Njt (talk) 17:17, September 18, 2019 (EDT)

"Offensive"
This may not be terribly urgent to spell out, but just so it's here if ever it does come up. "Offensive" can obviously be rather hard to pin down, so Wikipedia ends up defining it (more or less) as, "Is it disruptive to the project of building the encyclopedia?" And that's kind of useful, IMO, saves much (if not all) debate about whether something is quote-unquote really objectionable and goes straight to--"Is it posing a problem to what we're trying to accomplish here? If yes, you gotta pick a new name." Canele (talk) 19:42, July 4, 2019 (EDT)
 * Thanks for pointing that out. I have clarified "offensive" by saying "offensive in a way that is disruptive to the project".
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 14:30, August 13, 2019 (EDT)

Help me choose
I have just found this is the page displayed when someone wants help creating a username and clicks "Help me choose". I suggest adding something like this to the start, above what is not allowed - either in the username policy or in MediaWiki:copyright-used-with-permission (which currently just links to the Username policy).

Username suggestions
Try to choose something easy to remember. Njt (talk) 07:11, September 20, 2019 (EDT)
 * A nickname you use
 * Your first name, then a number
 * Your initials, then a number
 * The name of something you like
 * Looks good to me!
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 17:22, September 20, 2019 (EDT)