I said "block" considering T17294, but with current tools of course I mean "lock". Replacing "unsuitable" with a synonym is not an answer to my question. Why would a lock be unsuitable/overkill, do those users need to be left access for any allowed action?

Blocked users are allowed to access this page

But not locked users, I assume.

there are cases where blocked users should be able to ask for a rename (eg. promo usernames)

Are promo usernames being locked?

In T101615#2174879, @Nemo_bis wrote:

I said "block" considering T17294, but with current tools of course I mean "lock". Replacing "unsuitable" with a synonym is not an answer to my question. Why would a lock be unsuitable/overkill, do those users need to be left access for any allowed action?

Lock is even worse! It's an overoverkill because most of people asking a rename/month are not disruptive onwiki.

I propose to create a Special:GlobalRenameBlacklist for users with the global-rename right to be able to manage on Meta-Wiki. When one user requests through Special:GlobalRenameRequest on any wiki, the system should check against the blacklist and return an error message such as "You're not allowed to request a global rename" or something more descriptive. Maybe we can make the entries in the list to work as blocks, with expiry and custom blacklist reasons. Just my two cents. Would that be hard to achieve? Thanks.

@Qgil @Wwes Can we have some resources / personnel allocated for this? Thanks!

This looks like a good proposal for https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016_Community_Wishlist_Survey ?

Concur with @Qgil and it aligns to potential resources and personnel through that effort. @Tnegrin please chime in as appropriate.

I think hooking into the global title blacklist might be the simplest solution here.

In T101615#2175068, @Vituzzu wrote:

Lock is even worse! It's an overoverkill because most of people asking a rename/month are not disruptive onwiki.

It's difficult for me to discern the real use-cases here. Are you trying to prevent abusive users from making rename requests or are you trying to rate-limit good-faith users who request renames "too often"?

The user rename process should not involve stewards or bureaucrats or any other user group, as far as I'm concerned. The fact that we've created this pile of bureaucracy for what every other site (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) allow users to do themselves is insane.

@MZMcBride We already know your views that renaming should not involve anyone and that any user should be able to rename himself by accessing their preferences. But by fortune or disgrace, this is not the system we use at WMF sites :)

That said, good faith users asking for renames too often are manageable. What we do need is a system to prevent stubborn insistent users from requesting renames over and over because they think this is a game, or do so disruptively.

Blocking is not the solution because the user may or may not be productive in other areas, but because: a) we should allow blocked users to request renames as some blocks are for username violations and b) it's overkill and nothing prevents him to go to other project and access the request page and go on flooding us with such requests.

A blacklist for recurrent rename requesters might be a good start. While not perfect, we might be able to stop some of those users. We should maybe address the problem of their sockpuppets too. Any ideas for that?

In T101615#2768502, @MarcoAurelio wrote:

Blocking is not the solution because the user may or may not be productive in other areas, but because: a) we should allow blocked users to request renames as some blocks are for username violations and b) it's overkill and nothing prevents him to go to other project and access the request page and go on flooding us with such requests.

We have https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Title_blacklist that applies to all public Wikimedia wikis. This blacklist supports regex, provides a timestamp of actions (albeit via the page history), supports comments using #, and it's not specific to a single wiki, though we do have local/per-wiki whitelists. I think the global title blacklist meets most of your requirements laid out in this task. Are there any requirements or feature requests I'm missing?

Each entry in the global title blacklist can have associated attributes such as newaccountonly. We could create an attribute such as globalrenamerequestonly. Given that the title blacklist extension is already deployed everywhere and already has most of the features you want, adding an attribute would probably be straightforward to implement.

A blacklist for recurrent rename requesters might be a good start. While not perfect, we might be able to stop some of those users. We should maybe address the problem of their sockpuppets too. Any ideas for that?

I'm not sure any solution will address sockpuppet accounts directly.

In T101615#1343512, @Legoktm wrote:

This seems rather hasty given that we haven't seen how well (or not) T101080: Add relevant logentry or warning to Special:GlobalRenameQueue works.

Are we deeming this as not useful?

Anyways, if we're set on having a blacklist, I suppose I can just implement that. What is the user experience supposed to be? Do we show them a message saying that they are blocked from making rename requests or black hole their request?

most of people asking a rename/month are not disruptive onwiki

Thanks, this answers my question. How many are they? Did someone talk with them?

In T101615#2774481, @Nemo_bis wrote:

Thanks, this answers my question. How many are they? Did someone talk with them?

I once had one user trying to be renamed for numerous times. First 3 rename request were granted, but fourth request was denied because he was an established community member by then and changing username on few months basis will confuse other community members.

I talked to the user advising "You should stick to one username. We may deny your future rename request." I believe he requested username change after some months, but I can't check it because GlobalRenameQueue/closed is inaccessible for now. In the end, he abandoned the account for "clean start".

Also, I can see at least 5 rename-ban request on global-renamer mailing list.

In T101615#2769501, @Legoktm wrote:

Anyways, if we're set on having a blacklist, I suppose I can just implement that. What is the user experience supposed to be? Do we show them a message saying that they are blocked from making rename requests or black hole their request?

This is still waiting for a response.

A message telling them that they're blocked from making rename requests would be more user-friendly IMHO, pointing them to m:Talk:SRUC for questions. Thanks.

I'm not sure how many times an average or a good faith user would make a rename request, but I'm wondering if there should be a solution that does not require creating a blacklist of users and works for everybody. Allow each user to be able to request rename only a specific number of times (3-5). Display a clear message about the same on this page, and a friendly error message when then they go beyond the set limit.

Also, looks like @Legoktm, you are planning on working on this in the near future, so may not be a good idea showcasing this for the hackathon, right?

In the end, he abandoned the account for "clean start".

Sounds like locking the user would have had the same result then. :)

AF is not the right way for this. Personally I like MZMcBride's idea of hooking to titleblacklist, or use an internal right to determine whether the use may use the tool.

Mentioned this in the task above, but finding some way to prevent users from getting a rename, whether it be at the request level or at the level where someone renames them really is needed. This is becoming an increasingly larger issue as the Wikimedia movement is becoming more diverse and we don't have a rename team that has enough representation from all projects that requests which should not be approved are slipping through and the only way to raise an issue currently is via the mailing list.

Change 528155 had a related patch set uploaded (by Urbanecm; owner: Urbanecm):
[mediawiki/extensions/CentralAuth@master] Introduce a blacklist of users who cannot use Special:GlobalRenameRequest

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/528155

Change 528155 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/CentralAuth@master] Introduce a blacklist of users who cannot use Special:GlobalRenameRequest

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/528155

Change 564102 had a related patch set uploaded (by Urbanecm; owner: Urbanecm):
[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Configure GlobalRename blacklist

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/564102

Change 564104 had a related patch set uploaded (by DannyS712; owner: DannyS712):
[mediawiki/extensions/CentralAuth@master] Follow up c18695aa: Use preg_quote instead of str_replace

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/564104

@Urbanecm came across https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_rename_blacklist - why is this not in the mediawiki namespace?

I created it in same way as https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Spam_blacklist and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Title_blacklist.

In T101615#5804392, @Urbanecm wrote:

I created it in same way as https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Spam_blacklist and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Title_blacklist.

I would posit that those should also be moved to the mediawiki namespace...

But they're not - if you want to push for doing that, start an on-wiki discussion. I beliee it is better to have it done in an standard way. Also, I can't recall a page in MediaWiki namespace with global effects.

Meta has two blacklists: there is a global one(in main NS), and another one is local one (in MW namespace). You can't realistically merge them.

I guess we'll have to control access to that list via AbuseFilter so only stewards and global renamers (and meta admins?) are able to add/remove things there. A setup similar to the Spam Blacklists, with on-wiki logs, etc. would be helpful as well. I'd have prefered a special page though, but this is better than nothing so thanks so much :-)

Change 564102 merged by jenkins-bot:
[operations/mediawiki-config@master] Configure GlobalRename blacklist

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/564102

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2020-01-16T12:33:39Z] <urbanecm@deploy1001> Synchronized wmf-config/InitialiseSettings.php: SWAT: 65e17eb: Configure GlobalRename blacklist (T101615) (duration: 01m 05s)

Change 587846 had a related patch set uploaded (by Reedy; owner: Reedy):
[mediawiki/extensions/CentralAuth@master] Add GlobalRenameBlacklist config to extension.json

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/587846

Change 587846 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/CentralAuth@master] Add GlobalRenameBlacklist config to extension.json

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/587846