Author: drkolb
Description:
I'm not sure whether I put this in the right place. I guess it would be a change
to the MediaWiki software, but there is no choice for that. There is something
called MediaZilla, but I do not know what that is. On Wikipedia it just
redirects to Wikipedia:Bugzilla. I think it should only be done on the English
Wikipedia for now, since other languages may have different policies about
usernames.
Getting to the feature request, I think @ should be prohibited from usernames to
stop people from using email addresses for usernames. While names consisting of
email address are not expressly prohibited, they are strongly discouraged on the
username policy page, and more importantly, editors with such usernames are
virtually guaranteed to be blocked. All they need to do is get the attention of
an admin who blocks for that reason.
First it would save work for admins. Second, new editors would not be blocked
for using an email address for their usernames. New users are likely to be hurt
that they were blocked and simply leave the project rather than getting a new
username. Third, if the editors who are blocked have read the username policy
and saw that usernames consisting of email addresses are not prohibited, he or
she may feel lied to. Fourth, editors would get less spam, as their email
address on their user page or user talk page, often telling them that they have
been blocked, can be harvested. Frequently, a user page or user talk page is
specifically created to tell them that they have been blocked. Certainly, this
is not very bright if the main reason for blocking such usernames is to prevent
spam. Their email addresses may be on some talk pages and Wikipedia namespace
pages, too, if they make some edits before being blocked. Fifth, even
disregarding the spam issue, alienating new users and saving time, having an
email address for a username is awkward. Similarly, usernames consisting of
random letters and/or numbers are blocked.
Note: I had to remove all keywords, like "block", "username", "email" and
"e-mail". I got an error message that said the first one was an unrecognized
keyword, so I deleted it and tried again. I got the same error message, so I
deleted it and tried again, but it still did not work. It gave a list of odd,
code-type keywords, but I could have sworn that previously you just put in words
that people are likely to search for.
Version: unspecified
Severity: normal