Commons talk:Username policy

Initial thoughts

Should take into account unified single login -- many acount names won't be Commons-only... AnonMoos (talk) 15:46, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Username policy might be a good place to model our policy from. With SUL it makes even more sense to have the project username-policy comparable. --J.smith (talk) 17:25, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

This looks good to me, and I have just a few thoughts:

• Are extremely long names allowed? I believe they are generally considered disruptive, and if so that could perhaps be metioned.
• What about names that mimic an IP address?
• I don't know how serious a problem this is, but I do wonder if there really is a need for a special page to report problems. Don't we already have plenty of ways to get an admin's attention?

--MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:29, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

The system has a build-in limit on the length of usernames. J.smith (talk) 17:47, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Well I was wondering on usernames like "Dhhgewrewoaasdqercdasd" what should we do about them? --Kanonkas_(talk) 18:03, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I just added confusing usernames like the one above, what do you think? --Kanonkas_(talk) 18:14, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Also usernames that are like ip adresses should be blocked, I'd guess as that can be pretty confusing, thoughts? Also about the "COM:UAA" well I believe it's much easier if we kept it there, rather then on the noticeboard. --Kanonkas_(talk) 18:19, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

"Misleading usernames" would be a good catchall. We can't fall into the trap of trying to list every possibility. We need to keep the policy flexible. J.smith (talk) 22:01, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

wiki-formatting

<span id="Promotional" /><span id="PROMOTIONAL" />

Whats that about? What is the span tag being used for? It aught to be removed if we aren't actually using it. J.smith (talk) 17:30, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, it looks like this is a carry over from wikipedia. I wonder what it's used for. J.smith (talk) 17:48, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Lets you link to a particular point in the page.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:04, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Company names

There would be a serous problem if people were to impersonate companies, ie if User:Microsoft started adding pornographic images, this would not go down well with the company involved. I'd recommend saying "Users that register a company name as a username will be blocked unless they can show that they are official representatives of the company, via e-mail to OTRS" TimVickers (talk) 17:49, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, very true. It kind of falls into the same category as "Real names of notable people" too. J.smith (talk) 17:56, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Hm I guess we can also put a "Celeb/notable names" on the username policy, for example somebody registers "Hilary Duff" as their username we will block & ask them to confirm if they're "Hilary Duff" through an OTRS mail, sounds good? --Kanonkas_(talk) 18:02, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good, with the rider that I've got no idea who Hillary Duff is so don't use that as an example in the policy! TimVickers (talk) 18:20, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

No one important. J.smith (talk) 22:00, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

←The whole section about company names was just changed I'm not sure if I can agree with that, it's fine with big companies but not with minor companies, also should usernames like "Msn-spam.com" (example) be blocked too? --Kanonkas_(talk) 18:59, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I was bold and changed this. If you think not all company names need be blocked we could say "Users that register the name of a company or group as a username may be blocked", which allows admins to ignore the policy in the cases where it doesn't fit. Would that be better? TimVickers (talk) 22:33, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I think that section is still a bit confusing. I think I can see what it's driving at, but at a first glance it appears in some ways self-contradictory. In particular, it does not seem to provide a clear and unambiguous yes-or-no answer to the question of whether I'd be allowed to use a name like, say, User:BuySpatulasOnline.com if I 1) could prove myself to be an official representative of that company and 2) did not otherwise engage in promotional activities on Commons. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:44, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I just changed it to that web domain names aren't allowed (hope it's fine), however company names are allowed under the restriction that they don't spam/advertise their products. --Kanonkas_(talk) 17:52, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Test case

(originally posted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/User_names:

Hey - I have no username to review yet. I want to ask about setting up accounts which are named for an organization, and this is in violation of WP:ORGNAME. I want to ask about precedent and maybe WP:IAR.

I work in medical technology and I have been talking with the public relations departments of some major international health organizations. A lot of these organizations have specific departments for promoting health education.

Officials in these departments are interested in exploring the possibility of releasing large numbers of their company-owned photographs into the public domain, or GNU or CC:0, or whatever else is best for Wikimedia Commons. These photographs would be depictions of health issues and health devices of broad general interest to the public and in my opinion, especially valuable for an encyclopedia.

Here is the issue - I know that Wikipedia has a release form for requesting a third party to allow someone like me to upload media content into Commons on behalf of someone else. I could bring this up, but I think it is not best. What I think is best is a companyname useraccount which uploads the media content and provides proof of its affiliation with the company, as right now, the huge number of pictures (hundreds, if not thousands) to be uploaded are all property of these non-profit health orgs. The company itself is going to have to make some kind of declaration that yes, the pictures were taken and rights are owned by the company, and yes, now it wants to transfer those rights to a free license and make available to the public so that the public can use them for any purpose by Wikimedia Commons standards.

Is this the way to go? Surely the company PR person should not open a personal account in their own name for the purpose of uploading pictures on behalf of their employer, as that person does not actually own the rights to the pictures - the company does. However, this seems to be the advice given by current guidelines.

What is the precedent in this case? How does a science organization with lots of technical pictures get them into Commons, and keep a record that they were the originators of the pictures (not to keep rights, but only to prove that they were legitimately granted)? Can company usernames be created in this case for this purpose? Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:34, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

If this concerned potential Wikipedia contributors, it would probably belong at WT:Username policy. That being said, it looks like you are mostly asking about Commons usernames, so perhaps this is best posted at commons:Commons talk:Username policy. From Commons:Username policy#Company/group names it appears that "a username such as 'Microsoft' will be blocked unless the contributor can show they are official representatives of that company or group, via e-mail to info-en@wikimedia.org". –xeno^talk 18:41, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I just moved this talk to this board at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Username_policy.

Can I get some comment on the following points? This is how I think this should work:

1. The account with a company name should refrain from doing article editing in any Wikipedia mainspace, but can upload media content.
2. A company account can be a shared account with the username and password being "organization property" to be retained after any employee using that account leaves the company.
3. If a company or organization wants to edit article mainspace, then it should do so through an individual employee. In such a case -
   1. The employee should pay close attention to WP:COI,
   2. not edit under the company account,
   3. have their own useraccount and edit using that account, and keep that account even if leaving the company's employment, and
   4. declare their organizational affiliation on their userpage.

Is this how things should go down? Blue Rasberry (talk) 06:38, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Is up to Wikipedia to draft policy on people editing Wikipedia, not Commons. --  Docu  at 10:31, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks - I know where I am and what the difference is. Various Wikipedia projects have rules and part of being a user at any of them is signing up for a username. I am proposing to get a username on Commons which is in conflict with the rules on another Wikimedia project, and which is not clearly acceptable even by standards on Commons. I assert that when an organization plans to upload files to Commons they should have a shared company account using their organization name on Commons. In doing this, the company will also be creating a global account and have accounts on other projects, like English Wikipedia. If someone at English Wikipedia opposes the use of a name, I want the support of Commons to keep it. Most likely, if the name is used on a Wikipedia page then its userpage ought to redirect to the Commons userpage, where all the activity actually will be. But I do not want the existence of such a page for a non-contributing user on another Wikimedia project to be hassled if it is found to exist. Understand? Is everything I am saying cool? I understand that not all this is for discussion on Commons, nor is it all for discussion on any Wikipedia project, but I think it is helpful to present all sides of this issue.

Summary - I want to make a shared account on Commons for a company with a company username so that lots of people can use it to upload lots of files here. Cool? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:00, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Precedents exist − on top of my head, User:Studio Harcourt who was operated by affiliates of en:Studio Harcourt. Also, loads of Commons images were uploaded by some bot affiliated to some kind of organisation (eg User:BrooklynMuseumBot).

My stance would be : organisation account is allowed around here on Commons, should be endorsed by the organisation through OTRS, meaning the organisation is responsible for every single upload. The use of the global account on other projects fall under those projects policies. Jean-Fred (talk) 15:20, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

• two similar cases I can think of use bots created to do the uploads Tropenmuseum & State Library of Queensland both run by the rgansiations I'd common account to uload would be fine, but individuals should still have their accounts to edit/comment/discuss issues Gnangarra 05:05, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
• And global account may be created - in the worst case it can be blocked local (on plwiki only editing accounts with name the same as company are blocked) Bulwersator (talk) 10:31, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

A few thoughts

We should add to the policy that usernames should not be easily confused with other user names. For example, with some fonts: Ian, lan, and 1an will look the same. Similarly One and 0ne. Also use of non-english alphabets should be mentioned in the policy, I assume that it is allowed (see for example User:Rüdiger Wölk. But if this is allowed than user:J&#1O72;r&#1O77;kt (after replacing O's with 0's) shows up as user:Jаrеkt with help of Russian letters that look identical to English ones, but have different codes. In general usernames designed to be confused with usernames of existing users should not be allowed. --Jarekt (talk) 03:15, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

The non-English part have already been on the proposed policy, see this edit. --Kanonkas_(talk) 12:52, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Also I'd like to make this clear, if somebody tries to "impersonate" somebody using upper-case letters, changing O, I, etc to make it look identical will result in an indefinite block, any objections? --Kanonkas_(talk) 12:56, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

If it is just a very similar name I'd go for an indef block of the username, but not the user - they should be allowed to re-register under a new name. However, if they do try to impersonate the person by posting on their talkpage or stalking them, then yes, indef block of the user. TimVickers (talk) 13:55, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. --Jarekt (talk) 03:01, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Some of this is already covered by AntiSpoof (ie disallowed in the software)  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:07, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Another noticeboard?

Usernames which are obviously inappropriate should be reported at Commons:Usernames for administrator attention, along with an explanation of the issue, and can be blocked on sight by any administrator.

How about just having them report to an existing noticeboard, rather than create a new one. I'd suggest either Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Blocks & protections or renaming Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Vandalism to include usernames. - Rjd0060 (talk) 14:16, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Why can't we just use Commons:Usernames for administrator attention for reporting usernames? Commons:Usernames for administrator attention will make it more specific what the issue is & I'd say easier to use too. --Kanonkas_(talk) 14:19, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

We already have 5 boards that overlap as it is. I would rather just use one of the existing ones. If you want it to be specifically named for its use, then I'd say rename the vandalism noticeboard to Commons:Administrators' noticeboard/Vandalism & Usernames. - Rjd0060 (talk) 14:30, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Well I'm thinking to implent twinkle to report such usernames here & well, it would be easier to just create a COM:UAA. --Kanonkas_(talk) 14:44, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

If that is the only problem then it would be simple enough to transclude the page that Twinkle writes to to the main reporting page. ;-). - Rjd0060 (talk) 14:58, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Not the only reason, that's just one of them. I just can't see why we can't have a COM:UAA. --Kanonkas_(talk) 15:16, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I do. Messageboard bloat, which is already a problem. Just don't do it, man!  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:06, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Would also be much easier for people from en.wp (I guess) to find this out instead of having to be dragged all the way to AN. --Kanonkas_(talk) 18:52, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

A lot of things would make life easier for English Wikipedians. However that's not why we're here. Do we also need ANI, the conflict of interest noticeboard, and rollbackersaurus? Hardly.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:57, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

No need to make this all into drama, I won't bother. Happy? --Kanonkas_(talk) 19:02, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm just trying to point out that we needn't replicate English Wikipedia's problems. We should instead learn from their mistakes. Commons is Commons, and our policies should reflect the issues that we have. Not having a page to point people at when we make username blocks is not one of the problems we have. Instead of creating "solutions" (and I dispute whether this is a solution for reasons explained below) for problems we don't have, we should create solutions for problems we do have.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 04:09, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Anything else?

Anything else we should add before we're trying to gather consensus for this policy? --Kanonkas_(talk) 15:24, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Explain why we need a username policy. What problem do we have which this will solve?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:06, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

People are being blocked for having inappropriate usernames (eg User:Adolf ss, User:Renamed user 1 and User:Acroterion rapes babies) so having a policy we can point people to would help us explain to people what is acceptable and what is not. I see that User:Hilarydufff was unblocked since we have no username policy, which was I guess the spur to try to create one. TimVickers (talk) 20:42, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

We haven't needed a policy to block users or determine whether they're inappropriate up to now; why do we need a policy?  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 00:08, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

If you are making decisions on blocking or unblocking people, if you can't point them to an agreed set of common-sense rules that outline why you blocked them, it will seem pretty arbitrary to the person who has been blocked. It is much less likely to cause offense to be able to say "I'm sorry that name isn't allowed under our username policy. As the policy explains..." than to say "I don't think your username is acceptable because...". Having the community agree on a policy that outlines what we are doing already, so that a new editor can see at a glance what is acceptable, seems much the best approach to me. TimVickers (talk) 20:52, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

But what problem does having this policy solve? To my knowledge, we have not had a problem with not having a page to point people at when making such blocks. Instead, most cases are either

1. obvious; or
2. brouth to WB:AN or somesuch for consideration

In the first case, we don't need anything further. In the second case we have at least some discussion to point them at - isn't consensus the heart of open wikis like Commons? What we absolutely don't need is an excess of policy, nor wikilawyering. This proposal fails to understand some basics, I think.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 04:07, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I think we're going around in circles here. As I said, I think the policy will help make decisions on username policy more consistent and more transparent to new users. To turn your question around, what problem would be created by having a policy that describes what we do already? TimVickers (talk) 17:53, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

We're not going in circles, proponents are evading the issue.

That said, I've already stated why I think approving this as policy is a bad idea. Not only do we not need it, but it can cause problems by enabling wikilawyering. It's not that I'm opposed to having policy, but rather we should make policies to solve problems we have, and we should avoid solving problems we don't have (which is, in and of itself, a problem).  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 18:10, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I think we have a fundamental difference is how we see policies. You see policies as telling the community what to do. I see policies as ways to explain to new users what the community does and what it expects. Would you say that was a fair summary? TimVickers (talk) 18:37, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Multi-language concern

Any ideas on how to fix these issues? Maybe not so strict on "offensive" names, for example it's a bad word in one language and not in another one, as such they're an exempt. --Kanonkas_(talk) 17:18, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks fine as it is. TimVickers (talk) 17:50, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Just thought I'd leave a note. Have you seen the village pump archived discussion? Just in case. --Kanonkas_(talk) 18:24, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia

This policy is already adopted at Wikipedia. Why not here? --Tyw7  (☎ Contact me! • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 06:54, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I think we have much less of an issue with inappropriate usernames than enwiki does, and in the case that we do get a vulgar, offensive, or promotional username, we can deal with it without a whole policy. I don't think it would be a bad idea to adopt a username policy, but that's why it hasn't been done yet. Regards, –Juliancolton | ^Talk 12:54, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

We have COM:AGF and probably some others that AFAIK are not controversial, and would be beneficial if adopted. Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:58, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Well established use

If the user-name has been registered before this guide was written and the user-name is widely accepted and well known in the community and a rename would be difficult, no action should take place.

-- My proposal. Feel free to comment. -- RE rillke questions? 20:38, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

If we allow, how it can be distinguished from commons position names..such admin or bot--...Captain......Tälk tö me.. 03:45, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

“

and widely accepted and well known in the community

”

Furthermore, bots do other tasks than normal users: They usually do not participate in discussions. -- RE rillke questions? 09:00, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Well known in the community is not appropriate, as the user will not be a known one to all..if he is active in some part of commons, that doesn't make well known..--...Captain......Tälk tö me.. 03:52, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
The request to rename Niabot was refused by the community. I don't know what to discuss any-more. We can maybe add something like "and the spelling does not surely indicate a status" (NiaBot would be prohibited, but Niabot won't become renamed.) -- RE rillke questions? 18:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Confusing user names

The section on confusing user names is rather non specific (which is perhaps the idea). I think it needs to be specific, as "confusing" is very subjective. I don't see why random strings of letters is any more confusing than unpronounceable "foreign" names (foreign to whatever is your native language). I can see names that look like IP addresses and names (or signatures) that look almost identical to another user, are liable to cause confusion, what other specific things are envisaged? I don't think we need a catch-all class like this in a policy, if use of a name is causing problems it can be blocked under 'disruptive' clauses, if it is not being used in a disruptive manner, leave it alone.

Looking at the structure of the policy, Commons:Username policy#Confusing usernames doesn't fit, the examples can be moved up into "inappropriate usernames", other material could perhaps be a preamble to the page etc --Tony Wills (talk) 00:15, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Still being developed or failed?

I was thinking of adding {{Rejected}} here, because things seem to have stalled. I do think we need a policy, so if this is still going then I guess it all needs to be officially finalised. -- Trevj (talk) 12:15, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Should it become policy?

Continued from Administrators' Noticeboard

Since Rd232 reverted the policy to proposed, I think it's time for the community to finally accept this as policy. As I said on AN, it pretty much describe what we are doing right now, and there hasn't really been any discussion for over a year now. It has been proposed for 4 years now, I think it's time to make it official. Techman224^Talk 21:58, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

I think the part of the proposed policy on blocking company and group usernames needs clarification, as can be seen at Commons:Village pump#Template:Bian. INeverCry 02:16, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

The following is edited from comments I made at the VP discussion since I think this is the right place for the discussion. I have two major reasons for believing that this should be policy.

First, since anyone can open an account using any username, we must protect ourselves against identity theft by disallowing organizational user names and requiring notable people to give OTRS confirmation that they are who their name says they are. We could require organizations to use OTRS to verify that the user name was authorized, with a statement from an appropriate corporate officer, but I suspect that few responsible organizations would be willing to do this. Having been that officer (Secretary or Clerk) in a dozen or so corporations, I know that I would not, because there would be no traceability. In support of this I can say that none of my many uses of {{subst:bian}} have been large or sophisticated organizations -- they have almost always been small organizations with only a promotional intent.

Second, and, to me, more important, is that Commons is a group of individual people working together as a team, albeit not always pulling in exactly the same direction. I know INC, RD232, et al and respect their individual opinions without always agreeing. That greatly speeds up some activities, notably closing DRs. For example, I know that Eugene's nominations for small size and lack of EXIF are almost always correct. I cannot know XYZCorp in the same way, because it would have no individual opinions, so every dealing with it would be slower.

As an example of this, I have been helping User:Bdcousineau, who the Gerald Ford Library has assigned to work on uploading their holdings to Commons. I work with her as an individual in a way that I could not work with User:GeraldFordLibrary. I know what she knows and don't have to repeat myself in the way that I would if I did not know what person I was actually dealing with. .     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 14:02, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

From my observation Commons is a group of people constantly undoing each others work, an awful lot of churn and thrashing about ;-)

Where does 'protect ourselves against identity theft' come from? We are not protecting ourselves, we would be protecting some third party. The fact that the uploads of most company usernames is dismissed as 'promotional content' implies that is the majority of cases we believe that it is the genuine company. The occurrences of identity theft of companies to defame them are few. And no policy about usernames is going to have any effect whosoever in stopping people trying to defame a company (or notable person etc). The number of username variations (including alternative character sets, additional punctuation, additional prefixes and suffixes, additional spaces) makes it pointless to block individual names for this purpose. Ask for OTRS verification when there is significant doubt that a user is who they say they are. Otherwise assume good faith. --Tony Wills (talk) 22:50, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

The policy reads:

"Using Commons for promotion of a company or group is not permitted and accounts that do this will be blocked. Use of a company or group name as a username is also prohibited. For example: a username such as "Microsoft" will be blocked unless the contributor can show they are official representatives of that company or group, via e-mail to info-commons@wikimedia.org."

This is to some degree self-contradictory, implies that the reason is to prevent promotional use, and does not embody the rationale Jameslwoodward discusses above. The policy, the reasoning, and the phrasing all need clarification. Dankarl (talk) 20:10, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Are we saying any blocked company username acct can be unblocked if they send OTRS, or just certain companies? What about companies that engaged in promotion, or who're non-notable? I think the policy has to be fair and even, with no ambiguity. We should block all company usernames or none. A Microsoft rep can upload something with OTRS permission just as easily under a neutral name. It only matters whether or not the OTRS is sufficient. My personal opinion is that all company usernames should be prohibited and blocked, and that the detail about Microsoft, etc, should be removed from the proposed policy to avoid confusion. INeverCry 20:48, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

• Notability is not a Commons requirement, if a company logo for Microsoft is educational, then a company logo for JonestheCornerShopButcher is educational. Both would be used in exactly the same way. I see an ongoing pointless war against company logos as 'promotional' content. --Tony Wills (talk) 22:50, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Certainly notability is a requirement. We are not Facebook. In order to have photographs of a person here beyond one or two for user pages, the subject must be notable in some way. In order to keep a logo, it must be educational in some way. The Microsoft logo is clearly educational as it illustrates articles on a major corporation. JonestheCornerShopButcher logo might be educational if it had some interesting art, but not if were a simple logo for a small company that did not appear anywhere on WP. .     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 23:04, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

What has appearing on WP got to do with it, there are many projects not just 'pedias. The microsoft logo is only educational in that it tells us what the microsoft logo looks like, it is no more inherently educational than any other logo. A microsoft logo doesn't so much illustrate microsoft articles, but decorates them - the only article it really illustrates is an article about the microsoft logo. --Tony Wills (talk) 23:17, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

• I support INC's view -- I see no way to police the use of an organizational name. Within strict limits, one person may have more than one account, but one account should have only one person. .     Jim . . . . (Jameslwoodward) (talk to me) 23:04, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

• If that is the aim of the policy, then don't be oblique about it, simply have a one account, one person policy. --Tony Wills (talk) 23:20, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
  • No, that would be really bad. Users must be allowed to have multiple accounts. For example, we don't want bot edits to be mixed with normal contributions. --Stefan4 (talk) 00:01, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't meaning one account per person, just a single person operating any single account at any one time, rather than muliple people logging under the same username. And I'm not even proposing it as a policy, just suggesting that if that's what we want to enforce, then that is the policy we should create rather than doing something tangential to the percieved problem. --Tony Wills (talk) 01:30, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

•  Comment What problems would this guideline solve if made into a policy? Not what problems is it aimed at, but what change would it actually make. As far as I can see it would be a place to point people to when explaining the blocking of their account, somewhat self referential - we have blocked you because we don't like your name, what harm has your name caused to the project?, well none but it is our policy to block you incase you cause a problem that would require us to block you. How about we block accounts that cause a problem, rather than block accounts in case they cause a problem. --Tony Wills (talk) 23:09, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
• I don't understand the section Commons:Username_policy#Famous_people very well. I think the intent is to avoid impersonation of public people but will an email to OTRS be the solution? I don't expect all famous people to have a verified domain and server to send an email from. And asking them to scan and send back for example, an identity card or a birth certificate is outside's volunteers remit (that's a Foundation task, see m:IN). Best regards. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 15:26, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
• I think that at Commons:Username_policy#Inappropriate_usernames_2 exceptions should be made for valid and approved m:Role accounts. —MarcoAurelio (talk) 15:29, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Joke usernames and attribution.

While joke usernames shouldn't be disallowed, the policy should point out that they may prevent commons files from being used because the requirement for attribution (to e.g. Can't sleep, clown will eat me for File:Manzanita Sol verde.jpg) will stop most publications from using the resource. -- Jeandré, 2013-03-04t15:41z