Instead of
trying to prescribe usernames, a much better solution would
be some equivalent of ostracism. For example, allow people to choose on
a case by case basis to see users by userid instead of username.
This is convoluted. Imagine: parents read about wikipedia in the newspaper
and come to check it out, with an eye toward recommending it to their
children as a resource. They click on recent changes and see 'cumguzzler'
and 'throbbing monster cock' and 'pedophilejesusdotcom' (I made that one
up, pretty good, huh?).
Or, imagine: a Nobel Prize winner reads about Wikipedia in the
newspaper and thinks, oooh, if this is a serious project, I'd like to
chip in and work on it, and ask all my Nobel Prize pals to chip in,
too. What a great resource. And again, they see our merry band of
jerks and decide to pass.
To respond to these cases by saying "Oh, but if Milton Friedman doesn't
like those names, he can go into his user preferences and block them on a
case by case basis, or choose to view numbers instead" is pretty weak,
I think.
You cut off the section of my proposal that after some number of people
commit the ostracism the username has to be changed. I.e. this is a voting
mechanism, ala Erik. Please don't attack my proposal for faults it doesn't
have.
I honestly don't think this is convoluted at all. Perhaps I did not explain
it clearly.