[WikiEN-l] Hardblocking usernames

[Luna]

On 8/8/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:

> "I will not assume good faith in the presence of evidence to the contrary"
>
> A username like "suckmydick" is evidence to the contrary.


If we're looking to define a canonical "bad faith" username, I'd actually
really prefer we look for something more akin to "Jimbo Wales sucks!! call
him at 123-456-7890!" -- something that displays not only bad judgement and
ill will, but even prior knowledge of Wikipedia's inner workings.

Yes, "suckmydick" should be blocked, but should they necessarily be
prevented from choosing a more appropriate name? What message should we be
sending? Is it "please choose another name" or "please choose another name,
oh wait, you're autoblocked, lol, gtfo and don't come back"? In most cases,
I'd prefer the former. From experience watching the live new users feed,
most people don't suddenly turn around and register "suckmydick2" if you
softblock them, and most of the serious trolls use dynamic addresses that
won't be significantly affected by autoblocks, anyway; I can't help but
question whether these harsh blocks are really doing much good, on the
whole.

Or something along those lines. I'd rather scare off as few potential
contributors as possible, in the process of keeping out the trolls.

-Luna