On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 6:04 PM, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think it was the colon, but that it contained a namespace name ("WP:"). Probably intruduced by Bug 5280.
It was analysed and fixed in bug 17877. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=17877
But still we should not allow users to register a name on any site that would not be SUL-compatible for all sites.
Unless we want to check against every namespace or namespace alias on every project (past, present, and future) the best practice might be not to allow the colon in user names at all. Otherwise this could be exploited time and again by anyone with knowledge of which namespaces will be created.
However forbidding the colon in usernames might have a chilling effect on languages which use it as a letter, as it might be part of the proper spelling of users' names. I really don't know the details on this and recommend asking Mark Williamson about it.
See "[Wikipedia-l] adding a font on a wiki", Feb. 2009: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2009-February/date.html
Whatever solution is adopted the key issue is we don't want users who cannot be blocked or desysopped, etc. through the usual means to have write-access on any project.
If namespace or other typographical conflicts after the account is created, the account should be locked out pending a rename (at least on the wikis where it creates a problem). Some way to do a total-SUL rename in one step would be good too.
—C.W.