On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 6:04 PM, Platonides <Platonides(a)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.