On 3/5/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On the talk page for Wikipedia:Username, there was a straw poll on whether sysops should be able to make snap decisions when policy is clearly breached. It has achieved anything but consensus (roughly 55% in favour).
So what is going on? Why do we keep seeing messages on this list about people being blocked without warning for having mildly provocative usernames?
You are addressing two issues simultaneously which I think risks confusing the discussion. I'll try to break them apart here.
First, whether admins should make judgments when it seems that a username clearly violates policy. This is going to happen regardless of the result of any vote. The next time I see someone create the username "Linuxbeak ON WHEELS! ! !", "Jimbo Whales Is Communism", etc, I am going to indef block, not sit around waiting for dicussion. The same goes with "GEORGE BUSH IS A WHORE" and so on. Most username blocks I've seen are of this variety: new accounts with blantantly inappropriate or vandalistic usernames where discussion is obviously a waste of time. It's very easy to get skewed results when you use loaded terminology like "snap judgment" to describe cases like these. But the results you get aren't going to change what the admins on the front lines are doing to protect against vandals.
Second, there is the question of what constitutes an inappropriate username. I don't see any need to use the mailing list to set up binding precendent in this matter. There is no way to make a comprehensive definition of "inappropriate" and each case should be dealt with individually.
Ryan