On 7/20/06, Lord Voldemort lordbishopvoldemort@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/20/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I would like to second this. Why were people so willing to advocate shoving User:Ombudsman around with official power or sanctions on this issue?
Because, apparantly, the name Ombudman would be confusing. People may think that is the official ombudsman. Andrew Lih above fell into that. That's why I suggested the can't-be-missed box on his user page.
There is a difference between "Your user account was not previously a problem or conflict with official Wikipedia functions, but is now, we need to officially ask you to change it or put up a disclaimer on your User page" and "Hey, let's all go force a name change on this guy because he didn't cooperate before".
That there may need to be a change and/or disclaimer is reasonably obvious now. There is zero justification in that necessity for any abuse of User:Ombudsman. They weren't violating policy before when they refused to change their name. Beating them up now for having previously stood up for their rights is inappropriate.
That there were discussions of forced changes or a permanent ban before anyone sent a polite note to them explaining that Things had Changed is a terrible, terrible shame for this mailing list...