Does that make sense though? With an account called "Starwarrior", say, there is no way of knowing who made the edit either.

On 29 April 2012 02:32, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com> wrote: Sure, you do. It's not the name on the person's birth certificate, but it's still a name. It tells you about as much as "John Smith" would. You can hold that account holder responsible for their actions. With a role account, they can just say it wasn't them.

On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 2:40 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote: With respect, this doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Please consider: 1. We allow IP editing. One IP may be shared by thousands of people. Any one of them can "say it wasn't them". If we are so careless about one half of edits made to Wikipedia, does it make sense to be so stringent about the other half? 2. Even where we have an account name like John Smith and know the account's IP address, it is not trivial to move from that knowledge to identifying the person – especially if the IP address is a proxy, a dynamic IP, or an Internet café in Calcutta. How does having an account name like John Smith help there? 3. It's happened before that several people have shared an account. I can recall a desysop over account sharing. We have no control over that, regardless of what the account name is. Compared to that, identifying the person editing Wikipedia at Monmouth Museum is a cinch. Especially if User:MonmouthMuseumWales says on her user page, "This account is operated by Roisin Curran, the Wikipedian in residence at Monmouth Museum." Surely, that would give us as much transparency as we could ever want? In fact, rather more transparency than we have for all our pseudonymous users? I am not saying we should allow role accounts. I am just not convinced by the arguments brought forward here. And I do think that the present admin practice of blocking role accounts on sight is unfriendly and should stop. I was instrumental in getting Xeno to change [[WP:UAAI]] in February 2011 to say that accounts using organisation names should *not* be blocked on sight if they edit productively, but that admins should *talk* to people first. So it's very disappointing to see that this still goes on, especially if the person at the receiving end is someone on a project like Monmouthpedia. Wikipedia is shooting itself in the foot. Andreas _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

Is a user name like "MonmouthMuseumWales" "promotional"? You could equally argue that it is transparent. And it is just this sort of transparency which we demand from the Bell Pottingers of this world (and crucify them for if we find them editing as "John Smith", without telling us who they work for). I think a company name account should be fine, as long as the person gives their real name on their user page, and states that they are the only ones editing from that account. That is more accountability and transparency than we have for any pseudonymous account. Andreas On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 2:34 PM, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

On 29 April 2012 15:23, WereSpielChequers &lt;werespielchequers(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: coverage How is that different to having "(WMF)" or "(WMUK)" after your username? There are several obvious differences (WMF/WMUK staff don't usually edit article content, they are affiliated with Wikipedia, they are non-profit, etc.), but I'm curious what, if any, difference you think makes one ok and the other not. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

I am not sure I agree that a name in itself is *unduly* promotional,

As it is, we have PR professionals calling themselves some fantasy name

It's a big fallacy to assume that by pushing things underground, they have

On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 3:23 PM, WereSpielChequers < werespielchequers(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I am not sure I agree that a name in itself is *unduly* promotional, especially in a case like Monmouth Museum. As it is, we have PR professionals calling themselves some fantasy name making the same arguments, whether they are justified or not. I'd rather know who they are, but YMMV. It's a big fallacy to assume that by pushing things underground, they have ceased to exist, and that appearances should be more important than realities. Andreas _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 12:50 PM, Charles Matthews &lt;charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com (mailto:charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com)> wrote: As I understand it, there used to be a general concern that the only way the GFDL could be held to be compatible with pseudonymity was if there was a 1-to-1 mapping between pseudonyms and human beings. I'm not sure that was ever actually looked into, since it seems to me that many-to-many would be just as good, as long as you realised and confirmed you were asking to be attributed with a vague identifier (like 99% of humanity does when it picks a name someone else already has or had).

In any case, role accounts are in all practical terms regarded merely an accountability issue these days. Which is probably why no page goes into detail on the copyright matter.