On Thu, 2002-11-14 at 13:50, The Cunctator wrote:
On 11/14/02 4:11 PM, "Brion Vibber" brion@pobox.com wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
As you can see at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMC%27s_sysop_request I basically agree, but I'll ask you to consider a more scalable resolution; that is, have the Recent Changes etc. display the nickname only, and enforce innocuousness of the nickname.
[...]
Showing the nickname *everywhere* would make the independent existence of the username both pointless and confusing.
That's its sole current purpose, but why should the nickname only appearing on talk pages be any less confusing?
The tagging of RecentChanges and revision edits with the username can be seen as equivalent to signing comments on the userpages. I don't think it's inherently confusing.
People can sign their edits in-page however they wish or not at all. The tilde-signing is a labor-saving convenience feature to automatically put in a link back to the user page, which is common in such signing; the nick is a convenience feature for those who wish their signings to appear differently from their user name, but still want a simple labor-saving method to link back to their user page. If we didn't have it, we'd still have people making manual links to their user pages whose text wasn't identical with their usernames.
Tagging on RC and page histories, on the other hand, is automatic tracking. Its sole purpose is to be clear and informative. It's not a signature; it's a return address.
The majority of people don't use a nickname, so this change wouldn't even be an issue for the majority of the people.
I'm not saying this is a perfect idea; I just don't think its consequences would be mass confusion, and it certainly wouldn't be pointless.
Why not? Because we can't perfectly adjudicate the inoffensiveness of usernames. People have even thought that my username is vulgar.
Then what makes you think that we _can_ perfectly adjudicate the inoffensiveness of nicknames, or that if we could there would be any reason to do so separately from hidden usernames which would never be seen by anybody (so why do they exist?)?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)