[WikiEN-l] Offensive Names - a Suggested Solution

[The Cunctator]

On Tue, 2003-01-28 at 22:56, james duffy wrote:
<"how to pick a politically correct user name" instructions snipped>
> Any observations?
> 
At the risk of being offensive, this is getting even more ridiculous.

My username makes reference to a Roman general. This might be offensive
to people who think that I'm advocating militaristic imperialism, or
that I'm critiquing the Roman empire.

Moreover, people have believed that my name is somehow vulgar ("a pun on
dictator"). 

Should we ban everyone from using their real names, too? What if
someone's first name is Dick? Or Jesus? Or Moses? If their last name is
Johnson? Or Matsushitsa? Or Fokker? 

Instead of trying to prescribe usernames, a much better solution would
be some equivalent of ostracism. For example, allow people to choose on
a case by case basis to see users by userid instead of username.

Thus instead of seeing entries by CrucifiedChrist you'd see entries by
5406 or whatever.

If some number of people do this, then (and only then) would we need to
consider taking some more serious action (like an automatic warning
requesting a change of username; if more people continue to "shun" that
user, the username change might be automatic. however, i dislike this
idea because it could lead to some ugly tyranny of the majority
situations).

Just my two cents.

--tc