[Wikipedia-l] [Evan Prodromou] User name, nick, real name

[Evan Prodromou]

So, I wanted to forward this message, which originally went to
wikitech-l, to this list. It gives the reasons I thought a "real name"
field was useful for MediaWiki.

I've been on the road and offline for a couple of weeks; sorry this is
dredging up old issues.

~ESP

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To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Subject: User name, nick, real name
Organization: Evan Prodromou
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From: Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:31:38 -0400
Message-ID: <87vfk37jz9.fsf at unicorn.bad-people-of-the-future.san-francisco.ca.us>
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So, the way that MediaWiki is currently set up, we have two fields for
identifying a contributor:

         * user name
         * nick

I think (but don't know) that the idea here is that your "user name"
is your "real" name, like "Evan Prodromou", and your "nick" is going
to be a nickname, handle, or pseudonym, like "Mister Bad". This may
come from the tradition on some wikis, like Ward's Wiki, Meatball,
others, where using your real name is the norm.

It seems that on Wikipedia, other Wikimedia projects, and Wikitravel
(which I'm most interested in), this is not the case. People treat a
user name like a Unix, IRC, or other "user account": an abbreviated
name or a pseudonym. The "nick" field is generally just used for
making fancy signatures; in other cases, it's just used to provide a
_second_ pseudonym or abbreviation.

Now, I'm the last person to put down pseudonyms. I think they're a
crucial part of Internet culture. But real names can be useful for,
say, getting credit as a contributor to an article. Somewhere along
the way here we lost the slot for adding a "real name" to a user
account.

You can't provide your real name even if you want to. Putting your
real name in the user name slot is lost in the noise; I don't know,
when you have a user account like "Bob Frapples", whether that's a
clever pseudonym or actually your real name. Contributors who want to
have their real name recognized now put them on their user pages. But
this is kind of difficult for software to determine what a user's real
name is.

I'd like to embrace the reality of the situation and have two identity
fields, plus a display field:

        * User account name -- a pseudonym or abbrev or whatever
        * Real name -- preferred form of legal name
        * Signature -- fancy formatting for signatures

For these reasons, I'd like to propose the following:

* We add a nullable user field "user_real_name". 
* The login/account creation page has an additional field for "real
  name", with an explanation that it's optional, and only for
  attribution, etc.
* The preferences page lets you change your real name.
* We change the documentation for the user name to note that it's a 
  nickname and doesn't need to be your real name.
* We change the documentation for the "nick" field to note its use as
  a "signature" format.

Automatic attribution tools can use the real name field if it's
provided, or the preferred pseudonym ("Wikitravel user Hogwallop") if
not.

The user account name would continue to be shown everywhere it is now,
and the "nick" field would continue to be used primarily
(exclusively?) in the ~~~ signature areas. The main thing is that if
contributors want attribution under their real name, but identity in
the system under a nickname, they get it.

Lastly, I think an easy way to change your user name is necessary, to
make this shift in emphasis easier for those who want to. That's a
whole can of worms, there, but I don't think it's impossible to deal
with.

~ESP

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-- 
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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