Kirby
1
Okay, so I was welcoming some new users, and I saw that this username http://www.wikihow.com/User:Andromeda1
is similar to http://www.wikihow.com/User:Andromeda
Is that okay? Or should Andromeda1 change their username?
system
2
Well, I know there’s nothing wrong with users having multiple accounts…
system
3
I’d probably use good faith and either suggest it’s the same person wanting to start fresh or because the “newer” person is an “Andromeda” fan (TV show) and saw that “Andromeda” was taken. The older account holder hasn’t edited in close to 3 years, so I’d say it’s fine. Unless it’s a really major known editor or using it to ‘fake’ administrationship, I’d say it’s okay.
Harri
4
I should think it would be fine. In my opinion, usernames that are similar to other users’ are only a problem if said user is fairly active at the time and they are easily confused. For example, I left {{username}} for a user named Ttrim a while back, because it is very easily confusable with our Ttrimm, who is kinda active
In this instance, the user Andromeda only made 3 contributions back in 2008, so it is fairly unlikely to be confused. Should be okay
Kirby
6
By the way, I have another question. Is this username OK? It has non-Latin characters; yet I see that someone already welcomed them… http://www.wikihow.com/User:杨馨
That person’s name is Chinese (Yang Xin, according to Google translate). There’s nothing wrong with user names in other languages being used on wikiHow (all of our wikis use the same user database). We should never put a username template on just because someone’s name is in a different language, only when the name is disruptive.
They’re definitely non-Latin; does that part of the username policy no longer apply?
idk if this is a violation or not because I saw other bots that were accepted. The username policy says that usernames with wikiHow in it are not allowed. Confused http://www.wikihow.com/User:WikiHowBot
When we consider applying our username policy, I think it’s important to realize that telling new contributors who mean well that their usernames are unwelcome is very discouraging, and likely to drive them away from wikiHow. What I think we really want to do with the username policy is to discourage disruptive, abusive or otherwise bad-faith usernames; it seems like good faith user names in other languages should be fine. Because we share a user database across all of our wikis, and have community members from all over the globe, we’ll have good faith people here who create user names in their own languages that they use on English wikiHow, many of which don’t use latin characters. I think the latin character requirement is one that we should reconsider in light of this.
Bots are usually run by the engineers or other members of the back office team to accomplish specific tasks. Since they are official wikiHow bots, that part of the user name policy does not apply to them.
system
12
WikiHowBot is a forum vandal, not an employee…
Linus
13
If that’s the case, then the Username policy
should be updated to reflect this. I know I’ve deleted a few users do to non-latin characters in a username.
system
14
Yes, I can see how this could be confusing. The username policy was written before our international wikiHows were as active as they are now, so I made a few updates: http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=wikiHow%3AUsername&diff=6312255&oldid=6239603
While welcoming new people in the user log, I found that R2D2Travis (what I believe is the main account) made 5 other accounts, each with his name on it. I think at least 2 of them are sockpuppets. Here are the links to each of them : http://www.wikihow.com/User:R2D2Travis
http://www.wikihow.com/User:R2D2Travis2
http://www.wikihow.com/User:R2D2Travis3
http://www.wikihow.com/User:R2D2TravisHello
http://www.wikihow.com/User:R2D2TravisByeBye
Oliver
18
As long as those sockpuppets are not used in a malicious way, they’re fine.
system
19
There’s a decent chance that this is Travis, one of our engineers, testing something
Well, I think we’ve all reached the point with this thread, so I think we can clues this discussion.
