On wikiHow, I have seen a lot of promotional usernames or group names. They would be something like “Cash app support number” or “HP technical support” or “Billy’s computer store” or something similar. Unfortunately, an extremely large majority of usernames with these cross-post promotional/copyvio content, publish spam, and/or link to their site as a sole link in references. While we have gotten a lot of spam from nonpromotional usernames, a lot of the promotional usernames are either outright spambots or are spammers just cross-posting their content. Ctrl-F’ing he Block log - wikiHow
shows a lot of users blocked for being a spambot. Few of them have promotional usernames. But when looking at users with spam usernames, almost all of them do something that is in violation of policy. From a consultant creating a spam user page:
to a window cleaner promoting their services on their user page:
to an elevator company promoting their lifts on their user page:
to an insurance company writing a spam article on wikiHow:
I see a lot of spam usernames promoting their own services or products. I am not opposed to an individual at a company detailing one of their services under a not-so-spammy username (like Mark at WidgetsUSA or WikipediaFan101). I am just opposed to usernames that suggest that they are a group. I have always been opposed to such usernames as they mostly are spambots. Most of them don’t go on to become productive contributors on wikiHow. For this reason, I am proposing that the username policy be amended to prohibit usernames suggesting they are a part of a group (i.e. is a promotional username).
If this gets consensus, we can update the username policy to reflect this change, as well as add “We do not allow usernames/realnames that suggests that you are a company or group or a spambot.” to the {{username}} and {{realname}} templates. If a good-faith user just happens to choose a username that represents a group, they can simply have their username changed so it no longer does. Account sharing is also a potential security risk, so blocking users that share their accounts is important to protect unauthorized users from gaining access to certain tools. And we can always allow exceptions for organizations that register on the site for the purpose of contributing to wikiHow’s mission (like WisdomFighters) so long as they do not gain access to additional privileges.
We should also echo the username template in the block reason when blocking usernames. Since templates will automatically fill in the block reason (see the below Wikipedia block message shown to users using a VPN and the corresponding block log entry on Wikipedia), we can fill in templated reasons for good-faith blocks. So we can give the block reason {{username}} instead of “Username” when blocking usernames. Or create a separate template {{username-block}} that we can use as the block reason. (Thinking about it, maybe under 13 users should be blocked with the reason {{under13}} instead of “Under 13”. Also, mobile users who are blocked cannot view their talk page, so doing this will give the good-faith users instructions to continue editing. Users promoting their business will see that wikiHow is not the place to do that and will leave. Spambots will not even see the block reason. And blocking users that don’t edit anyway yet have inappropriate usernames does little harm to the project, just as not blocking users that don’t edit does little harm either. Blocks are a preemptive measure used to prevent disruption to the project, either ongoing or planned, and if having a promotional username strongly correlates to spam on the site, then blocks may not be a terrible thing.
And to prove that you can transclude templates in block notices, see Wikipedia:
On wikiHow, I do not think it will be nicely formatted like on Wikipedia but at least doing this. And that is what matters.
But I do have a question for anyone who looks at recent changes, looks at new pages, and/or blocks users: whenever you see a promotional username, is it always (or almost always) making a promotional edit or post? (A more statistical question is do promotional usernames correlate to promotional/spam edits?)
