MediaWiki talk:Usernameblacklist/Archive 1

message: I'm not having much luck using this page (see my most recent username creations). If you have a chance, take a look, I must be doing something completely wrong. See here for documentation. alphachimp 05:24, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Doesn't appear to work.  --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 05:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As an admin, you can override it, but as anon, it works. →AzaToth 17:26, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just tested this and confirmed it. alphachimp 17:31, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Hmm... WP:POINT? :-P Maybe MediaWiki needs some time to refresh the content of this list. -- ReyBrujo 05:38, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Working?

message: The list we have here is great, but it doesn't take advantage of... shall we say, the magic of regexes. I suggest the following list, and also suggest that someone who has worked with regexes for longer than I have take a look before implementing this. This blacklist is extremely powerful, in the sense that it allows no exceptions. I have them numbered here, but that should be changed to bullets:
#\bass?!(ess|oc|yr|em|is)
#:Perhaps add the British spelling, but similar provisions (for assess, association, assyrian, assembly, assistance, etc.) would have to be made. Either that, or we could take the approach of only filtering out certain permutations -- when followed by nothing, "hole", "hat" (maybe), etc. GracenotesT § 19:49, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've commented a few of those out for numerous reasons, mostly since there'd be some collateral damage. --Conti|✉ 19:38, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How about changing "cock" to "cock(?!er)", since "cocker" and "cockerspaniel" are legit? GracenotesT § 19:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oof. then there's cockatoo, cockle, cockroach... meh. Maybe just have it restricted to "\bcock(s|sucker)?\b", then. GracenotesT § 19:45, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

text: I would appreciate it if you improved them rather than removed 'em. Namely, "\ban(us|al)" could become "\ban(us|al)\b"... etc. with other items. GracenotesT § 19:42, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I don't know much about regular expression (but I'm learning fast ), so I didn't knew how to correctly create such expressions. "cock(?!er)" would mean that everything that includes "cock" would be blacklisted, unless it's "cocker", right? If so, that's fine by me. Okay, it's not, just saw the other examples above. --Conti|✉ 19:48, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep! And this may of interest to you, if that's the sort of thing you're interested in. GracenotesT § 19:51, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks! Well, I'm mostly interested in creating as less collateral damage as possible with this list. ;) --Conti|✉ 19:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Me too. By the way, "cock(s|sucker)?\b" will restrict "cock", "cocks", and "cocksucker". GracenotesT § 19:54, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

text: That would be an effective way of stopping legitimate bots from getting accounts :) GracenotesT § 20:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And here I was, thinking about words like "Abbot" and "botanic"..  --Conti|✉ 20:30, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, so I didn't think that through very far--VectorPotentialTalk 20:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

text: It is extremely exhaustive, except I don't think we need to restrict burp(er|ing)s? :) GracenotesT § 22:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Unless people are actively creating usernames with these words, I think it would be a waste of effort (and possibly server processing time) to add them all. —Centrx→talk • 22:38, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Heh, it's just a nice starting point, I think. alphachimp 22:40, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed edits

message: Someone want to add bot to the list?--VectorPotentialTalk 20:26, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That would be an effective way of stopping legitimate bots from getting accounts :) GracenotesT § 20:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And here I was, thinking about words like "Abbot" and "botanic"..  --Conti|✉ 20:30, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, so I didn't think that through very far--VectorPotentialTalk 20:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  bot? 

message: Check out User:Lupin/badwords for a pretty exhaustive list of profanity. alphachimp 22:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is extremely exhaustive, except I don't think we need to restrict burp(er|ing)s? :) GracenotesT § 22:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Unless people are actively creating usernames with these words, I think it would be a waste of effort (and possibly server processing time) to add them all. —Centrx→talk • 22:38, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Heh, it's just a nice starting point, I think. alphachimp 22:40, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Good resource

message: A note, the regex are all case sensitive. you can force a particular regex as case insensitive. Extracted from http://se.php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.syntax.php →AzaToth 20:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would assume that it was already case insensitive, as two equivalent usernames (ignoring case) can't be registered. Maybe that caveat wasn't caught, however, in the code for this extension. GracenotesT § 20:30, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The code specifies: return count( $groups ) ? '/(' . implode( '|', $groups ) . ')/u' : false; →AzaToth 20:33, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Case sensitive 

message: Once the basic list has been established, does anyone think that it's worth it to create the page MediaWiki talk:Usernameblacklist/Requests for addition and removal? Thus, if there are any false positives, we can make a piped link to that page from MediaWiki:Blacklistedusernametext, so that newbies can say "Hey, I have [insert perfectly acceptable name]" somewhere. Or if there's an influx of vandals with a certain offensive username pattern, it can be stopped. (Although the blacklist should not be used as a temporary solution to anything, I think.) GracenotesT § 22:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm changing MediaWiki:Blacklistedusernametext to link to Wikipedia:Request an account (a page that already has this functionality). Admins can create accounts that bypass this blacklist. alphachimp 22:57, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, great idea! It might also be good idea to give people the chance to explain why a certain expression matches should be removed. GracenotesT § 23:00, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

text: This talk page is the most appropriate place to make requests for addition and removal. There will be almost nothing else going on here once the initial excitement dies down. There is no need for a subpage. See MediaWiki:Bad image list for a similar such page. —Centrx→talk • 23:02, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have previously pondered upon the value of a subpage for the bad image list. I think that it would help. However, maybe a link to this page would work? GracenotesT § 23:06, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That might not be a good idea. Some could use it to find ways to bypass the blacklist. alphachimp 23:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's right. Then perhaps admins working at WP:ACC should be aware of this MediaWiki page, so that they in turn can see if there's a faulty item. GracenotesT § 23:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: For future requests

message: I think this "username disallowal" may be malfunctioning. While working at WP:ACC I tried to fill several of the newest requests, but every time got a message saying "The username you have chosen is disallowed because it contains some forbidden string, such as an offensive word." But the usernames didn't seem offensive, they were:
* 555michael
* cybernerd1999
* scottlaverdiere
* DeathbyWiki
* jawdrops
It seems that every username is being denied; WP:ACC is being flooded with requests. Anyone know what is happening and how to fix it? jwillburtalk 23:37, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Fixed →AzaToth 23:40, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, it's amazing how one little edit can break things so badly. jwillburtalk 23:46, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Malfunctioning? 

message: While listing some common swearwords here is a good idea, we should avoid trying to enumerate every single inappropriate username, because turning this into a race between us and the people who like such names is simply a waste of effort. >Radiant< 08:06, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I suggested linking to this page from MediaWiki:Blacklistedusernametext. But as alphachimp mentioned above, security through obscurity is probably a good idea, so linking to it isn't. GracenotesT § 13:31, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think security through obscurity is a very good idea, especially on a wiki. Vandals aren't stupid, I'm sure they won't have a problem finding this page at all. Is it possible to add to MediaWiki:Blacklistedusernametext the regex that lead to the blocking of the username, so the user at least knows why his username was blocked? --Conti|✉ 14:40, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We'd have to bug Rob Church for that—he wrote this extension, after all! I think that a list of generally negative terms would be good. For example, check out . It's basically a laundry list of bad things to do: a bag of beans, essentially. However, by staying general, we can list things that are technically impossible to do, and if we keep this list comprehensive enough, vandals would probably get frustrated and give up. This would be aided by keeping this MediaWiki page in relative obscurity, such that not everyone would know about it. If there's a freak exception, someone can post at WP:ACC, and then the admin could discuss the troublesome item here, and create the account in the meanwhile. GracenotesT § 14:47, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that a few examples are nice to have. We should especially mention the not so obvious cases, IMHO. ("Hey! Why am I not allowed to register User:I'm_a_wine_steward??") I think it is inevitable that we'll soon enough have vandals watching this page, creating inappropriate usernames that are not on this list, whether we announce this page or not. But that's life, I guess. I just hope we're not going to panic and make this list bigger than it needs to be. --Conti|✉ 15:09, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hm. Come to think of it, "steward" isn't that bad of a word to have; perhaps we can remove it. After all, if someone is not familiar with the Wikimedia Foundation enough to know what a steward is, they would probably not be aware that having "steward" in a user name does not imply that that person is a steward. Not the same for sysop, however: "sysop" has a common meaning. And in cases where there might be a user name "Wikimedia stewards suck", we can take that on a case-by-case basis. GracenotesT § 01:49, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I went ahead and removed steward. I think when (if) a case came up where it was being abused, we could handle that, rather an a (more likely) larger fallout of blocked usernames and backlog at WP:ACC. I think, per Gracenotes, that  people outside the WMF don't know was a steward is (to us), so the potential for abuse is rather low. ^demon[omg plz] 04:21, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Race 

message: Please fill me in on how the coding works. BuickCenturyDriver (Honk, contribs, odometer) 22:19, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The text after an asterik (rendered as a bullet when you load MediaWiki:Usernameblacklist) is treated as a regular expression and, if any of the regular expressions are detected when creating a new user name, that user name cannot be created.  For general information about regular expressions, see regular expressions and http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/RegexTutorial.asp; for information about their implementation in PHP (the native language of MediaWiki) see http://se.php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.syntax.php; and for general information about the extension Username Blacklist which this is part of, see mw:Extension:Username Blacklist.  Regards, Iamunknown 16:14, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Code 

message: I like this feature. I wonder, does this have any implications for the Single Unified Login that we're getting Real Soon Now? --Abu-Fool Danyal ibn Amir al-Makhiri 20:10, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unified login 

message: I see that this has died down somewhat. Any change we can implement some of the uncontested/resolved changes above? GracenotesT § 01:29, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Such as which ones? Most of these have collateral damage, and for others are people actually creating many usernames with these strings? —Centrx→talk • 06:15, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

text: The last regex could match 'assess', denying, for example, a property appraiser from creating User:I assess houses. —Crazytales (talk) (alt) 00:50, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, it wouldn't match that (the \b). GracenotesT § 19:10, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Implementation 

message: I went ahead and added two more, Oversight and Checkuser. Figured those shouldn't be allowed either. Hope I wasn't out of line adding them. ^demon[omg plz] 22:22, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  2 More Additions 

message: Many username vandals create usernames which constitute personal attacks on editors: Here's a pile. As a frequent target of these types of vandals, can I have \bMER\-C\s.+ listed here, to stop this harassment? Other frequent targets include Misza13 and Slimvirgin. MER-C 10:04, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride 21:35, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Attack usernames 

message: I noticed User:Renuncio.com was registered today , despite having \.(com|org|co\.uk|net|info)\b in the blacklist. It's not the first time I've seen this happen. Is it just a bug, or does the regexp need tweaking? -- zzuuzz (talk) 20:58, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: also TUEPLOVOICE.COM  -- zzuuzz (talk) 15:13, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: dot com problem?