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Talk:Global rename policy/Archives/2017

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Latest comment: 6 years ago by Legoktm in topic Emojis

Emojis

Latest comment: 6 years ago101 comments60 people in discussion

I propose to reject all future requests including (only) an emoji, if there is not a consensus about it. An emoji can't be the result of an individual decision. Emojis can be confusing, and they looks different in different devices. An emoji username can generate some drama in wikis, and this kind of unilateral action runs against common sense. Our policy don't ban this kind of renames, but I consider consensus is necessary. Jmvkrecords ⚜ (Intra talk) 19:54, 2 May 2017 (UTC).

  Support, per Litlok. RadiX∞ 00:01, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Oppose Currently, there are no restrictions that I can see on any category of usernames. The reason is that this is a global policy, and we allow local projects to determine their own policies on what usernames are acceptable. At least one project has just decided to allow them, and now global policy is going to override local consensus? That's not ok. This policy was deliberately made very general for exactly this reason. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:14, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
    I don't think your remark makes any sense. The proposal is "I propose to reject all future requests including (only) an emoji, if there is not a consensus about it", you argue that one project has established consensus to allow such names. In what way does this proposal affect this wiki? --Vogone (talk) 16:37, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
This is a global policy. So unless we are now going to expect stewards to have an intimate understanding of the nuances of username policies on every single project, it would be a de facto ban on emoji renames. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:47, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
If you prefer, we could create a table which keeps track of such nuances. With regards to enwiki at least, I think most requests still go through your local request page where people are certainly aware of these project-specific nuances. Regards, --Vogone (talk) 16:51, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Oppose leave this to local projects. We are perfectly able of deciding our own acceptable usernames. --Cameron11598 (talk) 16:36, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
    Maybe they are, but not when you consider the fact that 1) It is entirely possible for a username that's acceptable on one wiki to be unacceptable on another; 2) Usernames are now global, so you can't have one username on one wiki and another on another wiki without creating additional accounts; and 3) There is enough confusion about global renaming in general, with people still thinking that "local renamers" are needed when in fact they are not. —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 19:12, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
  • For the record As the timing suggests that this is in direct response to a recent rename of an en.wp user who was renamed to an emoji, (a decision that was later upheld by consensus there after much discussion, a discussion that was closed the same day this discussion was opened) I have informed the community there of this discussion as it would override our ability to use our own local consensus in this situation. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:40, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
    This is a lie, it would not override this ability at all. --Vogone (talk) 16:42, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
First off, maybe try "this is incorrect" instead of assuming bad faith and saying I am lying. Secondly, please explain how a change to global policy preventing renames to emojis would not mean that users could not be renamed to an emoji? Beeblebrox (talk) 16:44, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
Sorry if the wording has been too harsh, I presumed you just ignored my response to your remark above. As to your question, this is not what has been proposed. I suggest reading the proposal again, especially the part I have quoted in my reply to your other comment. --Vogone (talk) 16:46, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
  • I also support this as a global policy that potentially overrides local ones. Global renaming is not an area for the enwiki community to legislate on. What next, local policies on global locks, global blocks, and the global abusefilter? Ridiculous. If we want to establish a cross-project standard we should, and if people really want an emoji username they can contact someone who is willing to violate this practice I guess. – Ajraddatz (talk) 17:03, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
That's a spurious argument. There is no attempt for en.wp to dictate global policy, my objection is that this global policy, which currently does not disallow any broad category of names, would in effect dictate policy to local projects. Despite what has been said I'm not seeing how that isn't exactly what it would do. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:09, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
I guess I'm responding to the people here saying that local policies should dictate this, then. I think it is totally reasonable to establish guidelines around what actions we take as global renamers. – Ajraddatz (talk) 17:14, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
  Oppose The proposal is a list of all potential issues emojis might have, but not a single syllable in either the proposal or the support arguments expresses why we should treat them differently from non-Latin fonts which are allowed. They also break on different devices, they also can be confusing and people also complain about them. And yet we allow them without much fanfare resulting. That they might be controversial is not a reason to take any action ."Unilateral" is not a reason at all, all renames are unilateral as we don't require consensus for each rename, just compliance with a set of pre-existent policies. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:57, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
Yes, some non-Latin fonts can be confusing. If you add emojis, it will be ++ confusing. Confusing non-Latin fonts are not a good reason to allow new confusing images. Usernames use text, names, nouns, something you can prononce. Emoji is not a name, nor a noun, nor a statement you can prononce. Then emojis are different of other type of usernames and it is normal to treat them differently. Custom and common sense show that emojis and non-Latin fonts are different too, Jmvkrecords ⚜ (Intra talk) 04:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC).
  •   Support Frankly, I think it was ridiculous that enwiki allowed this. Also per Vituzzu. --Rschen7754 18:12, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support, confusing, not used by any language, ambiguous. JAn Dudík (talk) 19:49, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support. No matter why this discussion started, Vituzzu gives the best reason why this is a bad idea. The arguments against such a rule are weak at best: 1) The fact that other non-latin characters are allowed is a non-starter. They are allowed because those characters are used in some languages. Emojis on the other hand are not used in any language. 2) The idea that local projects should decide for themselves ignores the fact that there is no plausible reason to use such characters as usernames at any project. Just because the policy so far has no such restrictions does not mean we shouldn't have restrictions in general. Even without intimate knowledge of how global renamers work, I doubt they currently allow disruptive names, so there is precedent. Regards SoWhy 20:41, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Oppose To be frank, the argument that emojis are somehow uniquely confusing is daft. Especially considering the growing number of people contributing from mobile devices, where their use is both simple and well-established. "I can't think of a reason to allow it" is a lousy reason to forbid something in a project dedicated to openness. A lot of the objections seem to boil down to a vague sense that emojis aren't "serious" enough, which is nobody's problem other than the owner of the username. (Note: like others here, I saw this cross-posted on enwiki.) Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:52, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
    They definitely can be confusing. No language uses them, many of them are very similar to others, they don't always render properly. It's worth noting that I supported allowing the guy who used to be called ^demon to retain his new name, because I object to the sort of dragging-over-the-coals reaction to individual people that happened there. But in general, I think it would be sensible for people to use names that are easier to engage with. And as a policy for global renamers, we should definitely be avoiding controversial renames, and renaming to an emoji username is obviously an example of that. If enwiki wants to allow emoji usernames, just remove the line from your title blacklist. – Ajraddatz (talk) 23:00, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
    Lots of things "can be confusing", especially to people who've decided they're not very interested in figuring it out. Poor saps keep pinging some weirdo called Opabinia Regalis who never pays attention. And that's if they manage to spell Opabina Obapinia whatever, apparently whoever decided that biological names should be fake-Latinized random words didn't care if it was confusing ;) We all know there is no existing case in which someone has been so helplessly confused by an emoji username that they were unable to usefully interact with its owner. I don't particularly care much about emoji usernames per se, but I do care about banning things without evidence. (I also kind of agree with Beeblebrox that this is a weird discussion; admittedly my interactions with renamers are limited and rarely involve contentious usernames, but I was under the impression that dramamongering on individual projects was not a global concern, and meeting expectations on projects where they're active is the responsibility of the requester. This proposal doesn't prevent renaming to anything else on anyone's title blacklist, so that seems to be a red herring.) Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:54, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
    I'd imagine that we would rarely/never rename someone to a blacklisted name, regardless of policy. The rest of your comment makes sense of course. – Ajraddatz (talk) 07:40, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Oppose Better to let individual projects decide this for themselves. Craig Franklin (talk) 03:51, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Strong support Emojis are confusing. They make it harder to communicate. How am I supposed to refer to hypothetical username "⛄👰🦃"? This is especially an issue for editors editing on mobile devices, where copy/paste is difficult. It's an issue with allowing editors to contribute from older browsers as well. Why allow a username that makes it harder to communicate? ~ Rob13Talk 04:40, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
    • I expect you to refer to the hypothetical "User:⛄👰🦃" the same way that you'd paste the name of someone whose username is in a script that you don't read: by copying and pasting the name. I understand that copying and pasting is relatively easy in mobile editing (perhaps, in fact, it is the only thing that's relatively easy. "Find", for example, appears to be impossible when you're reading a web page). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:24, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Strong support Agree atleast 100% with Vituzzo et al :-D Say NO to emoji, plain text rules! Klaas `Z4␟` V:  07:28, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Oppose no reason to deny emojis. They aren't so much confusing as they are too simple. They are inevitably going to become part of communication as more devices support them. It's the 🌊 of the future. Andre (talk) 08:55, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support TheDragonhunter (talk) 11:06, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support - On enwiki, any non-Latin characters in usernames are a barrier to communication, especially if on a device that has a harder time copy/pasting. The reason is because it's not part of the script our devices are made to use by default. There are possible workarounds there, as the global username policy means non-Latin usernames are unavoidable (we certainly don't want to discourage people whose primary language uses non-Latin characters from participating). So there's a compelling reason to allow non-Latin characters that individual Wikipedias can adapt to. But emojis are pictures, and not part a standard part of any language's script. So they are a barrier for communication in any language. Yes, Unicode can display them and some people are able to see the emoji and easily produce it as they may any other character, but I don't think that's a safe assumption to make. FWIW I came here via the link in the subsection below. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:11, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support We are trying to write an encyclopaedia, create a free source for media files, collect quotes etc. Playing around with emojis isn't part of that process. Natuur12 (talk) 15:17, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support Names in other languages not using the latin script are allowed because they are native to some languages used on Wikimedia projects and there are people that can understand those names. And BU Rob13 gave a great example why they shouldn't be allowed in his repsonse to Andrevan (and I do see a wave and not an empty box) Mbch331 (talk) 16:00, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support - Per Natuur12. Velocitas (talk) 20:32, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Strong support - Horrible, horrible! This is not a kindergarten. And how do you spell "😂"? ErikvanB (talk) 21:48, 6 May 2017 (UTC)
    Hashar is the spelling of 🐉. They use that thingy as a signature; discussion is about names, not sigs Klaas `Z4␟` V:  12:14, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support - User names are intended to identify the person you talk to and communicate with that person. With emoji such is much more difficult and does not contribute to our goals: building an encyclopedia with knowledge. Romaine (talk) 02:31, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Strong support emojis can't be spelled, pronounced, or easily copy/pasted in many instances, and they make it near impossible for people to contact/mention users in them, the only possible use they could have is to discourage people from mentioning users that use them by making it exceedingly difficult to do so. It is already difficult to write out nicks/names of people that are using different alphabets than your own. If no ban on them is the result here, what if another language wiki insitutes a local ban on emojis, will users with those names be permanently blocked from these, or forced to change their nicks? I can't find any good reason to allow them anywhere. -- Vrenak (talk) 08:44, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Strong support Using a deliberately obfuscated name, such as one containing emojis, should not be allowed. --Cgt (talk) 09:00, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support - makes communication more difficult. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:35, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Strong support The wiki's have serious content, it should not be a game party for trolls. Ymnes (talk) 19:47, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support Personally I can't believe why people even choose for emojis as their username; I see more disadvantages than advantages. Trijnsteltalk 19:55, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support But not just only "an emoji" but "emjoi's" in general. For many configurations these will only appear as a string of letters and numbers, making communications with the user difficult for anyone who needs to type them. — xaosflux Talk 21:38, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Oppose - Never in a million years would I have thought I would support the option of a user to have an emoji as a username. But the oppose arguments are considerably superior to the support arguments here. Every single argument that has been given to support this proposal can be applied to usernames we have right now. "Not used in any language"? Really??? I'd suggest that the emoji that would ordinarily show up when I type :-) is probably more quickly recognizable by a larger percentage of the world populace than "OK" is...and we just had a "fact" on the WMF annual report saying that "OK" is the word most recognized around the world. Mind you, I'd wonder how seriously an editor would be taken if they used an emoji instead of a username. But then we have some pretty ridiculous usernames now, and there are lots of respected community members with pretty silly usernames. And no, I'm not looking forward to encountering a username that is, essentially, the poop emoji, or even the eggplant one now that I found out what it's supposed to mean; I'm pretty sure they'd still be disallowed just because they'd not be acceptable if they were written in words. The biggest argument I can come up with is that it's pretty much impossible for someone with a "normal" keyboard to type it, but the same is true from my desk if anyone has a username with non-latin characters.

    Having said all this, it seems that there's a good likelihood this will achieve consensus. If that is the case, then the decision that the individual communities should be considering is whether or not to allow an emoji as a user's signature, in place of the "official" username. Risker (talk) 07:35, 8 May 2017 (UTC) Oh, and since someone has just emailed me wanting to know if I came here from enwiki - no, this page has been on my meta watchlist pretty much since it was created. Risker (talk) 07:39, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

    Just a note that this won't ban people from using emojis in their username, just ban renaming an existing user to an emoji-based username. Local projects could certainly still decide, and if a project got explicit consensus to allow it then this probably wouldn't be applied to those cases per some application of common sense. I definitely agree with the rest of your comment, though, despite supporting this overall. – Ajraddatz (talk) 07:42, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
      •   Comment - If this was a broader policy proposal (i.e., if it was to disallow the use of *any* image as a username), I would support. But simply saying "emojis are not okay" but then by inference allowing other images is problematic. To be honest, the biggest argument I can see is that emojis are often images, and images in signatures take up far too much bandwidth. Perhaps rethink and make the restriction "Usernames must consist of characters of a WMF-supported language, including numbers" would be what we're really after here. "No emojis" is really far too narrow. Risker (talk) 17:40, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
        • I agree with you, Risker, but there are some misunderstandings here. Emoji are not "images", though they look like it, and the issue of including images in signatures is not related. Emoji are Unicode characters, just like "x" or "á" or "β" or "→". They have different appearances on different platforms for reasons analogous to the fact that text characters look different in different fonts. All emoji characters have a text description in the Unicode standard of what they're intended to represent. We already have a few editors on various projects whose usernames are or include Unicode characters that are not used in any language. Opabinia regalis (talk) 00:29, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support per all the above arguments - to me, a user who uses emojis within their name should have their maturity brought into question. Patient Zero (talk) 11:28, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Strong support How do I instantly see the difference between         and        ? It is confusing. I bet it makes people getting involved into conflicts that never should have been there at all. Besides, as one of us above say: what has playing around with smilies to do with producing an encyclopedia? Jasper Coenraats (talk) 19:29, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support Emojis probably fall under confusing usernames - seems logical not to allow them for future renames. --Pmlineditor (t · c · l) 19:52, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support some wikis already have rules on names that prevent using unreadable names. Emojis clearly fall into this category. So renaming into emojis will clearly violate local rules. In addition they are not readable at all on some devices/systems. masti <talk> 20:17, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Oppose. We do not have any global username policy, and having a policy of just one line stating "Emojis are not allowed" is IMHO not a good idea. Either we set up a real global username policy or we accept any reasonable name that do not violate rules — NickK (talk) 17:11, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support Go playing elsewhere with usernames. Emojis are confusing, non-standard and can easily be abused. —MarcoAurelio 16:45, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Strong support Unreadable name and not accessible nor displayable on all devices. Linedwell [talk] 17:09, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Strong support - Using emojis as or in usernames is ridiculous IMO. Mlpearc (open channel) 18:18, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Oppose. If usernames consisting only of emojis are allowed, I don't think we have any business refusing to rename to them (even though I personally think they're confusing and stupid). Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 21:33, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support, emojis should not be any part of the username and should be disallowed by the software (at least on the WMF wikis). Stryn (talk) 10:41, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
    • Stryn, I think that would require a different proposal. The proposal here appears to be "If you have an existing account, you can't rename it to emoji-only. However, you are still allowed to create accounts that are emoji-only, and everyone is allowed to rename to emoji-plus-something-else usernames." WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:01, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support I'm with the folks emphasizing interoperability and accessibility here, and minimizing a chance for confusion in a place where it is not necessary. If someone really wants to express themselves this way, they can test their wiki community's patience by setting up fancy signatures. — Yerpo Eh? 05:12, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support per Yerpo. --Terra ❤ (talk) 05:25, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support A major oppose argument appears to be that non-latin is allowed, and emojis are (supposedly) no different. Non-latin usernames can be a hassle, but there's a dang good reason to allow people to use their native languages. I'm certainly not going to complain about someone from HeWiki working on EnWiki with a native-Hebrew username. Emojis pointlessly create headaches and drama for other users. We allow people wide latitude to be different, but that shouldn't extend to pointlessly making things difficult for others. Alsee (talk) 19:48, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support This type of user names not difficult the communication with the rest of users and are not offensive in mostly. I don't see because there. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 19:55, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support In the interests of synonymity. Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (talk) 11:49, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
  •   Support The reason we allow most non-Latin Unicode characters as usernames, as Alsee has remarked, is that they are used in scripts of other languages, and allowing editors to use their native languages obviously outweighs the confusion that may arise among those who cannot read those scripts. But emojis are not an official script, can appear very differently according to device, and just seem to be confusing for no good reason. Double sharp (talk) 08:07, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
    • I will further note that Hashar's signature shows up perfectly well on my phone and appears as a simple blank square on my desktop as I am now. And that is just a signature. Double sharp (talk) 08:35, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
  1.   Oppose, Emoji's are modern day hieroglyphs, they are are a form of communication no different than written language. --Donald Trung (Talk 🤳🏻) (My global lock 😒🌏🔒) (My global unlock 😄🌏🔓) 13:45, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

enwiki presence in this thread

This thread was mentioned at w:en:Wikipedia_talk:Username_policy#Our_just-established_local_consensus_may_be_overridden_by_a_change_in_global_policy and w:en:Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Possible_change_to_global_policy_that_would_override_a_just-established_local_consensus_here. No wonder I'm seeing some enwiki faces around here. —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 21:13, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Aye, that crossreference is the reason why I came here. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 21:28, 5 May 2017 (UTC)
For the record, see my above post with "for the record" in bold at the beginning of it. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:18, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

nlwiki presence as well

A colleague was so nice to add a link to above discussion in the Village Pump (De kroeg) of Wikipedia in the Dutch language. Welkom, Nederlandstaligen! Klaas `Z4␟` V:  07:35, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

Can we just talk about this for a moment, instead of voting already?

It appears that the proposed rule is:

  1. Any newbie can have an emoji for a username.
  2. All existing editors can have an emoji for their usernames, too – but only if they're willing to start a new/separate account.
  3. All existing editors can still have their accounts renamed to non-emoji symbols, such as ༆ (real account with >5,000 edits).
    • We've even recommended this in pre-emoji days to editors who mostly contribute at, say, the English Wikipedia, and whose native script can't be read by most English speakers.
  4. Local wikis can still block anyone whose username is disliked by at least one admin, even if the only thing the editor did is accidentally click an interlanguage link and end up at the 'wrong' wiki for a few seconds.
    • See, e.g., many blocks of people with numbers in their usernames at idwiki (but, of course, not the two admins there whose usernames contain numbers), people with 21 characters in their usernames at plwikiquote, etc.

Is this a reasonably complete and accurate summary of the proposal? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:58, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

  • As best I can tell, the proposal bans the use of usernames that contain only [an] emoji[s], or possibly the use of any emoji in a username. Indeed, the question itself is not clear WhatamIdoing. Risker (talk) 22:08, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
    • It is a bit unclear, isn't it? The original statement at the top isn't an outright ban. It looks more like "We, the Global Renamers, hereby refuse to be complicit in emoji-only usernames" than "Let's ban all such usernames". In practice, the only thing that Global Renamers can affect is renaming existing accounts.
      (Personally, I wouldn't be averse to a lightweight global username policy, which could ban emoji-only usernames, but which should ban things like tiny projects blocking editors for having usernames that are acceptable everywhere else, especially when the editor hasn't even tried to edit a page there.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:53, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
      • No it should not as GRP is not The Policy on usernames. You cannot enforce the view represented here as a global usernames policy. Such discussion should be held separately and have a wide community consensus. I would be in favor of such policy but this voting is not about it. masti <talk> 17:24, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
        • I have not proposed that GRP become a username policy. I have only said that I would not necessarily object to someone (i.e., separate from this discussion) creating such a policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:59, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
      • I think this would result in 95% of the issues being resolved. I remember the single usernames club on enwiki several years back, when editors renamed their accounts just so they could join the club. It was dumb and caused a lot of unnecessary drama. --Rschen7754 18:23, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
  • This change would dictate a de facto new renaming rule for all WMF projects, based on some people here at meta basically saying "I don't like these so nobody should be able to do it." That ain't right. There is no global username policy and meta does not have the authority to create one in a talk page discussion. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:25, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
    • Beeblebrox, that's part of why I asked for clarification on the proposal. It looks to me like the people here at Meta are voting to say that newbies should be able to have emoji-only usernames, but that existing editors should not. A sort of two-class citizenship system, if you will: if you create your account after May 2017, then you can create an emoji-only username, but if you created it before now, then you can't. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:59, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
  • I agree with Beeblebrox, and I don't see how a consensus here can have any force - a "global rename policy" discussion here at meta does not have the authority to set global usernames policy. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 21:36, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
  • Yep, what Beeblebrox said. I guess the idea is "this causes drama and global renamers don't want to be involved in drama", but the right way to do that is to respond to every single dumb complaint you get about someone else's dumb username with "that's not our problem, take it up with the local project". Opabinia regalis (talk) 00:29, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
    • I think that each individual renamer could and should refuse to rename any account if that renamer is uncomfortable with it for any reason. No one should act against their consciences or in ways that they believe would be harmful to the projects. If no renamer agrees, then the request would have to be declined, regardless of whether the request is technically acceptable. But "I, individually and personally, do not choose to be involved in this" (even if repeated by every single person with the rights) is a bit different from "We hereby ban anyone else from doing this". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:59, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
      • Renames are currently performed based on 1) The decision of the renamer who chooses to process it; and 2) The guidelines laid out at Global rename policy. Currently the problem with the global rename policy is that there is no global username policy to go with it, requiring renamers to know about local username policies (And with so many projects, you'd have to be mad to expect global renamers to know every single username policy out there). The general consensus among global renamers is 1) No names that imply shared use; 2) No bot usernames unless the account is actually a bot; and 3) No blatantly inappropriate names, like "K6ka suxs cocks and drinks pee pee". For cases where one isn't clear, a discussion between renamers may occur. For requests made on wiki pages, like SRUC and w:en:WP:CHUS, the request can be marked on hold; there is no way to do this on the global rename queue, however (The queue is where requests made using Special:GlobalRenameRequest are sent to). On some occasions I've seen renamers approve a request that I might've declined, or that I approve of a request that another renamer may reject. —k6ka 🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 22:32, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
    • Let's stop beating around the bush - usernames are global. We should have a global username policy. Not having one just hurts innocent users who get randomly blocked for not knowing the unspoken rules about usernames. This isn't the venue for it, but imposing restrictions on global renames is basically creating such a policy anyways. Legoktm (talk) 07:54, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
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