[Foundation-l] Assume Good Faith and Don't Bite Newbees

Thu Dec 3 22:15:22 UTC 2009

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 10:05 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Lodewijk <lodewijk at effeietsanders.org> wrote:
>> This is enforced by a group of moderators by blocking the usernames
>> who fulfill one of these conditions, and notifying them on their
>> talkpage they can create a new username, but that their current is
>> blocked indefinitely.
>
> I support policy that no organizational/group accounts should be used.
> It is not just about NPOV, but about liability, as well as WMF's
> position toward other organizations (imagine an account "Coca Cola";
> is it really Coca Cola account? should we ask every such entity to
> prove that it is so? and so on).

It also hurts the community's position towards other organisations.
Lets say we let them use their company name, and then we block them
for edit-warring or copyvio or something.  What!?  We just blocked a
_company_.

> However, you described the exactly wrong method for doing so. While it
> is not so easy to give some definite suggestions to English or Chinese
> Wikipedia because of the amount of possible companies, on the projects
> with smaller number of speakers (like Dutch is), I suggest much softer
> approach: Don't block them immediately. Talk with them. Explain to
> them that it is a problem for Wikipedia. Ask them to create their own
> accounts. And after that, with their approval, block the original
> account indefinitely.

This is a great way to handle the situation.  Sadly English Wikipedia
tends to want to "fix" each problem that they see _immediately_.

Our policy currently says:

"Since usernames that are the name of a company or group create the
appearance of intent to promote that group, accounts with a company or
group name as a username are indefinitely blocked."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:ORGNAME

--
John Vandenberg