[WikiEN-l] Eliminating homographs in usernames: was: Re: Pruning "dead" accounts (was Re: New York Times article)

Thu Jun 22 17:44:59 UTC 2006

The only problem is languages that don't have latin alphabets.

You can't restrict them to being only one charset. For example, Russian. I
don't want to be User:ильянеп , but then again there may be users that use
cyrillic in their names.

On 6/20/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Chris Lüer wrote:
> > At 09:59 AM 6/19/2006, Guettarda wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Don't forget the accounts which exist to prevent impersonation in one's
> main
> >> language - names with capital I's to mimic L's and Cyrillic characters.
> >> Deleting these would just open things up for abuse again.
> >>
> >
> > Is there are a reason why user names with weird Unicode characters
> > are even allowed? It would seem sensible to limit user names on each
> > Wikipedia to the alphabet that is used in that language.
> >
> >          Chl
> >
> >
> >
> A suggestion, based on practices used for IDN registration:
>
> Restrict new usernames on the en: Wikipedia to characters from the Latin
> alphabet and selected punctuation only (and possibly digits as well).
>
> Before allowing a username to be registered, generate a canonical
> comparison form by Unicode normalization, lowercasing, punctuation and
> space suppression and accent-stripping, followed by homograph
> canonicalizations such as mapping both digit zero and letter O to the
> latter, digit 1 and letter L to the latter, eth to lowercase d, etc.
>
> A new username should then only be allowed to be registered if the
> comparison form of the proposed new username is different from the
> comparison form of every existing username (which are stored in an
> indexed table, alongside the full, uncanonicalized name that actually
> gets registered).
>
> Doing this will eliminate the vast majority of all simple username
> spoofing hacks.
>
> Existing usernames get grandfathered in, of course.
>
> -- Neil
>
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-- 
~Ilya N. (Now with 2% Juice)
http://ilya.nepfamily.com (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.