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Can someone remove the okinas, "ʻ", from the blacklist? Attitudes have changed toward its usage, see ʻIolani Palace.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 19:26, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't see that okina's are explicitly disallowed. The only blacklist rule that matches "ʻIolani Palace" is one of the rules that disallows moves to titles with mixed Latin and non-Latin characters. Unless someone has an objection, it would be easy enough to modify those rules. Anomie⚔ 00:10, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

There was nothing stopping me on moving Tuʻi Haʻatakalaua last year but now I can't move Tu'i Kanokupolu to Tuʻi Kanokupolu. This message appears: "Tu'i Kanokupolu" cannot be moved to "Tuʻi Kanokupolu", because the title "Tuʻi Kanokupolu" is on the title blacklist. If you feel that this move is valid, please consider requesting the move first. --KAVEBEAR (talk) 08:42, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Unless the definition of ʻ in PHP changed in the past year (right now it's a non-Latin letter; if it was a Latin letter or a non-letter a year ago, the move would have worked), I can't see why it let you make that move then and not this one. Hmm. Anomie⚔ 12:11, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

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Hi, all, I'd like to request the following be inserted:

.+ prefix:.+

This is to prevent pages like LA Grade D Reflux Esophagitis prefix:Wikipedia:FAQ‎, Chelsea Newman prefix:Wikipedia:Manual of Style, Yiddish prefix:Talk:Isaac Asimov/, and How do you cut and paste something that I have from pdf including pictures prefix:Wikipedia:FAQ from being accidentally created. I was given a suggestion to take this here from VPT, where prior discussion seems to indicate that these pages come as a result of users unfamiliar with the Wikipedia search function. Thanks, Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 17:33, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Done Anomie⚔ 18:20, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I couldn't register the account "Oh god they've changed the sign up form" just now allegedly due to the title blacklist. Anyone know which entry may have triggered that? Do we have a test tool somewhere these days? --MZMcBride (talk) 13:19, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, usernames of 40 characters or more are disallowed. The name you chose seems to be only 38, did you have any additional punctuation in? ☮Soap☮ 14:58, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I just tested at the test Wikipedia. It's the 40-character rule that the username is hitting. The string itself is only 39 characters. My suspicion is that the extension is adding "User:" to the front, bumping it over the limit.

Is there any reason to continue to have this username length limit? Can it to raised or removed? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:40, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

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Please remove the ".{40,} <newaccountonly>" entry. It was added by me and I don't even remember why. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:42, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it should be disabled - as a general rule, do we really want accounts with more than 40 characters in the name? See the note at WP:USERNAME#Confusing usernames. This limit can be overridden by users with accountcreator if necessary. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 15:59, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, the problem here is that you're arguing the same thing that I argued previously (when I added the rule). Looking at the actual data, yes, most usernames are less than 40 characters. I could only find two that were longer that had user rights:

• Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The (42); and
• Squire of the Infernal Knight-Lord of Penguins (46).

But... the limit is still kind of arbitrarily low. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:42, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Why are

.*[cċĉ¢сćĉçč][óòôöõǒōŏǫőøόδοσоʘǿọơờởỡớợồổỗốộ][cċĉ¢сćĉçč][kķкќқҝҡҟӄ].*
.*[ċĉ¢сćĉçč][oóòôöõǒōŏǫőøόδοσоʘǿọơờởỡớợồổỗốộ][cċĉ¢сćĉçč][kķкќқҝҡҟӄ].*
.*[cċĉ¢сćĉçč][oóòôöõǒōŏǫőøόδοσоʘǿọơờởỡớợồổỗốộ][ċĉ¢сćĉçč][kķкќқҝҡҟӄ].*
.*[cċĉ¢сćĉçč][oóòôöõǒōŏǫőøόδοσоʘǿọơờởỡớợồổỗốộ][cċĉ¢сćĉçč][ķкќқҝҡҟӄ].*

four entries rather than one? —Tamfang (talk) 22:46, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Because "cock" is not blacklisted. Only variants that use an unusual character are. --Carnildo (talk) 22:55, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Ah! So simple when you point it out. —Tamfang (talk) 23:13, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

I was asked for help with a login error: the user cannot login on enwp because his SUL account “YeshiTuhden” matches the

.*sh[ÌÍÎÏĨļǏĪĬİḷŀΙЇɨ!łľıĮįī]t.* <newaccountonly>

blacklist regex. Is this Scunthorpe problem instance a feature, or a bug? I.e. could somebody remove the I from the regex, or do I need to refer the user to Wikipedia:Request an account (or ask him to rename himself)? --Mormegil (talk) 13:21, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

No idea how serious this one is, but you could always remove it temporarily and re-add it, I suppose. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:22, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Can YeshiTuhden request the account at Wikipedia:Request an account from a user with permission to override the blacklist, or would the existing SUL account prevent it from being created by somebody else? PrimeHunter (talk) 01:21, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. The problem was that the letter İ (Turkish dotted capital I) case-insensitively matches the normal ASCII lowercase i; there's also the reverse problem where the letter ı (Turkish undotted lowercase I) would case-insensitively match a normal ASCII uppercase I. So I made the rule in question case-sensitive and duplicated all the characters that are intended to be matched. Anomie⚔ 05:18, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, the API indicates it should be all right now, I’ll ask the user to retry. --Mormegil (talk) 16:09, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Request an account is always a good option here, Account creators can simply override the black list and create the account, not sure how to handle a login problems after account creation. Mlpearc (powwow) 16:54, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

The problem was there already had been a SUL account with the username, so an account creator would be given “The requested username is already taken in the unified login system. Please choose a different name.” error, I presume? But the problem was solved and the user was able to login here. Thanks for help. --Mormegil (talk) 21:35, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Why is the ʻokina on the blacklist? Nataev (talk) 17:09, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

You confusingly made a piped link from okina to ʻOkina but I don't see signs that either of them are blacklisted. Which exact title do you refer to and what makes you say it's on the blacklist? PrimeHunter (talk) 17:30, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

It's not specifically on the blacklist. But it's apparently considered a letter and not a part of the Latin script (at least in the current version of PHP's PCRE extension), so the blacklist rule against titles containing both Latin script characters and non-Latin-script letters (to prevent homoglyph vandalism) is triggered. Anomie⚔ 18:37, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Every time I try to move a page that has the okina in its title, I can't. For example, I wanted to move Toʻylar muborak (1978 film) to Toʻylar muborak (no need to disambiguate at all) and Kelinlar qoʻzgʻoloni (1984 film) to Kelinlar qoʻzgʻoloni (film) (no need to disambiguate by year; there's a play with the same name though). Sorry about the piped link. Have fixed it. Nataev (talk) 03:07, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I've requested to move the pages here. Nataev (talk) 03:14, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Ah, it's only move blacklisted. That explains why I didn't find a problem with page creation. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:53, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I would like to change the name of the biography for Ibn Maḍāʾ Al-Qurṭubī to just Ibn Maḍāʾ. Almost all academic and historical works about the man simply refer to him as Ibn Maḍāʾ without tagging al-Qurtubi to the end. Qurtubi is an attribution to his hometown and it is used for some authors from Medeival Spain, but not usually this one. I would like to know why Ibn Maḍāʾ is on the blacklist and have it removed, if possible. Thanks so much. MezzoMezzo (talk) 12:32, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

The character ʾ (Modifier letter right half ring) is apparently considered to be a non-Latin-script letter by the version of PCRE currently used on Wikipedia; page moves to titles containing both Latin script and non-Latin-script letters are blacklisted to prevent certain kinds of vandalism. Your best bet is to take the move to Wikipedia:Requested moves. Anomie⚔ 16:11, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Will do, thanks! MezzoMezzo (talk) 08:10, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

 Done I think we might want to just spell it "Ibn Mada" though .... in any case I've created a redirect from Ibn Mada to the requested spelling. ☮Soap☮ 13:12, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Why is She Can Put Her Shoes Under My Bed (Anytime) on the title blacklist? Can I have an exception made, since there is currently an article at She Can Put Her Shoes Under my Bed (Anytime) which needs the "My" capitalized? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 16:46, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I moved it, I didn't bother to find out why it was hitting the blacklist but if things like this keep happening we can fix it.☮Soap☮ 16:50, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

It's the rule with the comment "HERMY". It looks like any page title that contains the words "her" and "my" (in that order) will trigger it, for example, but only on page moves. Anomie⚔ 20:00, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

I cannot rename Template:GHSA Class AAAAA Region 5‎ -> Template:GHSA Class AAAAAA Region 5‎ because it matches something on the blacklist. Please fix this. Jojalozzo 00:44, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

It's not a false positive. Moves to titles with excessive copies of the same letter are blacklisted. You should propose the move at WP:RM. Anomie⚔ 03:04, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

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This is Nyttend on a public computer. Please check my edit to this page and modify something: either revert it if I made a big mistake, or remove the # character from the second line if it's otherwise ready to go. 129.79.203.174 (talk) 20:29, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Do you want to ban anyone from creating categories matching the regex "Category:Wikipedia files with no copyright ta*"? Ruslik_Zero 08:50, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Looks like you need the code Category:Wikipedia files with no copyright tag.* (note the full stop). But more to the point, why do you want to stop DumbBOT from creating these categories? Wouldn't blocking the bot until it can be fixed be a better idea? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 11:50, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

To your final question: absolutely not. See the discussion at "DumbBOT replacement" (WP:BOTR or at the "Category:Wikipedia files with no copyright tag" section of the relevant revision of WP:AN. The categories no longer have a use (the point of preventing creation is to enable the deletion of the parent category), but DumbBOT persists in creating them, and because the operator is AWOL, it can't be fixed, and there's no other way to prevent the bot from creating these categories. Blocking would work, of course, but this bot does so much necessary work (creating lots of other dated maintenance categories, creating AFD logs, etc.) that blocking it would be horribly unproductive right now. I understand that this might have repercussions on the bot that I can't imagine, but that's why we can watch it and remove this line from the code if it cause bigger problems. Nyttend (talk) 14:33, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Okay, done (with Mr. Strad's modifications). God knows what this'll do to the bot, but worth a shot, I guess. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:43, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

The page should to Chitram! Bhalare Vichitram!!. Because the film had the exclamation marks in its title. regards, DRAGON BOOSTER ★ 00:02, 21 January 2013 (UTC).

I've just tried to change Twang! to Twang!!, but have not been allowed to do so. I can only guess that this is for the same reason that Chitram Bhalare Vichitram was not changed - some sort of generic ban on double exclamation marks. Is there a way to get round this? Paul B (talk) 13:39, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes you cannot move a page to a title ending with two exclamation points. I think this is because of vandalism, and the fact that legitimate moves to titles like that are rare. But perhaps the vandalism is also rare enough that the rule could be removed? —Soap— 17:49, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm doing the pagemove now. I was at first hesitant because most of the sources are printed paper ones that I wouldn't be able to track down, but it seems that the spelling of the name is variable and !! is the only spelling that appears in the one linked source. —Soap— 01:39, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

As for the original title, I'd be inclcined to move that as well but I dont see any versions of it that are spelled in Roman letters with the exclamation points. —Soap— 01:43, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Please look here, the title is in Telugu language, the upper word is Chitram and rest is the lower part. hope this helps. regards, DRAGON BOOSTER ★ 14:38, 5 March 2013 (UTC).

Is it ever spelled with the exclamation points in Roman letters? —Soap— 23:14, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

No, I don`t find any versions of it in Roman letters... DRAGON BOOSTER ★ 18:19, 7 March 2013 (UTC).

What is the point in blocking youtu.be but not youtube.com?--Launchballer 17:35, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like a MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist issue, not a Title blacklist one. But I don't see it on the blacklist, either here or on meta. Are you sure youtu.be is blocked? I was able to save an edit with a youtu.be link in it, on a non-admin account, here. And other sites on the blacklist did indeed trip the spam filter. —Soap— 21:50, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I tried to add a link with that title to MC Kinky, with it telling me I had to use the full URL.--Launchballer 22:23, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I somehow didn't realize that the link I pasted was also to youtube.com. My browser must have automatically converted it. youtu.be is indeed banned. It's on the meta blacklist (search http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Spam_blacklist for "\byoutu\.be\b"), so nobody here can remove it, but you can ask at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#Proposed_removals. In the meantime though, all youtu.be links simply forward to youtube.com as far as I know. —Soap— 02:44, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

youtu(.)be allows you to link to a video at a specific time, but youtube.com doesn't (as far as i can tell). so if you are wanting to show a user something specific during a discussion youtu(.)be is a lot easier. ≈Sensorsweep (talk) 06:05, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

It does, you just have to add the time to the end of the URL in the form of a hashtag. #2m59s for example. —Soap— 01:36, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

What's the purpose of the .*\bN[äao]wlins?(Wiki)?\b.* filter, and can it be reduced in scope? An editor needed assistance creating the article Stephen Nowlin because of it. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:10, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

@NawlinWiki: ping. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:13, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

It's because there is one long-term abuser who at one point was creating attack pages using my screenname. NawlinWiki (talk) 20:19, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Do you think it's subsided enough to change it to .*\bN[äao]wlins?Wiki\b.* or something along those lines, to make it FP a little less? Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:32, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

False positives, such as the Nawlinwiki one above, are often responsible for requests at WP:AN asking admins to create talk pages for existing articles; for example, I just had to create Talk:Stephen Nowlin. Why does the blacklist prevent talk page creation in this situation? Yes, I understand that we should apply the blacklist to talk pages: imagine what would happen if someone found that he couldn't create Usernamehere is an idiot but had no problems creating Talk:Usernamehere is an idiot. However, if the article already exists, the creation of a talk page shouldn't be problematic — either the article's fine, or its existence is a bigger problem and the talk page will be deleted along with the article. Therefore, could we add a rule permitting the creation of any talk page when its corresponding article is a bluelink? Nyttend (talk) 17:15, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the software is capable of something that fine-tuned; I don't think it can even distinguish what namespace someone's in, let alone whether there's a page with the same title in another namespace. EDIT: It seems to treat the whole title of the page, including the namespace prefix, as a single string, so it does detect namespaces in that way. I still don't think it can tell if there is a coressponding article for a talk page or not. Could be possible in the future though. —Soap— 04:02, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Given User:MuZemike is no longer very active anymore so the chances of someone trying to impersonate him are much less likely, would it be possible to remove the .*MuZ.* <newaccountonly|errmsg=titleblacklist-forbidden-new-account> entry? I think most of the times I've needed to override the title blacklist when creating accounts at WP:ACC have been because of this, 2 out of 26 today. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 11:18, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Done by Reaper Eternal. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 04:18, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Any chance that we could instruct the blacklist to ignore "shit" specifically when it's in the middle of the word "Washita"? See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=570135331#blocked_category_name for the context; I don't see people using "Washita" for pagename vandalism, and I can easily imagine someone having to create another article or category or template related to this county. A search of List of United States counties and county-equivalents found no other examples of the string "shit", FYI. Nyttend (talk) 15:10, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

The filter it tripped is ing) (matching the "ate" in "Category"). Changing it to ing)? should fix it. (I know that not all of the \b's are needed in this case, but that'll help reduce FP's from it in the future, and it allows adding the ? to catch more real hits). Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:21, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good, and better than my whitelisting suggestion. For future reference, is it possible to whitelist items here, or do they have to get added to MediaWiki:Titlewhitelist? Meanwhile, please copy the entire blacklist page's code into a sandbox and make the change that you've suggested, and I'll happily copy it into the live page. There's no way that I'll do the change myself, since I don't understand regex at all. Nyttend (talk) 15:30, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

I've made one at /sandbox. Also, you're correct things have to be added to Titlewhitelist, but it's usually a bad idea to do so, because then it can be used to bypass any filter, not just the one it originally caught. Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:38, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! After copying the sandbox contents, I logged out and then logged into my non-admin alternate account to create Category:Nonsense in Washita County, Oklahoma. I had no problems whatsoever, even though my alt account has no rights that are related to title blacklists. Nyttend (talk) 15:48, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Coming here from the VP; after seeing the account "Niggerhater678" created to vandalize TFA, I'm wondering why "nigger" isn't blacklisted as a user name. Joefromrandb (talk) 01:51, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

It seems I misread it. It was actually "Nigggerhater678". Perhaps "niggger" should be added to the blacklist. Joefromrandb (talk) 02:07, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps .*n+i+g{2,}e+r+.* could be added, to catch repeats no matter how they go, with the {2,} to prevent "Niger" from being caught. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:13, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Seems like a sensible idea. Joefromrandb (talk) 06:03, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Support, except change i+ to i* so that "ngger" is caught. Ginsuloft (talk) 18:25, 7 September 2013 (UTC) Forget that, I just thought of a (slim chance of) a false positive. I support your original proposal. Ginsuloft (talk) 18:28, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

What is this code meant to do, and does it do it?

# Protection for future and archived TFA blurbs and names

Wikipedia:Today's[ _]featured[ _]article\/[a-zA-z]+[ _][0-9]+,[ _][0-9]{4}.* <autoconfirmed|noedit|errmsg=titleblacklist-custom-TFA> Template:TFA title\/\w+ \d\d?, \d\d\d\d <noedit|errmsg=titleblacklist-custom-TFA>

Thanks, Bencherlite^Talk 11:11, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

From reading MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-custom-TFA, I'd guess it's because editing it would edit something transcluded on the main page. Ginsuloft (talk) 01:05, 12 September 2013 (UTC) Sorry, didn't realize you're an administrator. You obviously want a more technical/precise answer. Ginsuloft (talk) 01:08, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

The first part keeps non-autoconfirmed users from editing articles with the name format Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 11, 2011 (or subpages thereof). The second part keeps non-administrators from editing articles with the name format Template:TFA title/April 11, 2011. It does both of those successfully. If an attempt is made to do either, the message at MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-custom-TFA is displayed. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:14, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

And if I have any clue at all, Bencherlite probably wants to remove the "autoconfirmed" part so that he no longer has to protect them, which is why he asked...? I can see you're going to be an admin in the future; keep up the good work. Ginsuloft (talk) 01:37, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Bencherlite: if so, remove "autoconfirmed|" from it. Ginsuloft: thanks. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:39, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but I don't think I'd be thanked if I upped the protection of all TFA blurbs to admin-only! At present, cascading protection looks after them while they are on the main page (and for 24 hours beforehand) which is enough. However, what I would be interested in knowing is whether it's possible to add some code to stop people (even autoconfirmed) using the blurb talk page - I'd rather they went to WP:ERRORS, because that's more likely to be seen than even an ((edit protected)). Would something like this work?

# Protection for TFA blurb talk pages

Wikipedia talk:Today's[ _]featured[ _]article\/[a-zA-z]+[ _][0-9]+,[ _][0-9]{4}.* <noedit|errmsg=titleblacklist-custom-TFA>

If so, then I'll see what people at TFA / ERRORS think about this. Thanks, Bencherlite^Talk 11:04, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

That would technically work, but I think redirecting those talk pages to WP:ERRORS would be a better idea, just because we almost never full-protect talk pages. Jackmcbarn (talk) 12:44, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Is there anyway to redirect people using Mediawiki magic such as the title blacklist (I assume not), or would redirects have to be added to each page? Or perhaps a special edit notice that appeared on pages such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/September 13, 2013 but not other subpages of WP:TFA such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests? Could such a clever edit notice be written? Bencherlite^Talk 13:05, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Technically, you could use the code you wrote above but change the "errmsg" part to your custom MediaWiki notice, although you can't redirect the editnotice as it'll just redirect the notice itself. Also remove .* from the end if you don't want to protect subpages. (.* means "any string of zero-length or longer". .+ would mean any string at least 1 character in length.) Why don't you try it and see if it works? Whatever you do, don't make an edit filter for this. Ginsuloft (talk) 14:26, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Being bold with Mediawiki sounds great fun. What could possibly go wrong? Maybe later - the train is approaching its destination and this isn't something to do in a hurry... Bencherlite^Talk 14:31, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Redirects can't be done with titleblacklist (they'd have to be done manually, though a bot could do it), but a custom editnotice could appear only on appropriate pages and warn users not to post here, but it couldn't redirect them automatically. Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:18, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

@NawlinWiki: I'm concerned that the filter Classic is going to have a quite high FP rate relative to the actual vandalism it catches. Is the titleblacklist really the best way to deal with this? Jackmcbarn (talk) 15:13, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

• I can't think of any legitimate article titles that would begin this way - if you can, let me know and I'll rethink. Thanks, NawlinWiki (talk) 15:37, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
  • You say titles "that would begin this way". As the filter is written now, because of the .* on the front, it doesn't just catch titles that begin with that, but with that anywhere in it. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:21, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
    • Good point, I took out the leading *. NawlinWiki (talk) 18:56, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
      • The leading . also needs to be removed. As it stands now, it won't match the vandalism pages either. Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:00, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
      • The anchored version of the "Hunter" regex matches five articles, down from the 43 that the unanchored version matched. --Carnildo (talk) 22:58, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
        • @Carnildo: Out of curiosity, how do you determine that? Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:05, 7 September 2013 (UTC)
          • You could do a SELECT COUNT(*) from page where page_title RLIKE "regexhere"; Legoktm (talk) 04:10, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
            • Wouldn't that require database access? Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:48, 8 September 2013 (UTC)
          • I've got a program (User:Carnildo/wiki-regex-tester.pl) and a recent list of page titles. --Carnildo (talk) 01:47, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

While you're here, you may want to change .*chaosmus.* to .*chaos.?mus.* or .*chaos.{0,2}mus.* (see Chaos(Musician)) - you may be already aware of this, WP:DENY and all that, but notifying just in case. I have already seen 2 accounts be blocked for chaos vandalism since the addition of the entry. Ginsuloft (talk) 19:02, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

• Took out the . on Hunter, and changed the Chaos entries. Thanks, Jack and Ginsu! NawlinWiki (talk) 19:18, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

@NawlinWiki: Was your goal with this edit to make the first letter of the second words case-insensitive? If so, can you change them to the following to reduce the FP rate?

 .*chaos.{0,2}[Rr]ap.*
 .*chaos.{0,2}[Mm]us.*
 .*chaos.{0,2}[Ee]nter.*
 .*chaos.{0,2}[Ww]ashington.*

Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:13, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

• No, it was because his last effort was Chaos (nusician). I have revised them to (hopefully) reduce FPs. What do you think? NawlinWiki (talk) 02:15, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Those look better. What I'd be inclined to do in this case is keep them highly sensitive (and susceptible to FPs), but stick <newaccountonly> on them all. Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:20, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist/Archive 3#Okina, this is still a problem. Can it be changed?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 06:07, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I second this. I just tried (and, of course, failed) to move Ka 'Ano'i to the correct title, Ka ʻAnoʻi. The ʻokina is an actual letter in the Hawaiian language, and one that is used in the titles of other relevant articles, including Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, the only article linked to from that article. We need to choose one way or the other, and the allowing of the ʻokina is the only logical way to go, because it is not an apostrophe.  — TORTOISEWRATH 23:45, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

I moved the page, but I'm not sure if the okina will ever be let back in. Basically the problem is that it's not specifically blacklisted, it's just matching a rule that traps all titles that are a mix of Latin and non-Latin characters, and the okina is considered a non-Latin character. So basically all titles containing the letter ʻ are disallowed, albeit only for page-moves and not creations. As far as I can see the only way to solve the problem would be to use MediaWiki:Titlewhitelist and add a rule that any page with "ʻ" in it is allowed. But then any vandal could just add an ʻ to any page and violate all of the rules on the blacklist. —Soap— 01:25, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, still a problem, and for the for the fairly non-obscure page University of Hawaii, which should be University of Hawaiʻi" (that's the way the university spells it). WP has a page University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, so can't we get an admin to straighten this out? Chris the speller ^yack 16:11, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

OK done. I was hesitant on this one because it's such a highly active page and people might get confused, but as long as a redirect there it shouldnt be any more difficult than the others. —Soap— 04:19, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. But now that I have dug deeper, the same treatment is needed for these:

University of Hawaii Board of Publications

University of Hawaii Marching Band

University of Hawaiʻi Maui College

University of Hawaiʻi Press

University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo

University of Hawaii at Hilo Botanical Gardens

University of Hawaiʻi – West Oʻahu (which also needs an okina before 'ahu')

That should do it for a day or two. Chris the speller ^yack 20:40, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Oops, missed one:

Associated Students of the University of Hawaii

Chris the speller ^yack 20:45, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me that moving 8 pages should not take two months. Is there another page where this should be discussed? Chris the speller ^yack 13:31, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

You're making an error in believing that moving those pages is something vital. I would personally disagree that the articles should be moved at all, as they're at the titles that they are typically known as in the English language - which, if you ever read the Ivory Coast move requests, is the VITAL aspect of our manual of style. Individual move request discussions should have been started to see if consensus was to move to a non-English title ES&L 11:46, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I never said "vital". Stop putting words in my mouth. Chris the speller ^yack 14:12, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I have requested page moves at University of Hawaiʻi to drop the okina from it and University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. If that request flies, we need do nothing about the other 8 articles mentioned above. Chris the speller ^yack 22:50, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

The pages have been moved, dropping the okina, so this matter is settled, for now. Chris the speller ^yack 01:26, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Can Wikipedia:Articles for creation/(?!Redirects/).* <errmsg=titleblacklist-custom-afc-prefix> and Wikipedia talk:Articles [fF]or Creation/.* <casesensitive|errmsg=titleblacklist-custom-afc-prefix> be added to the titleblacklist? These are to prevent submissions accidentally being placed in Wikipedia space rather than Wikipedia talk space, or accidentally created with an incorrect uppercase C (and possibly F). The custom error message is requested at MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist-custom-afc-prefix. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:51, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Well: please not - afc is for newbies (people who doing their first edit on Wikipedia) and shouldn't prevented to do this by a stupid rule of one upper case letter. Moreover the WP namespace is totally valid (and well seen if they create a talkpage for discussion or so on) - hell moving a page (for correction) isn't that time consuming... mabdul 06:16, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• Strongly opposed to adding this to the Titleblacklist per mabdul. I would however support creation/improvement of an edit filter that "warns" but does not prevent new users from doing this. Technical 13 (talk • contribs) 13:39, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
• This is gentler than an edit filter, since they get this before they start writing their article. An edit filter wouldn't trigger until after they hit save. Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:11, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
• The title blacklist filter can be confusing to new users. It doesn't explain why the title is blacklisted, just that it is. The first time I encountered it I had to ask four other users before I found one who could tell me that the proposed title had too many capital letters. It would be nice if there were a way to have the software just automatically remove any spurious capital letters in "Articles for creation" before performing the move, but since the "Move" function is used by everyone and not just Afc this would likely need a wide consensus and very careful implementation. —Anne Delong (talk) 17:38, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
  • That's why I wrote a custom message for this one. It explains exactly what happened and what page to use instead. Example:

You appear to be trying to create or edit Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Foo but are actually about to create Wikipedia:Articles for Creation/Foo If you are trying to create or edit Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Foo, just follow the link. If this is the page you want to create, please make a request at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard.

Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:48, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• Which is confusing. Users should never have to request that a page be created for them on any noticeboard. This is a very bad proposal, why don't we just wait for the new draft namespace (which will be case insensitive and not require a WikiProject prefix)? This also seems like a solution in search of a problem. I've never seen the ((AFC submission)) template fail because of a case sensitivity thing for page names. Technical 13 (talk) 18:05, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• The idea is that they won't have to request it, because the page they mean to create is the one that they can just click the link to create. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:07, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• A lot of the incorrect moves happen because our submit template says "This article should be located at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/sandbox", which is not true. Of course, the move fails because the page exists, which leads the submitters to start messing around with the namespaces. Can't the template be written so that if the article name is "sandbox" a pop-up appears asking for an article name, and this is substituted for the word "sandbox" before the "Move" routine is called? —Anne Delong (talk) 17:53, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, I'll see what I can do about that now. If I get that fixed, how would you feel about this? Jackmcbarn (talk) 17:55, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• I believe I already have a fix for this worked out (at least mostly) in my sandbox. This is still a bad proposal for a solution in search of a problem that if it existed at all would become obsolete in no time with the creation of the new draft namespace. Let's not waste any more time on this and instead work on getting prepared for the new namespace and perhaps spend time of creating a Guided Tour (like WP:TWA) for the article creation wizard that will eliminate most of these problems. Also, let's decide if the USD templates need to be adjusted to reduce misnamed pages or if that can be incorporated into the tour. Technical 13 (talk) 18:10, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• Your custom message removes my main objection. I'm not sure, though, that it is appropriate to totally prevent submissions in Wikipedia:Articles for creation. Most of the time, prevention is a good idea. At least half of the articles that I see in Wikipedia:Articles for creation are placed there because there is already an article with the same name in Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation, and this is not always noticed for some time, creating messy history merge problems. Occasionally, though, articles are moved back from mainspace to Afc (or to user space and then to Afc) to be improved, and they may already have talk pages which shouldn't be discarded. —Anne Delong (talk) 18:15, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• In the few rare cases that having the submission in the Wikipedia namespace is desirable, it could just be requested at WP:RM or somewhere (and in those cases, it would be an experienced user that wants it moved). Also, the history merge issues resulting from duplicates, as you mentioned, are my primary reason for wanting this. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:23, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• @Anne Delong: I've submitted gerrit:97559 that will allow the article name to be requested rather than blindly moving to /sandbox (or similar). Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:59, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I could be wrong, I'm not code minded, but wouldn't adding this suggested code to the titleblacklist prevent everyone (except administrators and account creators) from creating an AfC submission in the Wikiepdia:Articles for creation/Article name namespace? When moving a submission to the project page is a time honoured method of dealing with more complex submissions where a talk page is needed for talking on. Bellerophon _{talk to me} 20:51, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but with only 150 submissions total in that namespace now, I don't think moving the few that do belong there would be a big workload. Also, template editors can override the titleblacklist. I've updated the message above to display that. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• Looking over your custom error message above, I hope that you were just using "sandbox" as an example, because the Afc submitters shouldn't be moving their submissions to either of those page names. I believe that the commonly used example filename is "Foo". —Anne Delong (talk) 21:15, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks, example updated. And, when used for real, it will intelligently fill it based on the page name they're actually on (uses Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/((#titleparts:((PAGENAME))||2))). Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:19, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• Jackmcbarn, you may want to wait until you see if there is consensus for this before putting too much work into it. Your comment about this being something that template editors can override will strike a nerve for many - perhaps the first example of what was a big complaint during the discussion about this right - that suddenly a lot items that were open to all would become restricted to holders of the new "hat". As an experienced Afc reviewer, will I now find that I have to ask for permission to bypass this new restriction, but that template editors who may know nothing about Afc don't? —Anne Delong (talk) 21:41, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• Template editors can override the entire title blacklist. That has nothing to do with my proposal; I just thought it was worth mentioning since accountcreators were mentioned. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:52, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

• Well, it does have something to do with the proposal, because something that any autoconfirmed user could do (move pages to Wikipedia:Articles for creation) would now have to be requested from a group with special access rights. However, I admit that it is a peripheral issue and will not bring it up again. —Anne Delong (talk) 00:09, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Since this seems more controversial than I thought at first, I've started an RfC below. Jackmcbarn (talk) 00:25, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

RfC: Should the titleblacklist be set up to prevent AfC submissions from being created in the wrong location?

Per a request at WP:AN, I've just moved three pages: ISO/IEC JTC1/SC36 to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 36, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22 to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22, and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34. Admin rights were required, because as Amakuru noted at WP:AN, there was some sort of blacklist preventing the movement. Any idea what happened? Nyttend (talk) 03:18, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

.*\p{Lu}(\P{L}*\p{Lu}){9}.* <casesensitive | moveonly>  # Disallows moves with more than nine consecutive capital letters

That's the filter it hit. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:50, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you; I thought it might be a false positive, not something working just as it should. I guess it's unavoidable. Nyttend (talk) 04:54, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

• That doesn't look right to me. None of those have nine consecutive capital letters. Since slashes [/], spaces [ ], and numbers [0-9] are not capital letters, so "3/3 31/236" to "3/3 3 1/2 36", "3/3 31/222" to "3/3 3 1/2 22", and "3/3 31/234" to "3/3 3 1/2 34". I actually don't see any of them with more than 3 consecutive capital letters. This is apparently a bug in the titleblacklist parser. Technical 13 (talk) 05:44, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

• Depends what's meant. More than nine consecutive characters that are capital letters? Then something's indeed wrong. More than nine consecutive letters are capital, i.e. there aren't any non-capital letters amid the capitals? Then it's working fine, because all eleven letters in these titles are capital. Nyttend (talk) 15:46, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

• Indeed, the pattern is designed to match at least 10 uppercase letters with no lowercase letters in between. Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:14, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, the pattern matches any name that contains an uppercase letter followed by any mix of non-letters and uppercase letters that contains at least nine uppercase letters. --Carnildo (talk) 01:45, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Please change:

 Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations\/User:.* <errmsg=titleblacklist-custom-SPI>

To:

 Wikipedia( talk)?:Sockpuppet investigations\/User:.* <errmsg=titleblacklist-custom-SPI>

This is necessary because SPI reports filed by IPs start in the Wikipedia talk namespace. Jackmcbarn (talk) 18:06, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

 Done Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 02:18, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

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Some Thai letters and numerals (น ค ๆ ยี่ and ๔) were added to the blacklist, mistakenly as Unicode Letterlike Symbols[1]. One was removed[2], please remove the others for the same reason. Peter James (talk) 23:44, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

@NawlinWiki and Soap: Any comments or objections to this request? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 23:50, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

OK with me. NawlinWiki (talk) 23:55, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Ok, Done. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 00:53, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Fastestlaps.com
Weebly.com
*.weebly.com

And all forum sites 166.137.186.236 (talk) 16:06, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

This is the title blacklist, not the spam blacklist. Spam blacklist is used for blacklisting external links. Also I doubt that any one would blacklist these websites or all web forum sites without a valid rationale. --Glaisher [talk] 16:13, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

See Lyndsey Turner (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), Lyndsey Turner (director) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), Lyndsey Turner (British director) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), Lyndsey Turner (theatre director) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), Lindsay Turner (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), User:Fairyspit and the accompanying sock drawer. See also Ticket:2014012210016753.

I've no experience ad title filters (only the spam blacklist) and don't want to break it, so please help me out. Thanks. Guy (Help!) 19:35, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

.*L[yi]nds[ae]y Turner.* <casesensitive> should work for keeping articles with that pattern from being created. Stick it on its own line at the end of the "Attack titles" section and you should be good. --Carnildo (talk) 01:13, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

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Please add the following entry:

# Deprecated type of location map definitions
Template:Location map .* <errmsg=titleblacklist-custom-location-map>

(Note that the space between map and .* is important.) Location map definitions should be created as data modules now for performance reasons. There's already a huge backlog of templates that need to be converted, and there's no sense letting it get bigger. See also MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist-custom-location-map. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:05, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Done — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 03:45, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

A note: the documentation at mw:Extension:Title Blacklist#Using TitleBlacklist to control user account creation says that forbidden account names need to be prefixed with "User:", so I have prefixed a few that were previously un-prefixed in this edit. Feel free to edit or undo if I have misunderstood this. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 10:54, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

This edit request to MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-forbidden-new-account-invalid and MediaWiki:Titleblacklist has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please create MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-forbidden-new-account-invalid with the content of:

((Fmbox
|id    = mw-protectedpagetext
|type  = warning
|image = none
|text  = The user name "$2" [[Mediawiki talk:Titleblacklist|has been blacklisted]] from creation. The Wikipedia [[:mw:|software]] does not allow names that are greater than or equal to 40 characters in length, has the same character repeat more than 10 times in a row, or use certain invalid characters. Please select another username that complies with these restrictions, or if you need assistance, you may file a request at [[Wikipedia:Request an account]].
))

Which will display as:

Then, please change:

.*(.)\1{10}.* <newaccountonly> # Disallows eleven or more of the same character repeated in usernames
.{40,} <newaccountonly>

To:

.*(.)\1{10}.* <newaccountonly|errmsg=titleblacklist-forbidden-new-account-invalid> # Disallows eleven or more of the same character repeated in usernames
.{40,} <newaccountonly|errmsg=titleblacklist-forbidden-new-account-invalid> # Disallows usernames of more than 40 characters

Is there some background to this request? Any relevant discussion anywhere? Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:14, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

• MSGJ, nothing on-wiki itself. There has been a little discussion on IRC about changing one of the tool specific messages to include this reason. I came up with the idea as a solution to a perceived issue where I was trying to create an account via the ACC process and spent an hour trying to find out why the requested username was hitting the title blacklist before I found that little line limiting it to 40 characters (it was a long username request, but the UPOL says that is not a reason in of itself to decline/take action). I could have save a fair chunk of my volunteering time if this request was already in place. :) — ((U|Technical 13)) ^{(e • t • c)} 13:23, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

  Having been involved in said request, that would be helpful. In general having the blacklist print what rule is being triggered would really help with ACC requests.—cyberpower ^Chat_Online 20:24, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

  Done. This request seemed reasonable enough, so I have enacted it. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 09:16, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

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Please change:

.*[卍卐☭☠].* <casesensitive> # Swastikas, hammer-and-sickle, skull-and-crossbones

to:

.*[卍卐☭☠🖕].* <casesensitive> # Swastikas, hammer-and-sickle, skull-and-crossbones, middle finger

Jackmcbarn (talk) 02:22, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Done — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 04:59, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

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Sorry, I'm not too hot at coding, so I don't want to mess anything up on the technical side. Would it be possible to add the character used in [3] as a forbidden character? It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 21:13, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't see a reason to block that character, unless there's something particularly offensive about it. (For reference, the character is U+115D) Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:30, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Not done: We shouldn't just block random Korean characters - remember that we have a single unified log-in across all wikis now, so people who registered (for example) a Korean username on the Korean Wikipedia will be using Korean usernames here, and we don't want to prevent them from creating their user pages. If you want to block a specific pattern of disruptive usernames from being created, though, that might be doable. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 22:05, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Comment. Oh, sorry, it doesn't appear as a Korean character for me—it appears as a very long space (like an 8× spacebar). That's why I thought we could safely disallow it. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 21:39, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Pages titled Shuvo Saxema have been speedy-deleted 3 times and has been created a fourth (current speedy nomination) I think this warrants a SALT. As i don't understand the list could someone else add it. Thanks. NickGibson3900 - Talk - Sign my Guestbook 07:22, 10 August 2014 (UTC) I realised this is the wrong place for my request. Sorry NickGibson3900 - Talk - Sign my Guestbook 07:56, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

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Please change ".*An hero.* <moveonly>" to ".*An hero.* <moveonly|casesensitive>" to avoid many false positives. Jackmcbarn (talk) 05:29, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Done — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 05:43, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

.{40,} <newaccountonly|errmsg=titleblacklist-forbidden-new-account-invalid> # Disallows usernames of more than 40 characters

Why? Matma Rex talk 16:53, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

@Matma Rex: Maybe MZMcBride knows? They're the one who added it back in 2009, and I don't see any discussion about it in the talk page archives. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 17:43, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Mr. Stradivarius, Matma Rex: Err, MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist/Archive 3#False positives?. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 04:31, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

@Matma Rex and MZMcBride: Aha - I only checked the archives for 2009, when you added it. I don't see any reason why we can't change this, but should we increase the limit, or just remove it altogether? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 10:59, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

I suggest just removing it. MediaWiki limits usernames to 255 bytes already :) Matma Rex talk 11:48, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

@Matma Rex: Now removed. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 11:52, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Titleblacklist-forbidden-new-account-invalid needs to be updated. Matma Rex talk 12:23, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius I think it's quite sensible to have a reasonable human-scale limit to the lengths of names. Names are meant to be identifiers, not manifestos or an opportunity for perfoemance art. Removing this limit will lead to people being able to create accounts with very long names such as User:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX and User:Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum Bum, which risks silting up Wikipedia's processes with repetitions of those names in signatures, templates, etc. It also provides an easy way for vandals and trolls to be annoying (see above example). Even Reddit applies username length limits (of just 15 characters -- we are far more generous), and they don't have the goal of writing an encylopedia. For these reasons, I've reverted your change to this for now, pending a much wider discussion among the community.

@Matma Rex, can you tell me why you wanted this limit removed, and what you believe the benefits would be to the community of doing so? -- The Anome (talk) 14:13, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Because it's an arbitrary limit of questionable value that I ran into. I don't care enough about this wiki to spend any more time on this discussion that I already have. The drive to inanely "discuss" the most trivial changes has bad effects on me.

By the way, you might want to expand your English-language-centric worldview about the length of persons' names. I found http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ to be a fascinating read. Matma Rex talk 14:53, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Well this is the English Wikipedia. However, this seems to be a global proiject issue, especially in light of SUL; so soon it may not even matter. Does anyone know if there is a overall limit associated with SUL? — xaosflux ^Talk 15:30, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Also notable, the "username" field is simply an identifier, is is not designed to be everyone's "Full name". — xaosflux ^Talk 15:31, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, local username blacklists, in addition to local user renames, will soon® be going away, I imagine. The global title blacklist lives at m:Title blacklist. I don't see a user account name length limitation there off-hand. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:21, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

The name limit at meta and mediawiki (tried at both) seems to be 65 characters long, cf. the new user User:Doe a deer a female deer, Ray, a drop of golden sun, Me, a name. (and trying to type more characters than that triggers the "invalid name" pink warning box), but I can't see why (the string "65" doesn't appear in the meta blacklist).

I'd suggest that 65 characters is a reasonable limit, if the 40-limit has any real reason to be removed. (Are non-latin scripts regularly hitting the character limit in any particular language?)

Afaik, the best overview of technical limitations, is at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Restrictions on usernames, which indicates that somewhere in the code (now or previously) there's a limit of 235 characters.

I'd find it annoying (and basically trollish) if usernames were actually 235 characters long (or really anything over 65). That's a lot of linewrap, in our logs/feeds/etc. Imagine the hypothetical user User:Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam feugiat consectetur diam non sodales. Vivamus eget velit massa. Duis congue congue nibh suscipit molestie. Quisque bibendum sapien eu tellus tempor accumsan. Phasellus sed filling up watchlists/RC/history/IRC with their massive name. If someone wants to have a display name that is 255 characters long, the signature-field is available.

HTH. Quiddity (talk) 22:15, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

(un-indent, cc: Quiddity && Matma Rex) It took a bit of digging, but I found that $wgMaxNameChars is set to 64 on Wikimedia wikis (cf. InitialiseSettings.php.txt). I hadn't realized this (or I'd forgotten). Unfortunately I'm not sure who added this restriction or why. The file's history doesn't go back far enough and I couldn't find a relevant entry in the server admin log. The only hint I uncovered was that at some point Commons likely had a non-default limit. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:03, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Is mw:Manual:$wgMaxNameChars including or excluding the namespace? The length is different in different languages. In some languages, the length also depends on the gender of the user. "利用者" is only three characters whereas "Utilisateur" is eleven. It would be a bad idea if a user can create a long name on Japanese Wikipedia, but then not use it on French Wikipedia. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:07, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Hmmmmm: bugzilla:2693#c1. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:05, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

OK. If that's the case, I think we can live with a 64 character limit, so I'm fine with removing the 40 character limit here. On enwiki, we can continue to flag up long names in our local semi-automatic username monitoring processes, as part of the process for human oversight of potentially abusive accounts. We should do some testing, though, just to test that the 64 character limit is actually enforced. -- The Anome (talk) 12:24, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:06, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

^

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Legoktm (talk) 04:14, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

• I think that this should be fixed globally. c:MediaWiki:Titleblacklist/Archive 3 currently only allows 40 characters. This means that some users who create SUL accounts here can't use them on Commons. --Stefan2 (talk) 22:07, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

"User:Elvey/COMMONDEER" cannot be moved to "User:Elvey/COMMENDEER", because the title "User:Elvey/COMMENDEER" is on the title blacklist. If you feel that this move is valid, please consider requesting the move first. Why is this blacklisted? Please fix and explain and move.--((U|Elvey)) ^(t•c) 19:43, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

PS COMMENDEER is the correct spelling per http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/31/nsa_weapons_catalogue_promises_pwnage_at_the_speed_of_light/ ! --((U|Elvey)) ^(t•c) 19:44, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

@Elvey: You're hitting .*\p{Lu}(\P{L}*\p{Lu}){9}.* <casesensitive | moveonly> # Disallows moves with more than nine consecutive capital letters. I've performed the move for you. Jackmcbarn (talk) 20:14, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

This edit request to MediaWiki:Titleblacklist has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please add the following entry:

.*HIGH19\.COM.*

Special:DeletedContributions/Dsdgfgsa and his sockpuppets keep creating spam pages with this in the title. Jackmcbarn (talk) 21:13, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Done — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 05:39, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

I attempted to move Aliiolani Hale to Aliʻiōlani Hale over an existing redirect, but was blocked by the title blacklist. I'm not sure why it was blacklisted. Can this move be allowed? — Ipoellet (talk) 19:55, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

You're hitting (?!(User|Wikipedia)( talk)?:|Talk:)\\P{L}*\\p{Latin}.*[^\\p{Latin}\\P{L}].* <moveonly> # Latin + non-Latin. Are you sure all of the characters in the new title are correct? (Some characters in Unicode look exactly alike but are in different character sets.) Jackmcbarn (talk) 23:15, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Revelations (Hell On Wheels) to Revelations (Hell on Wheels). I've had this problem with several episode pages of the series, which is probably why I quit doing them. Thank you. — Wyliepedia 21:13, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

@CAWylie:  Done Jackmcbarn (talk) 23:12, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! — Wyliepedia 23:28, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I tried to create the username "read mint julep", based on an amusing verbal slip I made the other night while talking to friends and browsing Wikipedia (I decided to finally create an account today). Unfortunately, it told me this name was blacklisted. Is there some ban on the use of alcoholic beverages in usernames? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.132.173.139 (talk) 21:12, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

User:Read mint julep is not blocked by the titleblacklist. Are you sure that's the exact username you were trying to make? Jackmcbarn (talk) 22:31, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I didn't realize usernames could have spaces, so I used user:readmintjulep - not sure whether that makes a difference. 130.132.173.139 (talk) 23:24, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

It's still blacklisted without the spaces but legal with them. Read mint julep (talk) 23:26, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

I see the problem now. The version without spaces was "readmintjulep", and the word "admin" isn't allowed in usernames. The one you have now is fine, though. Jackmcbarn (talk) 03:44, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

In order to standardize fan userboxes and because of a team's name change, I tried to move User:Tom Danson/USL-Rangers to User:UBX/USL-NJLP...however, for some reason it popped up on the title blacklist. Could you please make the move? Tom Danson (talk) 07:21, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

@Tom Danson: It was stopped by .*\p{Lu}(\P{L}*\p{Lu}){9}.* <casesensitive | moveonly> # Disallows moves with more than nine consecutive capital letters. I've made the move for you. Jackmcbarn (talk) 14:37, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Regex can be pretty obscure, so maybe I've got this wrong, but in "Wikipedia:Today's[ _]featured[ _]article\/[a-zA-z]+[ _][0-9]+,[ _][0-9]{4}.*", I can't imagine that "A-z" is right; shouldn't that be "A-Z"? - Dank (push to talk) 15:10, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

@Dank: It looks wrong to me too. I changed it. Jackmcbarn (talk) 16:25, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. - Dank (push to talk) 16:30, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

• I can't imagine that we would want to prevent any possible article from being TFA... That said, if you want to prevent them all from being created by those not authorized to create them, shouldn't it be:

Wikipedia:Today's[ _]featured[ _]article\/.*

As a test, I created Wikipedia:Today's featured article/1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ⋯ from an account that doesn't have tb-override (Technical-13) and the blacklist didn't prevent it. — ((U|Technical 13)) ^{(e • t • c)} 17:06, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

That's not the point of it. The point is to match "Month Day, Year", not all text. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:33, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

• So, the goal is to only allow MDY pagenames? Or only disallow MDY pagenames for those without tb-override? — ((U|Technical 13)) ^{(e • t • c)} 01:42, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

  To disallow non-tboverride users from from creating MDY pagenames. Jackmcbarn (talk) 01:51, 21 November 2014 (UTC)