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This help page is a how-to guide. It details processes or procedures of some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus and vetting.

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The UAA noticeboard is for reporting serious violations of the username policy that require immediate intervention by an administrator. To use this board correctly, please read the following instructions and ensure you’ve followed the steps to addressing inappropriate usernames.

• UAA is for obvious and serious violations only. Do not report borderline username violations; rather talk it out with the user on their talk page to encourage them to rename or abandon their account. Templates such as ((Uw-username)) or ((Uw-coi-username)) may be used. If, after discussion with a user, the problem still seems unresolved, a username request for comment may be in order.
• Sharing issues are not for UAA. Names that imply account sharing are not serious enough for UAA. Do not report them unless there are other serious username policy violations. For actual account sharing, first ask the users to stop sharing and discuss the issue at ANI if they refuse.
• Only report accounts with edits and do not report those with no edits in the preceding 2 weeks. Do not report a user that has not edited or has not edited in the preceding 2 weeks, except for an instance of an egregious name violation. We do not want to welcome productive editors with a report at UAA, nor do we want to waste time dealing with accounts that may never be used.
• Give constructive users a chance. Except in extreme cases, when an editor has an obvious username violation but is otherwise constructive, give them a chance to change or abandon their name before blocking. We do not want to drive promising editors away.
• Real names, stage names and pennames are not violations. Unless a user is using someone's real name in a misleading way, there is no violation. Real names do not fall under the promotional criterion. This is true even if the person performs or engages in commercial activity under that name.
• Promotional violations require substantive evidence. Do not report a username merely because it "looks" promotional. For there to be a violation, there must be edits or log entries that clearly link them to a particular company, organization, group, product, or website.
• Do not report names solely because you have seen a bot report similar names. Username-reporting bots are a great tool, but they also produce a great many false positives because they only read "strings" and not context. As a human, you are expected to be able to contextualize a user name and evaluate it more thoughtfully than a program.
• Explain the issue with the username in your report, rather than just say it is offensive or disruptive. Issues that may seem obvious to you are not necessarily obvious to others with different ages, nationalities and life experiences, and it has to be the username itself that is disruptive, not the account's behaviour.
• Do not warn someone about their name and then immediately report them to UAA. The entire point of a warning is to give someone a chance to stop doing something wrong and to discuss concerns.

• Please review the username policy regularly to ensure that it is followed when taking administrative actions and implementing blocks. You should place the page on your watchlist to monitor ongoing changes.
• If the reported username is a blatant violation and the user is likely to edit disruptively under a new username, the account should be "hard blocked", which is done by ticking the "Prevent account creation" and "Autoblock any IP addresses used" boxes in the block form. However, users who are likely to edit constructively under a new username should be "soft blocked" to allow further editing.
• If you decide that a reported username does not require administrative action, please notify the filing editor with a descriptive reason. Common reasons have been included in Template:UAA, which can be listed under reports. You are also encouraged to alert the filing editor on his or her talk page, possibly with ((subst:uw-uaa)), which has been created for this purpose.
• Reports that are marked as not requiring administrative attention should be left on the noticeboard for several hours so that the filing editor has a chance to be informed of the reason. After such time, the reports can be removed.
• In addition, editors and administrators are highly encouraged to monitor Filter 102, Filter 148, Filter 149, Filter 354, Filter 499, Filter 579, this recent changes filter tag and CAT:UAA for active username problems. In particular, administrators are reminded to remove usernames from that category after they block accounts that are included there.
• Except in obvious cases, you should provide a descriptive reason for a username block in the account holder's block log and talk page. Several templates have been created for this purpose:

• English Wikipedia username policy
• Request for comment on usernames