Restrict allowed username

Thanks for capturing this.

The new user procedure has seen significant changes, however I've not yet implemented the REGEXP feature (#5295), that would come close to proposal no 1. A separate blacklist would certainly be preferred for that, or a dedicated wiki page.

Not implemented is valid for the "minimum length of username" requirement, but while this is a smart idea indeed, I don't remember such a requested until now.

Replying to hasienda:

The new user procedure has seen significant changes, however I've not yet implemented the REGEXP feature (#5295), that would come close to proposal no 1. A separate blacklist would certainly be preferred for that, or a dedicated wiki page.

My initial thought is, I like the idea of the dedicated wiki page, patterned after the BadContent page.

Here are the current autowikify settings:

[autowikify]
exclude = plugin,release,macro,type,metatag,macro,script,patch,theme,integration,workflow,0.8,0.9,0.10,0.11,0.12,1.0,example,unsupported,ugly,tutorial,translation,theme,user,test,broken,news,add,alpha,beta
minimum_length = 3

We could set minumum_length to 4, or add dev and one to the exclude field.

Thoughts?

+1 for raising the bar even to 5 characters --> minimum_length = 5

So we can delete "add", "type", "ugly" and more from the current list afterwards and forget about the words we discussed earlier too. Seems like most branch version numbers fall into the black-listed category, and I think that's fine, isn't it?

Some more candidates for the blacklist (applies to an upcoming blacklist for AccountManager as well):

• admin
• smart

From looking through current wiki page index I see, there is a lot more, especially regarding user names. But this is a different topic, not strictly related to auto-wikification.

There are just some suggestion on invalid usernames:

• less than 4 chars, possibly more - handle exceptions (well-known hacker acronyms etc.) on request to admins
• numbers-only
• numbers mixed with (common) special chars like '#', '-', '_'
• bad language - exceptions like above, if pre-existing

I've not made up my mind on Unicode names. Should we allow them at all? They may introduce a bunch of problems, but OTOH Unicode support is strong in Trac >= 0.12, so we could feel forced to fix plugins instead, as we get aware of them. Hm, the longer I think it's becoming more of a challenge (good).

Just started to edit a username policy proposal wiki page.

Status update:

Manual review of all user names (wiki pages tagged with user) beginning with [A-Za] done, stopped now - waiting for some feedback on if/how to proceed with this

Status update:

With REGEXP available since [11960] there are blacklisting and moderation left for implementation so far. Anyone willing to figure out the correct regular expression for no. 2 + 3 in the list of requirements?