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I noticed today that someone's called their user account 'Server Fault', personally I believe it implies, whether intended or not, some form of ownership/authority/legitamacy.

I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to implement at account creation time, in fact there could be some form of blacklist of words/phrases we don't allow - I'm all for freedom but don't really want to be answering questions by users with obviously offensive user names.

By the way there are LOADS of users on SO called 'Stack Overflow' - I really don't think it's a good thing.

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  • I think I should try to name myself, Meta Stack Overflow :-)
    – YOU
    Commented Mar 19, 2011 at 16:05
  • Some more: Registered User, Deleted Account, Delete Me, What, Whom, ...
    – Arjan
    Commented Mar 19, 2011 at 16:39
  • I don't know whether that really confuses people
    – Dr. belisarius
    Commented Mar 19, 2011 at 18:33
  • (As an aside: I do not support banning any name. I guess flagging user names should only depend on @wether or not many folks would be offended by a name. Like a truly racist name would raise my flags.)
    – Arjan
    Commented Mar 19, 2011 at 18:39

1 Answer 1

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Well, if by loads you mean 18-ish on Stack Overflow...

215952  AS_at_stackoverflow
190620  balajistackoverflow
511987  cnstackoverflow
645691  mini_stackoverflow
483043  random_stackoverflow_user
393662  sagayastackoverflow
298184  stackoverflow
314945  stackoverflow
467415  stackoverflow
539463  stackoverflow
136966  stackoverflowBee
583222  stackoverflowFan
596721  stackoverflowpro
228530  stackoverflowsk
237121  stackoverflowuser
200647  stackoverflowUser001
307099  stackoverflowuser2010
387587  We love stackoverflow

.. zero on Server Fault ..

.. and 8 on Super User.

15555   asksuperuser
58603   mikeFsuperuser
60459   super user
25577   superuser
31450   superuser
50204   superuser
64288   superuser123
21175   superuserrada

I don't oppose this, but where do we draw the line? What forms are unacceptable? What related forms are unacceptable? Where does it end? is "moderator" a bad username? "supervisor"? "serverfault" vs "server fault" vs "serverfault user" vs "serverfault1"?

User names aren't unique, either, and we informally do frown on users who actively attempt to impersonate other users.

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  • Wonder how many have "noise word" user name like What, Which etc..
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Mar 20, 2011 at 8:21
  • There was one on SF but I asked him if he'd mind me changing his account, he suggested a different name so I did.
    – Chopper3
    Commented Mar 20, 2011 at 10:34
  • You could just have a global or site-specific blacklist that you throw bad user name regexs (or whatever) in every time an undesirable name is found. When a user renames to one on the list, you can show an error or reject the change. Not a great solution, but not a difficult one either. Similar to how tags are blacklisted.
    – Mark Rogers
    Commented Mar 21, 2011 at 18:24
  • Actually it looks like something like that already exists, my bad.
    – Mark Rogers
    Commented Mar 22, 2011 at 20:17

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