Forum:SH:Removal of admin nicknames

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Forums > Senate Hall archive > SH:Removal of admin nicknames

Greetings. Currently, the signature policy allows admins to use a shortened/altered version of their name as their signature/Discord handle.

1. include your actual username. (Administrators are not obliged to follow this rule, but their signatures must be clearly recognizable to the community at large.)

When I first joined Wookieepedia, I was learning everything about it through the discord. As such, there were a lot of policy pages that took me a while to be able to locate by myself. For instance, I didn’t know there was a page that listed the current admins at first and I struggled to find “ecks’s” userpage. I imagine others may have this struggle as we have an increase amount of editors coming in through discord interactions. Even with Xd1358’s departure, OOM 224 and Imperators II have this issue as well, though less severe, with multiple users fitting “OOM” and “Imperators.” This would also bring some consistency between the privileges of admins and non-admins. So please see my proposal below and offer any insight.

Proposal:

  • Removing of the phrase "(Administrators are not obliged to follow this rule, but their signatures must be clearly recognizable to the community at large.)" from #1 under Rules for customized signatures section.

I would expect admins to switch to full usernames on the discord with this removal as well. NBDani TeamFireballLogo-Collider(they/them)Yeager's Repairs 17:26, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

  • Thanks for bringing this up! Indeed, back when the exception was adopted it was meant to be a little "perk" for the admins. It's not a huge deal, obviously, so I'm all for making us all more even. And I'm not even talking about actually problematic cases like the ecks one, where the name was "recognizable" to... whom? Imperators II(Talk) 17:35, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
    • Was "ecks" not recognizable to regular Wook community members? SorcererSupreme21 (talk) 23:47, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
      • Long-time and active users know him as ecks, but no one else does since… there is a huge difference between "Xd1358" and "ecks" or "Ecks Dee." OOM 224 (he/him) 23:53, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
  • Makes sense to me. VergenceScatter (talk) 17:37, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
  • This bugged me at the Mofference where this was introduced because it didn't make sense as despite their obvious leadership role, on paper admins are really supposed to be users trusted with a few essential site tools and this effectively functions as a "legal recognition", for lack of a better term, of admins being above users. Like, it's not a big deal obviously, but it always bugged me a little so aye, I'd support its removal. Fan26 (Talk) 17:38, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
  • Good catch indeed, we should do away with that. OOM 224 18:00, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
  • A great proposal. Rakhsh (talk) 18:09, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
  • I actually had this same thing in mind recently. Admins shouldn't have special rights here. What I also considered was to suggest allowing it to all users, but it's quite subjective what "clearly recognizable" means, so it wouldn't really work. (I recall that there were discussions about whether "established users" should also be exempted from this rule, but it was turned down because "established" similarly lacks proper definition.) 01miki10 Open comlink 18:27, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
  • Was also wondering about this, would definitely support changing it. Rsand 30 (talk) 18:49, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
  • Time for me to bug Fandom about making room for a username change to my nickname again. :P MasterFredCommerce Guild(talk) (he/him) 19:29, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
    • Honestly my big thing is connecting Discord and Userpages properly. The unique signatures never bothered me as there is a link to the userpage in the signature. But I'm sorry :( NBDani TeamFireballLogo-Collider(they/them)Yeager's Repairs 19:45, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
  • I agree SO much!! it was all very confusing when i joined, this is a great proposal! HeadSpikesWalls (she/they) RainbowRebellion2 (talk!) 22:45, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
  • All fine with me. Braha'tok enthusiast Hello there 22:49, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
  • this has also confused me heaps in the past! Dropbearemma LesbianRebellion (she/her) 23:57, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
  • 100% agree. This doesn't matter most of the times, but it sometimes confuses people, so getting rid of it is the best way to go. -ThrawnChiss7 ThrawnHS Alliances Assembly Cupola 01:58, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
  • It's fairly harmless but miki makes a good point. JediMasterMacaroni(Talk) 02:01, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
  • I think that this is a good change. As an example, whenever people would talk about "ecks", I had no idea who they were talking about until about 45 seconds ago. Jarhead002 (talk) 21:23, 18 January 2023 (UTC)