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AGF message for semi-"well-known" people
WP:IMPERSONATE says that editors whose username matches that of a well-known person "may" be blocked, and that verifying identity must be done "in some cases", and the standard practice seems to be not to block someone who is only marginally well-known and an unlikely target for impersonation, especially if their edits don't seem problematic.
I don't think "block first and let VRT sort it out" is the best way forward. I do agree that asking them to verify their identity is probably a good idea (regardless of how notable they are). I'm not opposed to the nicer message, especially since it is in a similar vein to {{Uw-coi-username}}. Primefac (talk) 17:05, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The idea, for me, is that we don't want people editing their article with the authority of claiming to be the subject. Most of the COI-not-username cases are of people who are non-notable. It really doesn't matter if they are the real person or not if they are not anyone in particular. I push back against people wanting to block COI spammers as a username violation - there really is no doubt they are John Doe (rapper), and asking them to prove they are doesn't make any difference. If they become notable it is different. If John Doe is being irritating we block them for what they done (link spam etc) not pretending that we are worried they are impersonating themselves. Secretlondon (talk) 17:06, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To follow on from that - we get a lot of stage names/online handles of YouTubers. We'd never ask them to prove they are who they claim to be. These are just COI. We just don't vet randoms like this. Secretlondon (talk) 17:27, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I recently encountered a sig which I was unable to read because of the color patterns, and left this message on their Talk page. I found nothing in the policy that seems to cover this, so it seems permissible currently. I would assume that styling one's sig, say, in white-on-white font (not the case here) would be unacceptable, but there isn't really anything about that, afaict. It seems to me we should add something to the policy about illegible signatures, but I don't think we have to enumerate all the ways someone could obscure their sig, because someone will always find some other way; it would be sufficient to have a catch-all saying that signatures styled in such a way that an editor could not easily determine the username, should be forbidden. I am not overly concerned with the case of the individual editor I messaged; my main concern is having something in the policy I can link or quote to a user when an illegible sig is at issue. Mathglot (talk) 04:43, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed; signature customisation is allowed until someone finds issue with it; nothing wrong with saying to someone "I can't read your sig", goodness knows I've done plenty of that over the years. Primefac (talk) 12:40, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Should we run a bot to remove declined and stale reports from UAA? Currently, HBC AIV helperbot14 only removes processed reports, so we have to manually remove declined and stale ones. I suggest removing declined reports that haven't received any comments within an hour, and stale reports with no comments in the past 24 hours. If HBC AIV helperbot14 can add this functionality, that would be great. Otherwise, I can assist with my bot. – DreamRimmer (talk) 12:12, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think an hour is far too brief of a time. And as far as I can recall, declined reports have been being manually removed for a very long time. We don't remove them immediately as to give the reporting user time to seer why their report was declined. However I wouldn't object to automatic removal of a report that has been declined with one of the standard templates indicating as much after a period of a few hours.
