Non-spacing characters

Per w:Wikipedia:Village Pump (policy)#New user's registered username seems bad it has been suggested to prohibit usernames consisting of only non-spacing marks and non-spacing combining marks, for example User:݂ (U+0082 BREAK PERMITTED HERE) and [[User:]] (U+00BA MASCULINE ORDINAL INDICATOR). Thryduulf (talk: meta · en.wp · wikidata) 10:58, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: What exactly is the addition you are proposing? NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 11:19, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

I don't know the technical details, I'm just reporting a proposal raised elsewhere on behalf of user:TooManyFingers (who is not autoconfirmed on this wiki) and user:ahecht (who suggested bringing it here). My understanding is that it would require all usernames to contain at least one printing character. Thryduulf (talk: meta · en.wp · wikidata) 11:41, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: I'm afraid you will need to be more specific than that. Besides, User:º (U+00BA Masculine Ordinal Indicator) is not non-printable. Neither is the more recent User:ູ (U+0EB9 Lao Vowel Sign Uu). NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 12:01, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

@NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh then we need to wait for the other people in the linked discussion on en.wp (I have linked this discussion there) as this is not my proposal. Thryduulf (talk: meta · en.wp · wikidata) 12:06, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

@Thryduulf The first one was User:݂ (U+0742 Syriac Rukkakha), not U+00BA Masculine Ordinal Indicator. In any case, the ask was for names consisting of only nonspacing marks and nonspacing combining marks, neither of which should ever appear alone, as they are designed to modify other characters, and in the absence of anything else, end up modifying the colon in "User:". -- Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:42, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

FWIW I support such a change. I wonder if there's a handy list of these characters anywhere. Maybe all those listed at and en:Combining Diacritical Marks? Toadspike [Talk] 22:33, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

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@Thryduulf, Ahecht, and Toadspike: I see the linked discussion has (long) been archived. If there isn't a concrete proposal for us to work on, I'm afraid I'll have to mark this as procedurally declined. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 10:37, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

@NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh The concrete proposal is to blacklist all characters at the two links I gave on 15 February. Toadspike [Talk] 08:55, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Astrawiki

.*Astrawiki.* <newaccountonly|antispoof>

Repeated account creation by LTA Astrawiki3203. See username search. --Prothe1st (talk) 18:04, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

For the record, a whole bunch of accounts were created on the 14th and 15th. --Prothe1st (talk) 00:31, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

@Prothe1st: Patterns like these shouldn't be added, as they will only cause the vandal to use another pattern. See en:WP:NOSALT. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 10:29, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

@NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh: Except in this scenario, this LTA seem to have a fixation on this username and nothing else. We have some usernames on the blacklist as well for LTAs that persistently create new accounts such as .*salebot.* <newaccountonly> which was created persistently by Salebot1. --Prothe1st (talk) 12:05, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

@Prothe1st: And that certainly did not stop Salebot1 from using other names. Also, I would say the main purpose of that entry is to prevent impersonation (or name confusion). On the other hand, there's no legitimate account named Astrawiki. If anything, the fixation is to our advantage more than to theirs. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 12:34, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

Timelash

.*Timelash.* <newaccountonly>

This username is only ever used by LTAs and according to ToolForge data, all user accounts that have the name "Timelash" are globally locked. There is no need for someone to create a username containing "Timelash" unless THAT person or TA is/wants to be a good faith editor.

For the backstory of the user Timelash, he was an editor active in 2023, who was blocked by NinjaRobotPirate in September 2023. Several pages that Timelash edited were also a silly target for Timelash vandals, thus they have been protected.

The only thing I want is that the username must be blacklisted from the English Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects, if possible). There is no such vandal creating Timelash usernames on the Spanish Wikipedia or elsewhere.

So... what will we do with the name? - SimpleObjects-9ei (talk) 00:55, 17 April 2026 (UTC)