In my very brief Admin career, I've run across two users who had the name of well-known living persons and were making promotional edits for that person. Ideally, I'd give a bad-faith well-known username block notice, but the only one we have is good-faith (see the table at to see the empty table cell). Can we develop one that combines living person username confirmation requirements with disruptive/promotional editing language for hard blocks?

That is, take Template:Uw-ublock-wellknown and add bad faith/hard block language to it. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 02:35, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you can edit Template:Uw-ublock-wellknown/sandbox and replace it in its entirety with the wording that you think the template ought to emit in that case in plain text format, I will attempt to help adjust the template to do so. If you want the language to come out of the existing template, we will need a new parameter to flag that; what should be call it, |badfaith=yes? Something else? Mathglot (talk) 09:01, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll do the editing later today. Thanks. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 16:12, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like tomorrow instead. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 05:50, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:NODEADLINE. Mathglot (talk) 05:51, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the user warning vandalism series of user message templates, I noticed that Template:uw-vandalism1 uses contractions and ends with "Thanks", but the rest of the user warning vandalism series templates do not. I propose we could rewrite Template:uw-vandalism1 as follows, using User:Example in this instance.

Hello, I am Example. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions have been undone because they did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the Teahouse or the Help desk. Thank you.

Please let me know if this rewriting would work and if people could take users who post these messages more seriously. A more formal tone could convey seriousness. I think people would be more likely to heed the notice. Z. Patterson (talk) 18:55, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Z. Patterson: Have you looked at the other level 1 templates, such as Template:Uw-unsourced1? Most (if not all) end in either "Thanks" or "Thank you", because they assume good faith. If it's clear that the user has begun with a bad faith edit, you don't need to begin the chain with {{subst:uw-vandalism1}}, you can go straight to {{subst:uw-vandalism2}} - or higher, if necessary. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:59, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Redrose64: I understand now. Thank you. Z. Patterson (talk) 20:07, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We use this same language in many block templates. I'm sure somebody has pointed out that the net result of this is very frequent unblock requests that follow the instructions we give the user quite literally; they add exactly that text to the bottom of the talk page. Though sometimes it's just the blocked miscreant being obtuse, as often as not, when asked to actually give a reason, they give a reason. Why are we wasting our time and theirs with this? It sets us up to be chastising the user for following our instructions literally. --jpgordon^{𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇} 01:22, 17 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Are we really wasting our time? The key part before even asking the user to use the unlock template is they understand why they were blocked. We have the same set of instructions for any other template like XfC and XfD regardless of user experience. – The Grid (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Delete 175.157.61.175 (talk) 12:10, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The last sentence ends with, "or you may simply create a new account for editing". This almost sounds like a solicitation of WP:SOCKING, something the new user is almost surely unaware of as something to be avoided. Rather, it would be better if this sentence said this instead:

• ...or you may simply abandon this username, and [[WP:REGISTER|create a new account]] for editing.

Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:11, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The last sentence of what? DonIago (talk) 08:30, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm assuming it's {{subst:uw-username}} Heythereimaguy (talk) 14:18, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Right now, it indicates that the warning template should be {{subst:uw-generic4<nowiki>}} but we already have uw-ai4 for that purpose - should the table be edited? Heythereimaguy (talk) 14:49, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]