I've been asked if there's a userbox for people brave enough to edit under their own real names. The picture on such a box should be a circle with a line through it (in the manner of international "prohibited"), and behind that, some sort of recognizable mask (phantom of opera mask, criminal mask, Mardi Gras mask, theater mask-- use your imagination). The idea is to spread the meme of editing Wikipedia under one's real name.

Anybody got anything? I'm not great with images. I can find something on Google Image, but it's not uploadable to Commons, likely.

Nobody really gives userboxes much weight. If you want to promote the idea lead by example, make good edits and then sign your name.

What are "good edits," exactly?

I think Milton & Co. should encode the template so as to display a different 40x40-pixel image for each person, i.e., meant to be a photo of the person who owns the user account. Anybody can come up with a real-sounding (or real-looking) fake name, after all... right? Then again, I suppose anyone can come up with a fake photo too.

Oh well...

Difficult philosophical question, since the "usefulness" of knowledge is a slippery concept. Myself I think the best edits are those that create accurate, clear and engaging articles on topics people are interested in, but I know other contributions are also valuable.

What do you regard as "good edits"?

Well, we have to bear in mind the context of this thread. Certain Wikipedians have fostered the notion, for good or ill, that being a WP administrator (or even a prominent editor) can lead to your being targeted with various threats of malicious retaliation and revenge, even violence. So far we haven't heard of any specific cases of WP'ers being violently attacked - we've basically heard repeated Amorrow stories, and a few other tales of people receiving angry e-mails, but little else that would really qualify as a "spillover" into the real world. And of course, we've seen plenty of cases where someone created a WP account to libel someone, and where the person in question was found, and occasionally even charged.

So to that extent, "good edits" might be defined as anything that doesn't offend somebody else, putting aside the assumption of proper grammatical usage, spelling, and/or WikiML formatting. But in fact, there are all sorts of people out there who would probably tell you that to accuse some poor innocent BLP victim of being a "child molester" or a "psychopathic murderer" without a shred of evidence would constitute a "good edit," simply because they know it to be true. (That's an extreme example, admittedly.)

The question is, how do you know if something you believe, something you know to be true, isn't offensive to at least one or two other people living on the planet who have internet access? You don't know - in fact, you can't know. So, even though the claims of "death threats" and such are mostly as bogus as the actual threats themselves, to use your real name - particularly in such a way that you could be physically located because of having used it - still suggests that you're not afraid of these things.

Whether or not there should be a userbox for announcing that is another question, of course. It really depends on whether people will want to use it to actually promote user accountability, or just to say "nyaah nyaah nyaah" to the other users who are still using screen names.

You need to go with the Guy Fawkes mask, of course -- the symbol of the Anonymous movement.

Shankbone's already got you half-way there.

I suppose it depends on the subject, Somey. For example, I'd have second thoughts about editing the article on Matthias Rath with my own name, as this particular "vitamin entrepreneur" has a history of using the legal system to target critics.

Here are a couple of brand new ones, and just made. I reckon the Anonymous mask is worth missing (trademark, too detailed, politics etc).

The problem is the scale. You are not going to see a lot of detail at 40 px x 40 px. I might have some other better ideas but time is short right now.




If you like one, grab it because I will take it down sooner or later.

I edit under my real first name and have my real pic up. Is that close enough?



Anonymous stuff isn't copyrighted, but I like 2.

Funny, people keep forgetting what happened to Mr. Fawkes....

Thanks. I was thinking the V for Vendetta mask might be I don't know. Also, I did not think he wanted to send out an anti-Anonymous signal.

Here is a bigger one if you want to use it for a "manifesto" page. You want to reduce it in size slightly to clean up the edges and if it is useful, I might spend a little time re-working it.