Should users be allowed to change their username despite not meeting criteria?

I’m sorry if I offended anyone.

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You didn’t!
It’s absolutely fine! We get what you mean.
:slight_smile:

I just want to support you @Fangirl1710

:hugs:

Sending wikiLove!

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I personally think its great that this conversation has came up. While I have been here for about 3ish years, I have never seen a situation like this, so I’m not sure what my thoughts on changing the policy is.

However, in this case, I do strongly believe you should be able to change your name!! @Fangirl1710

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Hey everyone! Just going to jump right in. I have been here for a number of years as well and I’ve never seen something like this happen. I have to agree in that it’s probably just never happened which is why there’s nothing specifically addressing this in the username policy. I don’t know that we need to change the policy but perhaps adding an ‘other’ category at the very least could be beneficial. But we could word it so not everyone would be trying to change their names willy nilly.

I know cases like this would definitely fall into the other category and I personally would gladly change your username if it made you feel more comfortable. For now we can wait for Jayne to see what she’ll have to say - but I will also support you. As a local neighborhood non trans person (TM(

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Lots of good discussion here. Thanks for starting the discussion and for tagging me, @Fangirl1710!

I think @R2_d2000 did a great job pointing out the main reasoning for not allowing username changes at will - we’d see a lot of username changes for no reason (just because people are ready for a new one), and it can be challenging to know who is who and build relationships in the community when usernames are constantly being changed.

With that said, the wikiHow community (and Haus) are all reasonable people, and there may always be exceptions made to various policies, especially when there are very legitimate reasons like you have demonstrated here. I’m not personally sure that a change to the username policy may be necessary at this point. As @Galactic_Radiance pointed out, this isn’t a common occurrence, and I’m not sure it warrants changing a policy based on making one exception. However, I’m definitely still open to the idea of building in a caveat to the policy indicating that other exceptions may be granted on a case-by-case basis.

With all this said, (and with @JayneG being out this week) I’m comfortable moving forward with an exception to this policy and helping you with a username change, @Fangirl1710. If you’d like to reach out to me via talk page or email with your new desired username, I would be happy to help accommodate the request.

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No problem.
I sent you a talk page message, @Eric.

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@Alex1710, I’m so glad that you finally changed your username. :partying_face:

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Thanks for handling this name change @Eric. There’s no reason we can’t make an exception to our guidelines and change a user name when there is a good reason to do so. I’m sure Jayne would have been happy to help with this were she working this week.

Our username policy, like all of our policies, is not intended to be an absolute rule, but instead to provide guidance in most situations. We want to avoid lots of arbitrary name changes because that can confusion other community members, but we can always change a name if there’s a real need to do so.

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