User:JamesLucas/Username recycling

Introduction
This is a proposal for a longterm plan to recycle Wikimedia usernames. At present, a username that is claimed is forever associated with a single person (or at least a single email account) and is transferable under very limited circumstances by a processes known as usurpation. Even when an editor requests a renaming or vanishing, the old username is generally retained as a redirect.

While the number of possible usernames is unlimited for all practical purposes, the number of "desirable" usernames is a smaller resource. These names tend to be much shorter than the 85-character maximum and include common names or words and culturally significant numbers. While User:WѲXC0K_UЄTZ-Pctk is a valid and functional username, but it is unlikely to be as desirable as User:212, which is short and culturally significant to a large group of editors. Unsurprisingly, the former is available and the latter is not, despite neither being used to contribute to Wikipedia during the past 20 years.

Due to all contributions being licensed under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL, it is not possible to delete an account, but for the sake of the long-term health of the Wikimedia community, a comprehensive and widely implemented renaming process must be adopted.

Objectives

 * Even a century from now, there should be a wealth of desirable usernames available.
 * An absence of a reasonable duration should not cause an editor to lose his or her username regardless of when that silence occurs in an editor's career.
 * Past Wikipedians should continue to be appropriately referenced in Edit Histories and archived talk pages, and such references should be clear, intuitive, and unambitious, even if their username is recycled.
 * Pillars of our community who go silent after years of contributions should be honored with a longer period of name retention.

Registration
The username selection process will remain as it is now: Any editor can adopt any available username upon registration.

Retention
Usernames will belong solely to their owners, as they do now, but that ownership will no longer be indefinite. The duration of ownership of a username will be dependent on the behavior of the user: An editor who chooses to be renamed will retain his old username to serve as a redirect for 3 years, at which point the old username will be recycled. An editor who chooses to retire may submit his username for early recycling, in which case he will retain his name for 3 years or until his account would otherwise be renamed due to inactivity, whichever is sooner.
 * An editor who makes no edits during their first year will be renamed at the end of that year.
 * An editor who uses their account only for vandalism, sockpuppetry, or harassment and is permanently blocked without having made any constructive contribution will be renamed immediately.
 * An editor in with at least one substantive edit will retain their username for a minimum of 8 years from the date of registration, regardless of the manner of their departure. Ownership of the username may be renewed indefinitely by continuing to make edits, and the duration of the renewal will be equal to the time elapse between the first and last edits. Therefore:
 * An editor who edits for 1 month and then goes missing will be renamed 8 years after she registered.
 * An editor who edits for 5 years and is then permanently blocked will be renamed 5 years after her last edit.
 * An editor who edits for 35 years and then retires will be renamed 35 years after her last edit.

Renaming
It is not feasible to delete users, but renaming is an established practice and may be used to effectively divorce accounts from their usernames. When ownership of a username is revoked after the applicable duration defined above, the editor's account will receive a new username based on one of the following formulae: In the event that the new username dictated by the relevant formula above is unavailable, the applicable two-digit month and two-digit day will be appended to the end of the year. If that username is also unavailable, random Roman and Cyrillic letters will be appended to the end until a unique username is formed.
 * a user account that is never used to make an edit will be given the new username [Username]-n[year registered] (example: User:Foo is registered on 1 June 2017 and never used. On 1 June 2018 the account is renamed User:Foo-n2017.)
 * a user account that is inactive due to permanent blocking will be given the new username [Username]-b[year blocked] (example: User:Foo is permanently blocked in 2018. The account is immediately renamed User:Foo-b2018.)
 * a user account that is left inactive for a prolonged period will be given the new username [Username]-d[year departed] (example: User:Foo is used to make edits from 1 June 2018 to 1 June 2024. On 1 June 2030 the account is renamed User:Foo-d2024.)
 * a user account that is left inactive after a declared retirement will be given the new username [Username]-r[year retired] (example: User:Foo is is used to make edits from 1 June 2019 to 1 June 2031, when the editor declares his retirement and opts for early recycling. On 1 June 2034, the account is renamed User:Foo-r2031.)

Signatures
At present, there is no active mechanism for changing signatures or instances of u or re that reference an editor who is renamed. Instead, the Wikimedia community relies on redirect to connect old references to an editor's new username. This method, while functional, is obviously not compatible with the goal of reclaiming unused usernames. Systematically replacing all instances of with Foo-d2024 should be trivial for a special-purpose bot. Systematically replacing all instances of the user's signature (which may have changed over years of use or in some cases been corrupted by other editors) will be more difficult. With some thoughtful scripting, it should be possible to update a large majority of affected signatures with bots and automatically replace even elaborate signatures such as Foo Bar  with the delicately modified  Foo Bar  d2024.

User page templates
Templates may be created for editors who have adopted recycled usernames and would like to provide links to the userpages of their namesake forerunners.

Renewed availability
In all cases, the old username will become available for registration 90 days after the account it was attached to was renamed.