Wikipedia talk:Changing username

Duration to wait for an usurpation
I noticed that, as of this writing, every pending request on WP:CHUU is set for a one month waiting period, same as on Meta. However, to my understanding (and per the heading below each section), on enwiki we only need to wait one week after informing the target user before renaming. I'm not sure if there was a consensus elsewhere to extend the waiting period to one month.

As far as I'm aware, the current convention is due to the fact that WP:CHUU predates the global rename tool, so some of its procedures were grandfathered in. WP:CHUU is only for usurping accounts whose home wikis are the English Wikipedia; accounts whose home wikis are on other wikis need to be usurped via Meta, and go through the one month waiting period.

If there's consensus to extend the waiting period to one month here, I'm curious to know, but if not, all of those requests can currently be processed, as they're all past the one week waiting period. — k6ka  🍁 ( Talk ·  Contributions ) 00:45, 30 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I think a seven-day hold should be enough. We've recently introduced the 30-day hold from Meta, but I don't see any issue with going back to a seven-day hold for future requests. Since the processing time for old requests was also seven days, I'll go ahead and process pending requests for now. – DreamRimmer (talk) 12:06, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Sounds good! — k6ka  🍁 ( Talk ·  Contributions ) 22:57, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Redirect from old user talk page
So... I've been telling a user who was recently renamed that we generally don't delete the redirect from the old user talk page to the new one that is automatically created during the rename. That's based on what I've observed in other renames, and another admin confirmed that was their understanding. Old user talk page redirects seemed to only be suppressed when someone is vanishing. The user was annoyed but eventually accepted that. Different than user pages, which are deleted on user request.

However, yesterday I saw someone on my watchlist was renamed, who wasn't vanishing, where the redirect from the user talk page was suppressed as part of the page move.

So first, is there a rule? And second, if there is a rule against it, how important is it? I'd like to just IAR and delete the redirect even if there is a rule, just because the user wants it and I can't see any giant problem. I don't know if this is just a personal choice by the global renamer, and I've been insisting on a rule that doesn't exist. I generally only like to follow rules that make sense, and (if it exists) I'm not sure this one does. Floquenbeam (talk) 18:43, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
 * When renaming an account, there is a tick box to suppress the creation of redirects, but not particular pages. As far as the rule of thumb or policy, I don't know. -  FlightTime  ( open channel ) 18:55, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Floquenbeam here's my hot take: WP:DELTALK is primarily because that is a page that likely has multiple authors and may be useful to others. This type of redirect doesn't suffer from that condition. So should these go to RFD or MFD? No, that's a waste of time. If it seems like a reasonable deletion request from an editor in good standing, I'd likely just delete it. And if the redirect wasn't made, I wouldn't go making it (but certainly wouldn't care if the user made it themselves). The redirects are often very useful, but in certain cases someone has a good reason from distancing themselves from their old username a bit. Users asking about this in side channels should be cautioned that renames are absolutely not secret (only the "reason" may be if submitted though the queues).
 * The global renamers are not always consistent in their processes, and we're not going to fix that upstream situation here on enwiki. — xaosflux  Talk 19:16, 7 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you,, I'll do that. It appears I took half a dozen observed data points and called them a policy. Floquenbeam (talk) 19:23, 7 June 2024 (UTC)