RFC: username squatting: how should we handle it?

[denise]

So, one of the things that has come up repeatedly recently is the question of username hoarding and account trading/selling. We've been trying very hard to work out a policy to manage the problem (and how to handle it when it happens) that will be fair to everyone and will only affect people who are honestly abusing open account registration, not people who are using the site legitimately.

People have reported some of the most egregious squatting/hoarding and trading, and we've been holding off on taking any definite actions because we've been having trouble formulating a policy that's fair to everyone and working out what consequences there should be.

We have an idea of what we think we should do, but we also know that this has the potential to negatively affect people who are using the site in a performative/creative style (roleplay, fiction projects, collaborative performance art) instead of a personal journaling style. We don't want to interfere with that legitimate use, so we'd like to hear feedback. To keep the discussion away from "pick holes in a specific proposal", I'm not going to share the full range of what I'm thinking yet; instead I'm going to lay out the problem and let everybody brainstorm.

The goal here is:

* To formulate a policy regarding username squatting that prevents squatting, without placing undue restraint on the many and varied ways people use Dreamwidth for performative/creative work;

* To prevent rewarding people for bad behavior and encourage fair play and community responsibility;

* To prevent username trading and selling (which is not only a violation of the Terms of Service but is a very bad idea because a traded account will never and can never be secured);

* To take away the advantages of username squatting/hoarding with minimal administrative overhead and in a way that returns desireable squatted usernames to the pool of available usernames.

( 1. The Problem )

( 2. Additional Considerations )

( 3. Some Examples )

( 4. The problems of putting that into policy )

( 5. Disincentives )

There are a ton of other things I can think of, but this is long enough already and I don't want to make it too overwhelming. I'll turn the discussion over to the floor and see what everybody comes up with.

Parameters for discussion: you don't need to give more examples of legitimate use or reasons why people might want to have multiple accounts. Likewise, please don't offer up specific situations (either hypothetical or actual) and ask "is this squatting?" We know there's tons of reasons why people would want to have lots of accounts (and we want to encourage the creative use of DW and avoid having any kind of "chilling effect" as much as possible), and we're not ready to talk specifics yet.

As always in discussions such as these, please remember there are many different ways to use Dreamwidth, and a) any solution we put into place has to work for the benefit of the service as a whole; b) we're looking for solutions that will, at best, only slightly inconvenience legitimate good-faith usage, while stopping things that are negatively affecting the entire community; c) however, it may not be possible to completely avoid affecting legitimate good-faith usage completely and this is a trade we may have to make.

With that, I'll turn it over to the floor for discussion!