I’ve seen usernames that are in the format of “[name of politician] for president”. I don’t see any direct prohibition on this in the community guidelines, but it seems really unhelpful to have such usernames on a global collaborative site that is not about politics.
I’m not sure if as a curator I should ask people to change these, report them to staff, or just ignore them. If there is no rule against this I think some sort of rule that usernames not be political endorsements should be made. I do not see how such usernames support any purpose of this site and they seem like an excellent way to antagonize the millions of people who do not agree with ones’ political views and start fights.
I don’t see the purpose of it-- better to let people have the username they want, and just deal with the people who are actually engaging in political fights.
I would be extremely wary about setting any official policy (cough cough, Johnson Amendment), since the administration of such would fall to who knows how many volunteer Curators/Moderators and that is quite a lot of risk.
I think there should absolutely be a policy on usernames if there isn’t one already (e.g. ban on racial slurs, vulgarity, ect). But I think this username moderation should only be reserved for rather extreme cases.
For example we already allow people to express support for countries (for example, national flags). I’m not sure how expressing support for the leaders of those countries is any different.
There is a policy against hate speech in general, so racial slurs in a username would fall under that. I know of no actual policy on username profanity, but I know in practice the F word is not allowed
Don’t you think “Harris 2024” or “Trump 2024” would be a lot more provocative than the flag?
To a certain extent, political names are like aposematic coloration, they give you fair warning of what you’re dealing with. If you see a name you find offensive, you can just ignore that user and move along.
Most flags are not as blatantly taking sides in a controversy as endorsing a presidential candidate is.
I just realized this whole discussion about whether flags being allowed in usernames means political endorsements should also be is moot, because flags are technologically impossible to put in usernames
I’m not someone who gets offended by politics, my fear is that other people will and it will cause problems. What I imagine is “I won’t engage with someone who supports that horrible candidate” and then “how dare you discriminate against me for my political beliefs”
I can get offended about politics, but I have never been offended by the simple fact that people prefer different candidates. Isn’t that why we have elections? It’s not news.
I think its really a good sign that most commenters here are willing to tolerate differences of opinion even about something like political candidates, I’m still concerned that these names could lead to fights, but the response here so far is reassuring me that maybe they won’t.
I think the existing guidelines are generally enough to allow curators to manage usernames. I think political usernames should generally be allowed, even though I don’t personally like them, (though obviously there could be individual issues). What different users will consider to be “political” will vary quite widely, and trying to regulate this would be very difficult.
This is true. Some people consider various movements as political, so regulating that, for example, would be very unfair.
I don’t like seeing people endorse a political candidate either, and I agree that it’s not really desired for a site meant for community science. I agree that they should just be ignored.
If there aren’t already guidelines for users, it might be worth mentioning when people are setting up accounts that their icon and username will be their “face” on iNaturalist and it can be disruptive to change these, since users who’ve gotten to “know” them may then not recognize a new ID/icon, so they should try to pick something they think they’d be happy keeping long-term (which might gently discourage people choosing names based on current political events?).
The general policy on iNat has been to apply the Community Guidelines to profiles (eg no hate speech, insults, etc), but usernames and profile pictures are a different matter because those appear on other users’ content and can appear thousands or millions of times on the site. So a username or profile picture that endorses a candidate or sells a product, or is clearly offensive or inappropriate (eg contains curse words) is subject to more scrutiny.
