MediaWiki talk:Usernameblacklist

Does anyone know jack about regular expressions?--Gage 18:30, 5 April 2007 (BST)

Hello. An asterisk means "zero or more of the previous character" in a regular expression. "3*page" would block any user who wanted the string "page" in their name, which you presumably weren't intending. Wikipedia knows about regular expressions, I don't know of any better beginner guides offhand.

I doubt this is going to be useful for anything other than blocking the numerical-username spambots, though - human vandals can just try other names until they hit one that's valid (or read this page to see what characters they need to insert to skirt the restriction). --Kevan 18:37, 5 April 2007 (BST)

Here and here is some information on regular expression in PHP, which should be what mediawiki uses. Also, check wikipedia's Usernameblacklist for pointers on constructing these. The (?i: ) pattern is very important, as it enables case-insensitive matching (I believe). --Brizth 19:03, 5 April 2007 (BST)

Yay Brizth! I was getting Xoid's help with it, and it is 4am his time. I'm totally clueless to tell you the truth :)--Gage 19:16, 5 April 2007 (BST)

Just tell me what you want to blacklist and I'll see what I can do. The second one that's currently on the page should block all names that have only numbers. The first should block all threepage variants. --Brizth 19:25, 5 April 2007 (BST)

(?i:jimbo wales)? You're kidding right?--Vista 19:49, 5 April 2007 (BST)

Copypasta! :D--Gage 19:49, 5 April 2007 (BST)

Don't forget Gold Blade! --^T 03:01, 6 April 2007 (BST)