OpenWetWare talk:Username policy

Name Format: 'Foo Q. Bar, Jr.' versus 'Foo Q Bar Jr'

Pros Of the Period

• more similar to a journal citation
• easier to read?
• Reshma 13:34, 3 May 2007 (EDT): Nature uses periods.
• Reshma 13:37, 3 May 2007 (EDT): Science uses periods.
• according to wikipedia, the period is used iff when the letter is an abbreviation. So there's a semantic difference between Foo Q Bar and Foo Q. Bar. In the first case, the person's middle name is Q and in the second, the person's middle name begins with Q.

Cons of the Period

• the url would look like http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Foo_Q._Bar with the period, and http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Foo_Q_Bar without. I think the latter URL is much simpler - people are not used to periods outside of the domain names in url's
  • Austin Che 13:23, 3 May 2007 (EDT): It doesn't seem likely people will be manually entering in URLs and that we should decide based on this. Also, what about things like Jr. and Sr.? Note that there seems to be often comma separating name from Jr. which is another uncommon character in urls
• the period offers nothing extra - middle initials are already separated by a space
  • Austin Che 13:23, 3 May 2007 (EDT): One could make the argument the space adds nothing extra (separated by case), however I think it helps readability. I'm not sure if period helps with readability.
• Reshma 13:34, 3 May 2007 (EDT): Looks like Pubmed doesn't use periods.
• Reshma 13:34, 3 May 2007 (EDT): Looks like Nature MSB doesn't use periods.

Renaming users

Users to be renamed

• Lucks -> Julius B Lucks
• Jasonk -> Jason R Kelly

Already Renamed

• Jennyn -> Jenny T Nguyen (are we going for the period after middle initial?)