[CentOS-docs] A Question of Style

PatrickD Garvey

patrickdgarveyt at gmail.com
Wed Dec 24 01:05:28 UTC 2014


On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 4:53 PM, Brian Stinson <bstinson at ksu.edu> wrote:

> On Dec 23 16:29, PatrickD Garvey wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 4:18 PM, Karsten Wade <kwade at redhat.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On 12/23/2014 03:56 PM, Yves Bellefeuille wrote:
> > > > On Tuesday 23 December 2014, PatrickD Garvey
> > > > <patrickdgarveyt at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> In
> > > >>
> http://wiki.centos.org/Contribute#head-42b3d8e26400a106851a61aebe5c2c
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > ca54dd79e5 the standard for the wiki username is established as
> > > >> FirstnameLastname.
> > > >>
> > > >> In http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Centpkg, created and edited by
> > > >> BrianStinson, the Community Build System username is shown as
> > > >> bstinson
> > > >
> > > > If I understand your question correctly, your name as a wiki
> > > > *author* is FirstnameLastname.
> > > >
> > > > When giving examples of commands, output, etc., you can use
> > > > whatever you want. Sometimes you have to use the user "root" in an
> > > > example.
> > >
> > > In other words, one can choose whatever username is preferred for
> > > community systems such as git.centos.org and cbs.centos.org -- for
> > > example, my commmunity username is always 'quaid' (when I can obtain
> > > it.) But the wiki stands alone in requesting that document authors use
> > > a "real name", i.e., FirstnameLastname of the autheor. E.g., my
> > > username on wiki.centos.org is KarstenWade. The same is true for all
> > > other project members that I have seen.
> > >
> > > FWIW, I don't follow this practice in other locations. For example, on
> > > the Fedora Wiki I am 'Quaid' and on Wikipedia I am 'iquaid', the
> > > latter being my preference when straight 'quaid' is not available to
> me.
> > >
> > > The FirstnameLastname preference for the CentOS wiki is a bit of
> > > legacy, and makes sense to follow simply for that reason unless there
> > > is a better reason to change it.
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > >
> > > - Karsten
> >
> >
> > I'm not referring to the username used by a particular person while
> using a
> > CentOS community resource. I'm trying to understand if the document
> example
> > should use an actual person's username (a security risk increase. That's
> > half that person's credentials.) or a pattern that refers to no one, such
> > as "username".
>
> I could be convinced that generalizing to 'username' might be less
> confusing (although my opinion is the opposite, I find real-world
> examples to be more illustrative). In that particular case the important
> distinction is between the UNIX superuser account and a normal user
> account (that happens to be configured with my cbs credentials). If
> there's a way to make that more clear, I'm happy to update.
>
> I don't, however, buy the "security risk" argument simply because it's
> an open buildsystem, user IDs are already public in many more ways than
> in the documentation.
>
> Cheers!
> Brian
>

Thank you for your contribution to the discussion. I'm glad you appear to
understand this was not directed at you personally.

I'm a retired System Administrator. Part of my job was being a professional
paranoid about user credentials. At most of the companies where I worked,
loss or sharing  of the company phone book was a firing offense. I imagine
that is the source of our difference of opinion.
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