This template is for these "Doppelganger" accounts, created by legitimate users to avoid being impersonated by vandals. Many users have been impersonated by imposters such as the "Doppelganger" vandal. The vandals use various tricks to create an account name which appears identical to the impersonated user's account name. For example, a user may replace capital "I" with lowercase "L" or vice versa.

In order to use this template, first create an account for the doppelganger, then insert the template text on your "Doppelganger" account's user page & talk page. It is suggested you place the template from your "real" account, rather than the "Doppelganger" account, so the "real" account will show up in the page history. This will help to prevent vandals from using the template to "validate" imposter accounts. Please do not use this template on the page of a blocked user believed to be an imposter. Use Template:Sockpuppet instead.

This template will correct itself based on the gender set in the preferences of your real user account (i.e. in the sentence "Please see their talk page for any relevant discussion", "their" will change to "his" or "her").

This template adds pages to Category:Wikipedia doppelganger accounts.

This template can be placed on user pages of "Doppelganger" accounts, created by legitimate users to avoid being impersonated by vandals. See the template page for more instructions.

Template parameters[Edit template data]

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
real username	1	Username of the user whose Doppelganger this account is	User	required
reason	2	The reason for creating the Doppelganger account Default to prevent impersonation by vandals	Content	optional
category	cat	Whether to place the user page in [[Category:Wikipedia doppelganger accounts]] Suggested values yes no Default yes	Line	optional

• Template:Doppelganger-other