[Wikimedia-l] Single User Login finalisation: some accounts will be renamed

[James Forrester]

All,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts
work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools
for our users (like cross-wiki notifications). These changes will mean
users have the same account name everywhere, will let us give you new
features that will help you edit & discuss better, and will allow more
flexible user permissions for tools. One of the pre-conditions for
this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900
Wikimedia wikis.[0]

Unfortunately, some accounts are currently not unique across all our
wikis, but instead clash with other users who have the same account
name. To make sure that all of these users can use Wikimedia's wikis
in future, we will be renaming a number of accounts to have "~” and
the name of their wiki added to the end of their accounts' name. This
change will take place on or around 27 May. For example, a user called
“Example” on the Swedish Wiktionary who will be renamed would become
“Example~svwiktionary”.

All accounts will still work as before, and will continue to be
credited for all their edits made so far. However, users with renamed
accounts (whom we will be contacting individually) will have to use
the new account name when they log in.

It will now only be possible for accounts to be renamed globally; the
RenameUser tool will no longer work on a local basis - since all
accounts must be globally unique - therefore it will be withdrawn from
bureaucrats' tool sets. It will still be possible for users to ask on
Meta for their account to be renamed further, if they do not like
their new user name, once this takes place.

A copy of this note is posted to meta [1] for translation. Please
forward this to your local communities, and help get it translated.
Individuals who are affected will be notified via talk page and e-mail
notices nearer the time.

[0] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login
[1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_User_Login_finalisation_announcement

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Product Manager, VisualEditor
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

jforrester at wikimedia.org | @jdforrester