I might make a longer response later, but I wanted to comment on a few
things quickly:
On 8/13/07, Tangotango <tangotango(a)ts.wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Aug 14, 2007, at 12:00 AM, Anthony wrote:
But I think en.wikipedia.User:Anthony and
fr.wikipedia.User:Anthony
should be able to get along. I'll probably win the eventual conflict
between us, as fr.wikipedia.User:Anthony doesn't have very many edits,
but I don't think there should have to be a winner. The two of us
have gotten along perfectly fine without SUL.
In the grand scheme of things, far more users are going to benefit
from being able to log in to Commons with their English Wikipedia
accounts. I sympathize with the situation you are in, but I think
this is more a technical thing than a who-gets-what-username thing.
It is possible to let people log in to Commons with your English
Wikipedia account without SUL. First, attach the two accounts using a
global identifier (could be a number, and doesn't have to necessarily
be seen by anybody). Then, have a login page on commons with three
fields - username, wiki, and password.
How do you attach the two accounts without knowing the global
identifier? Log into your commons account and type in your
en.wikipedia username and password and press "attach". Or log into
your en.wikipedia account and type in your commons username and
password and press attach.
Commons account usernames could even be used as this global
identifier. That'd simplify the login stage - each wiki login would
have a spot for username and password and a drop down to select the
local wiki or commons.
None of this implies SUL, because users are not required to use the
same local username on every wiki. And in fact, doing things this way
is going to be a required step before SUL *anyway*, because there has
to be a transition period while working through the conflicting
usernames.