On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 6:09 PM, Benjamin Lees emufarmers@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 5:03 PM, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
If you go back far enough you may find user accounts created under
versions
of MediaWiki that didn't record the account creation date; this is
probably
what you're seeing.
There has to be more to it than that. The creation date for User:Brion VIBBER, for instance, is displayed, even though the date for accounts created much later isn't.
Some, but not all, accounts had creation dates retroactively filled in.
Hmmmm, not sure if there's a reliable one. You can check if user_touched
has been updated BUT this gets updated for things like people leaving messages on their talk page.
It gets reset for a user if other people edit that user's talk page? That kind of seems like a bug. :-)
No, it's quite deliberate -- that's how their cached pages get cleared to make room for the "You've got messages" indicator.
-- brion