The standard of verification used in other "offwiki" venues (for instance, the en.wp UTRS unblock system, IRC cloaks, etc) is generally having the user make an edit using their wikimedia account, to their own userspace, verifying that they are the holder of account [whatever] on offwiki site [whatever]. I see no particular reason you couldn't do the same (either at registration, or when asked by a wikipedian whose account has been "hijacked") if you're concerned about usernames being hijacked on Offwiki.org, and any number of experienced Wikimedians could have told you this if you'd asked. I find it a bit odd that your preferred solution is instead to send an email to everyone that gives off a vaguely "join my site or someone else will do it for you" vibe.
On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 9:48 PM, Wil Sinclair wllm@wllm.com wrote:
Hi all, I've started a new wiki called Offwiki: http://offwiki.org. Our community discusses potential changes to Wikipedia and its Wikimedia sister projects that aren't easily discussed in forums like this mailing list. We also try new ideas that we hope will be adopted on-wiki- both social and technical in nature.
But that's not the primary reason I'm writing all of you. I've noticed that many prominent Wikipedians have created accounts to avoid impostors claiming their very public usernames for themselves. My apologies, but Wikimedia doesn't run an OpenID server, and there's really no other way for me to confirm identities before a user has created a username. The problem is technical, and AFAIK there is nothing I can do about it.
So, if you're concerned about your username being phished out, then consider creating an account at http://offwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page. Maybe you'll even stick around for a few minutes to see what we've been up to. :)
Thanks. ,Wil
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