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tool will no longer work on a local basis - since all accounts must be globally unique - therefore it will be withdrawn from bureaucrats' tool sets.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(a)wikimedia.org | @jdforrester _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

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”.

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.

Will the affected users be given a one-time offer to have their accounts renamed, or are they stuck forever with the "~" ones? On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 5:01 AM, James Forrester <jforrester(a)wikimedia.org>wrote;wrote: _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

Will the affected users be given a one-time offer to have their accounts renamed, or are they stuck forever with the "~" ones?

On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Benjamin Chen <bencmqwiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: has too many edits, he may not be able to get it renamed further. It just needs to be done server side, The same way it already is. _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l

On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 4:29 AM, James Forrester <jforrester(a)wikimedia.org>wrote;wrote: Why did you choose to insert the character "~"? Many keyboards do not have such a key.

James Forrester, 12/05/2013 19:20: Sorry for the disruption to everyone's plans. If you have any questions, Will you still make the lists and send out the notifications so that people can start planning?

Yes.

James Forrester, 12/05/2013 19:56: We're in August, so the account unifications may happen any time soon, but no notifications have been sent to users. Is the plan again to give them only few days to fix their accounts before they are messed up with?

It needs to be made explicit here and now that this change needs to be managed _incredibly carefully_ or it will result in very negative consequences for Wikimedia.

The process outlined at <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SUL_finalisation> is currently unacceptable and needs to be rewritten. We must not have a repeat of the recent VisualEditor deployment fiasco in which arbitrary deadlines and requirements lead to thousands of Wikimedians being angry.

On 03/08/2013 09:41, Chris McKenna wrote: Why not ten years, or maybe twenty years just to be on the same side?