On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 11:00:17AM -0400, Anthony wrote:
IF SUL was implemented from the beginning, it would have been fine. (Same thing, by the way, with the whole .com/.net/.org analogy.) But it wasn't implemented from the beginning.
[ ... ]
Fair enough. I'm keeping the domain name analogy in my toolbox for trying to convince others, because I think it's a good one, but I accept that it wasn't a good analogy to convince you of anything.
If "the domain name analogy" is what I think it is, it's a poor analogy.
DNS's multi-2ld shape is *precisely so that* 3ld's which are identical won't collide, since they fall under different administrative spheres of responsibility. Why should Ford Motor Co., the Ford Foundation, and the Ford Car Club of America *not* be able to be ford.com, ford.org and ford.us?
A different situation pertains here: the WMF public wikis *do not* fall under separate administrative spheres, though I can understand the POV of some people who assert they might.
There is a reasonable assumption that can be -- and clearly is -- made, by users, that the entire WMF is under one login namespace. Clearly that is not the case, but I'm pretty sure that those people who know that are a) the people who've signed up on more than one, and couldn't get the same name and b) those people who've made an assumption that anthere@pl.wiki is the same person they think it is (example made up of whole-cloth, but you know what I mean).
I believe a random statistical sample of wikipedians not directly involved with SSO, and who don't have accounts on more than one wiki, would show a "believe that SSO's already there" rate much higher than you might think.
Cheers, -- jra