Jimmy Wales wrote:
Well, there is one potential complication. Right now,
someone could
be signed up as 'John' on the
en.wikipedia.org, and someone else could
be signed up as 'John' on the
de.wikipedia.org, and they might not
even know each other or realize that there's a collision.
Well, I've thought about the issue of merging user accounts, and I have
come to a conclusion. Do we need to do that at all?
I mean, we're not hosting anything for the users except for their
preferences. A user can re-create an account (and re-set all
preferences) within a few minutes. Wouldn't it be worth starting with a
whole new userbase? It has the added bonus of getting rid of inactive
users in the old system.
Or perhaps we could make it so that a Phase-IV user can "claim
ownership" of a Phase-III user (by entering their e-mail address and
password) and then all their article history and contributions will be
transferred to them.
That takes the issue off our shoulders, and it will take every user no
more than a few minutes to do.
But, you know, if you're interested in working on
a grand plan for the
future, by all means... :-) I'd be eager to see single sign-on, that's
for sure.
If I started this as another whole new Phase-IV software, would there be
a chance it would be used on Wikipedia? As I'm sure you understand, I'm
reluctant to starting it if it's not going to be used anyway. And I
can't really judge this because I haven't been here for very long yet.
If yes, would anyone object if I bring us back to Perl this way? :-)
Greetings,
Timwi