Sascha Noyes wrote:
On Wednesday 31 December 2003 09:38 pm, Timwi wrote:
The basic idea is to mark all accounts as
"old" (and make them
unloginnable), and require everybody to create a new account. Then allow
users to merge their old contribution-lists into this new account
provided they know the password to the old account.
So, for example, I would then create a "new" account named "Timwi"
and
then merge "old:en:Timwi", "old:de:Timwi", "old:fr:Timwi",
etc. into it.
Umm, this sounds like an incredibly bad idea:
1. Hassle
It takes no more than a few minutes for everybody. I don't see a major
hassle in this, considering the advantages it brings.
2. Account stealing: This would be a feast day for any
trolls or malcontents
(and wikipedia seems to have quite a few of those)
You're forgetting that this would require actually hacking into an
account (i.e. cracking the password). Seeing as this is already
possible, and no easier or more difficult, I believe this concern of
yours is invalid.
3. Solution in search of a problem
Pardon?
The only problem with the merge is the collision of
accounts (eg. there exists
a [[de:Jan]] and [[en:Jan]], but they are not the same person). Your proposal
does not solve this,
It does solve it. Perhaps you haven't quite understood my suggestion.
Maybe what you're thinking of is that these two people cannot both
continue to use the name "Jan". But that's normal. It would be the same
way if we had had single sign-on all the way through. Whoever comes
first on that "day of the switch" will get the username Jan, and the
next person will just have to pick another name.
Greetings,
Timwi