On Wednesday 31 December 2003 09:38 pm, Timwi wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I think we should do this ASAP, because the issues are only going to get harder. But the main issue, Timwi, is social -- there are certainly cases where two different people have the same username but in different languages.
I have already suggested a solution for this some time ago. I'll repeat it here because I feel like it ;-)
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 2. Account stealing: This would be a feast day for any trolls or malcontents (and wikipedia seems to have quite a few of those) 3. Solution in search of a problem
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, but would need to solve it in the same way as the simple merge would: In the rare cases that this happens, people need to discuss and come to an amicable sollution. (I would suggest that whoever registered that account name first should have priority.)
Best, Sascha Noyes