Tim Starling wrote:
On 28/05/12 03:50, Raimond Spekking wrote:
Since MediaWiki 1.18 we have the variable $wgUseCombinedLoginLink [1] which is set to true per default.
During edit workshops with students and seniors I registered that new editors are confused about the combined login page. They tried to register new accounts on the login page.
Surely, these observations are not representative but I think that the usability could be improved by setting $wgUseCombinedLoginLink=false
If I missed a prior discussion about this issue I apologize and would be happy if someone could point me to the discussion.
Otherwise I suggest to set $wgUseCombinedLoginLink to false for all WMF wikis.
Can't it be set to false by default?
They were combined to start with because the forms were combined. Then the developer who split the forms was too lazy to fix the skins, so for years, everyone who wanted to create an account was forced to click through the login page. I always figured it was a bug. Why would anyone want them combined?
Someone might want the links combined if they present both the create account and login forms on the same page. Wikia used to do this. Twitter and Facebook do this currently at https://twitter.com/ and https://www.facebook.com when you're not logged in. This is not a reason to not flip the default on Wikimedia wikis, but it is perhaps a reason to keep the configuration variable around.
I'll also note that creating an account is still considered a sub-type of logging in (Special:UserLogin?type=signup), though Special:CreateAccount properly redirects. I think it's a bit strange that they are not two separate forms completely (Special:UserLogin and Special:CreateAccount).
MZMcBride