On 8/13/07, Jay R. Ashworth <jra(a)baylink.com>

I guess what has to happen before this can really be discussed is we need to drop the hypotheticals and come up with a semi-accurate list of actual conflicts. If a good portion of the conflicts are actually causing problems, then it's one thing. If most of them are just good faith collisions which wouldn't have even been discovered were it not for SUL, then it's another.

"Anthony" <wikitech(a)inbox.org> wrote in message news:71cd4dd90708131131k36ef2c17k39d1aae4234b7311@mail.gmail.com... wrote: As far as I am aware, the time for discussion ended months, if not a year ago, and now it is simply a matter of waiting for the implementation to be completed. If that is the case (and correct me if it isn't) then this whole conversation is somewhat pointless.

On 8/13/07, Mark Clements <gmane(a)kennel17.co.uk> wrote: ... year be whole Considering that until a few weeks ago I (who follow the relevant mailing lists rather closely) didn't even know what exactly SUL was, I have to say that I don't think that is the case. A great many people right now still don't know what this whole SUL thing means. The documentation on it is inconsistent. Tons of misinformation is being spread. When was this discussion period announced? I don't think it's too late. It certainly won't be too late before user accounts start getting forcibly renamed, and even after that we could probably still change our minds. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Looking back, I guess it was brought up in a number of places, and I'm not quite sure how I missed it. I don't remember it being discussed on any of the non-tech mailing lists though.

[snip] I've put Anthony on moderation, I'm tired of his trolling. Please note that the single user login account merging system is up and running in a live demo state since Wikimania at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MergeAccount If your account on test.wikipedia.org matches your main one, you can try it out there and check for conflicting accounts. We'll go into the opt-in beta for actual logins over the next couple of weeks. -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org) _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

I wasn't aware that we were this close, I have still been using this along with [[Special:Electroshock]] as a joke as recently as last week - excellent jobs, developers, and I'll go have a look at the demo!

That's completely obnoxious. Disagreeing with one of the moderators is not trolling.

Neat, it's even identified MediaWiki.org as my home wiki. As it should be.

On 8/13/07, Anthony <wikitech(a)inbox.org> wrote: Probably not, but at this point the decision is effectively irreversible, barring a *really* big backlash (which I very much doubt we'll be seeing). Quite a lot of work has been done on it and most people seem to think it's a great idea.

[snip] I've put Anthony on moderation, I'm tired of his trolling. Please note that the single user login account merging system is up and running in a live demo state since Wikimania at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MergeAccount If your account on test.wikipedia.org matches your main one, you can try it out there and check for conflicting accounts. We'll go into the opt-in beta for actual logins over the next couple of weeks. -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)

On 8/13/07, Anthony <wikitech(a)inbox.org> wrote: Probably not, but at this point the decision is effectively irreversible, barring a *really* big backlash (which I very much doubt we'll be seeing). Quite a lot of work has been done on it and most people seem to think it's a great idea.

[snip] I've put Anthony on moderation, I'm tired of his trolling. Please note that the single user login account merging system is up and running in a live demo state since Wikimania at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MergeAccount If your account on test.wikipedia.org matches your main one, you can try it out there and check for conflicting accounts. We'll go into the opt-in beta for actual logins over the next couple of weeks.

On 13/08/07, Walter Vermeir <walter(a)wikipedia.be> wrote:

Who said this? Pester them. Pester the Board, since they would presumably know something about this.

About certain things is known that there is something going on but nothing concrete. I know there was supposed to be announced/presented on Wikimania a new skin for the WMF wikis. How it looks like and of it was presented I do not know.

The Communications Committee is actually nothing more then a mailing list. What is not send to there is unknown.

If your remit is such that you are required to communicate things about a particular project, then it is within your responsibility to find that out, by asking questions, by doing research - the actual implementation plans are there, in Subversion, for anyone to see - as is the code - and by pestering the developer(s) concerned until you know everything you feel you need to. Review his presentations, review his plans, hell - ask Brion for an interview if you think that you can compose the questions.

Then it sounds like the committee is malformed and needs to be created anew, with fresh volunteers, and with a proper understanding of what its purpose is. And as I suspected, the blame does lie higher. Rob Church

Steve Sanbeg wrote: link changed Hmm yes, that needs a little clarification. :) What it should be doing is directing you straight to the merge page on the other wiki, I think. -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org) _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Walter Vermeir wrote: That wasn't so much a presenting of a new skin as presenting of a plan to have a committee work on a new skin, and a demo. :)

On 8/14/07, Brion Vibber <brion(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Two issues: 1. So many people are trying it out, that test.wikipedia.org is slowing down to ridiculously slow levels.

2. Is there an opportunity to ask for differently-named accounts to be added to the mix (i.e. I have 'Werdna648' on meta, can I add that into the accounts to be merged?).

Please note that the single user login account merging system is up and running in a live demo state since Wikimania at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MergeAccount

One request: Please distinguish between accounts which have matching password/email and accounts that don't match but have no edits so will be merged anyway. The list of accounts it intends to merge with mine includes quite a few which I certainly didn't create, which could be rather confusing (well, to be honest, it *was* rather confusing, I thought it was a bug until I thought to check the contribs and saw they were blank).

On 8/14/07, Brion Vibber <brion(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Is there any reason we don't suggest for merging accounts with matchin names but differing emails? ... if the user knows the password, the account is effectively theirs seems silly to make them take the extra step of going and changing the email before it shows in the list. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

As for SUL, as far as I am aware there hasn't been anything major to announce in a long time. "Yep. Decision still on, work still ongoing," isn't something that merits a press release.

I also hit a bug on myself when not all accounts matched the email. I capitalised first-letter on some of them and not on anothers. Luckily, i only needed to identify to a second wiki to merge the full second block. This is correct rfc behaviour, the user name part of the email address must be left unchanged, only the system storing it can perform case-transformations on it, as opposed to the host, which should be lower case, but as most email providers are cese-insensitive (is anyone case-sensitive?)

I'm assuming this doesn't work on the test wiki yet -- I was prompted to enter a password and it only accepted the one I used with my login to the test wiki. It identified en.wikipedia as my home account but said I would have to log in at en.wikipedia to complete the merge process.

However, when I changed my password on test to the one I use on enwikipedia, it suggested all of the "mindspillage" accounts to merge, only prompting for my password on accounts where I have both different email and password. Is this what's intended?

It's very unlikely that two people with the exact same username will pick the exact same lame password. If they do, then they could have logged into each others' accounts anyway -- so it's high time for them to figure it out. ;)

On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 12:02:54AM +0200, Platonides wrote: Per the spec: LHSs of mailbox names have case sensitivity that is implementation-dependent and must be treated as case-sensitive. RHSs of mailbox names are -- these days -- domain names, and domain names are case insensitive by their spec.

RFC 2822 and 1136, I think.

This creates an obscure and hard to exploit but fun hole: Step 1. Pick a prominent non-admin on enwiki who is also not an admin anywhere else. Step 2. Email them something friendly in order to determine their email address. Step 3. Create an account on an obsecure wikimedia wiki where obtaining adminship is trivial. Set your email address to theirs, don't confirm. Step 4. Make some edits edits on the small wiki and become an admin. You now have prefered status for standing as the master account. Step 5. Merge accounts and enjoy your new enwiki account.

On 8/14/07, Brion Vibber <brion(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Ah. I didn't realize that we'd join across accounts using non-confirmed email data.

This creates an obscure and hard to exploit but fun hole: Step 1. Pick a prominent non-admin on enwiki who is also not an admin anywhere else. Step 2. Email them something friendly in order to determine their email address. Step 3. Create an account on an obsecure wikimedia wiki where obtaining adminship is trivial. Set your email address to theirs, don't confirm.

Step 4. Make some edits edits on the small wiki and become an admin. You now have prefered status for standing as the master account. Step 5. Merge accounts and enjoy your new enwiki account. ;) To counter this we need to add a check to not merge across accounts from one without a confirmed email address. I.e. if and only if you have both the password and the account has a confirmed email should you be able to merge to accounts with the same email (confirmed or not) unless you have the password.

On 8/13/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com> wrote: FWIW, I think there will be a really big backlash, and from what I've heard the whole reason it's taken over 3 years to implement is precisely because a lot of people don't think it's a great idea. I can see how the fact that me criticizing something that people have spent so much effort on might hurt some feelings, but I think these things have to be said anyway.

On Monday 13 August 2007 22:27:52 Rob Church wrote: Unfortunately, when I try to login, it tells me "there is no such user "tels"' or Tels. So, how can I actually use that check to see if my "other" "tels" accounts on various mediawiki/wikimedia/wikipedia sites/whatever are the same or not or cause problems? *confused* Tels -- Signed on Tue Aug 14 20:59:10 2007 with key 0x93B84C15. Get one of my photo posters: http://bloodgate.com/posters PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email. " ...the Machholz Comet is named after the guy who really discovered it. Bob Comet." -- Zathras26 (763537) on 2005-01-01 at /. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

On 13/08/07, Dan Collins <en.wp.st47(a)gmail.com> wrote: The joke's on you! [[Special:LART]] and [[Special:Electroshock]] are both (non-committed) extensions, and have been for six months.

Jay R. Ashworth wrote: Without any other data, they must. That's why i'm proposing it as a list of providers, rather than on a global basis. If we positively know that they're internaly case-insensitive, and treating them as such will make life easier for our users. Why not do it?

RFC 821 (August 1982), section 2; Commands and replies are not case sensitive. That is, a command or reply word may be upper case, lower case, or any mixture of upper and lower case. Note that this is not true of mailbox user names. For some hosts the user name is case sensitive, and SMTP implementations must take case to preserve the case of user names as they appear in mailbox arguments. Host names are not case sensitive.

Then what? It alerts of the action, but you can't stop it. The confirmation message says: Someone, probably you from IP address X.Y.Z, has registered an account "YourName" with this e-mail address on Wikipedia. To confirm that this account really does belong to you and activate e-mail features on Wikipedia, open this link in your browser: http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Confirmemail/baddeefbaddeefbaddeefba… If this is *not* you, don't follow the link. This confirmation code will expire at XXX So, there's no option to "refuse" the email connection. The receiver may think, "oh, somebody registered an account with my name at the wikipedia in strange language" but not matter more about it (note he's relating the warning to the username, not with their email). If he checks the contributions will see a user with good editions. If username clashes are as common as Anthony says, he won't think it again (until he loses his account). He would need to be a paranoic, knowing this vulnerability running to warn a steward or takeover it. And still he'll need to sleep. I'd create the takover account and not set its password to the matching one before minutes of Merging them.

Nice! I think it found all my 11 logins. (good lord, 11. And I didn't even remember I had one on wikiquote. No wonder I keep getting confused about what to do next;-)

On 14/08/07, Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com> wrote: Ah, I wondered when this would become a dickwaving contest. Rob Church _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

2007/8/14, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com>om>: Only 11? My page lists over 260...

Exactly right. A non-confirmed email address shouldn't be used for anything, at all, since without confirmation, it's just a random string. If you really want to use unconfirmed email addresses, then give control of accounts with unconfirmed addresses to accounts with confirmed addresses, but definitely not the other way around, that is a major loophole.

On 8/14/07, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote: Personally I dislike that provision. It means that no one who wants to use their account on (for instance) enwiki can use a non-Latin name *anywhere*, unless they use two Single-Login accounts (heh).

Simetrical-3 wrote: Why ever not? There has been some noise recently about people using non-Latin scripts who have fallen foul of over-anxious complainants worried that the names might be saying something rude in the non-English language to which they belong, but AFAIK there is no hard-and-fast rule.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username_policy#Non-Latin_usernames I hadn't noticed that change either. It's a good one, though. The main issue I have with non-Latin names is that I can't pronounce them. Reading something with unpronounceable words in is much slower than it otherwise would be, since one keeps tripping up over the words. Latin signatures fixes that pretty much completely. There is nothing wrong with names in a foreign languages, it's just foreign scripts which are a problem, all users need to do is transliterate their username as a sig.. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Please note that the single user login account merging system is up and running in a live demo state since Wikimania at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MergeAccount If your account on test.wikipedia.org matches your main one, you can try it out there and check for conflicting accounts. We'll go into the opt-in beta for actual logins over the next couple of weeks. -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)

How will the new users log work: whenever a new global account is created, or only once the account is 'activated' on the local wiki? ~~~~

On 8/14/07, Steve Sanbeg <ssanbeg(a)ask.com> wrote: That just shifts the failure modes about. Say you, like many others, don't have a confirmed email on your primary project. You have 10 gillion edits... whatever, just no confirmed email. An Some evil troll goes and creates an account with your name on klingon wikisource and old english wikibooks, confirms his own email, and makes a couple of edits.. Then merges his accounts.

On 15/08/07, Dan Collins <en.wp.st47(a)gmail.com> wrote: If the extension isn't changed from its current state, then it will continue to report (explicit) account creations for the local wiki. Perhaps the better question is, "how should the log work"?

Rob Church wrote: Marking on the local log only local activations and global creations on an specific log (at meta?) is imho right. But the global one should also give some hint about the project from which the global creation came, for the easyness of reviewing.

already User:B). Since it's yours, you can just request that it be renamed to C, and then rename A to B. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Thanks, that would be the obvious solution if the account B wasn't already existing (even if it's mine) on fr.wp (and with 1 contribution on User:B).

Here is my question : Is it possible that instead of proposing me to change my user name, the SUL system proposes me to "transfer" my A contributions to another acount (there I would specify B) and then to SUL-merge my account B ? I'm pretty sure this is technically possible, but is it something you "could plan" or "have the right" to do ? (please :-) )

Platonides wrote: Probably sensible. A link to the home wiki would do the job, probably?

Majorly wrote: You can get B renamed to old-B, and A renamed to B. If you care about that single contribution, you will need to poke a db admin to change that edit ownership.

The question is: what trolling were you trying to achieve creating the B account?, you sockpuppeter! ;)

On 15/08/07, Dan Collins <en.wp.st47(a)gmail.com> wrote: created, If the extension isn't changed from its current state, then it will continue to report (explicit) account creations for the local wiki. Perhaps the better question is, "how should the log work"? Rob Church _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

He doesn't have any -- that wiki's Account A belongs to someone else, who is a sysop with more edits than any of his accounts.

From: "Dan Collins" &lt;en.wp.st47(a)gmail.com&gt; Reply-To: Wikimedia developers &lt;wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; To: "Wikimedia developers" &lt;wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] SUL Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 16:25:07 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: from lists.wikimedia.org ([145.97.39.157]) by bay0-mc10-f23.bay0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.2668); Wed, 15 Aug 2007 13:25:17 -0700 Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:54553 helo=lily.knams.wikimedia.org)by lily.knams.wikimedia.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63)(envelope-from &lt;wikitech-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;)id 1ILPQX-0008BF-Rg; Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:25:14 +0000 Received: from py-out-1112.google.com ([64.233.166.182]:41259)by lily.knams.wikimedia.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63)(envelope-from &lt;en.wp.st47(a)gmail.com&gt;) id 1ILPQU-0008B6-Jjfor wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org; Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:25:11 +0000 Received: by py-out-1112.google.com with SMTP id y63so58859pygfor &lt;wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;;Wedt;;Wed, 15 Aug 2007 13:25:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.65.151.6 with SMTP id d6mr1713094qbo.1187209509715;Wed, 15 Aug 2007 13:25:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.64.184.7 with HTTP; Wed, 15 Aug 2007 13:25:07 -0700 (PDT) X-Message-Delivery: Vj0zLjQuMDt1cz0wO2k9MDtsPTA7YT0w X-Message-Info: 0jbW5ANosZLY8vjQK9rUF11rTfLn0SaDPjVzmzaUDo6r5VX4L1oCeOy5aEskXolqbNGTTc4kv/qZ1Rtl1YLTiQ== References: <71cd4dd90708131131k36ef2c17k39d1aae4234b7311@mail.gmail.com><46C0AFCD.2090101@wikimedia.org><2916cbf60708132248v4420cb7fqcd15ae1a36ae1092@mail.gmail.com><f9ru7t$anr$1@sea.gmane.org><7c2a12e20708141339x29e67a75x5a152e915e35451c@mail.gmail.com><12153381.post@talk.nabble.com><7c2a12e20708141546g684e5686o3a43be5470513119@mail.gmail.com><a4359dff0708141625y436008dcob5a9be39457dcc15@mail.gmail.com><38e9c3450708150517x53fb55b3lb45779a9103c8936@mail.gmail.com><e92136380708150628v42064cfbi3b732180b067d890@mail.gmail.com> X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.9 X-BeenThere: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9 Precedence: list List-Id: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org> List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l>,<mailto:wikitech-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> List-Archive: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l> List-Post: <mailto:wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> List-Help: <mailto:wikitech-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=help> List-Subscribe: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l>,<mailto:wikitech-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=subscribe> Errors-To: wikitech-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org Return-Path: wikitech-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org X-OriginalArrivalTime: 15 Aug 2007 20:25:17.0884 (UTC) FILETIME=[651E57C0:01C7DF7A] On 8/15/07, Rob Church &lt;robchur(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Well, it ''should'' show the account as soon as it's blockable, and not before, otherwise you could register "RobChurchSucks" on some obscure wiki and we'd see it, be unable to block it, and forget about it. I'm assuming that autoconfirmation is also on a per-wiki basis? -- ST47 Administrator, en.wikipedia _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

From: GerardM &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; Reply-To: Wikimedia developers &lt;wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; To: "Wikimedia developers" &lt;wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] SUL Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2007 09:39:47 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: from lists.wikimedia.org ([145.97.39.157]) by bay0-mc7-f10.bay0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.2668); Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:40:27 -0700 Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:53120 helo=lily.knams.wikimedia.org)by lily.knams.wikimedia.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63)(envelope-from &lt;wikitech-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;)id 1ILwQy-0000ZA-E7; Fri, 17 Aug 2007 07:39:52 +0000 Received: from rv-out-0910.google.com ([209.85.198.189]:25983)by lily.knams.wikimedia.org with esmtp (Exim 4.63)(envelope-from &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt;) id 1ILwQv-0000Z4-1wfor wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org; Fri, 17 Aug 2007 07:39:50 +0000 Received: by rv-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id c24so407613rvffor &lt;wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;;Frit;;Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:39:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.141.128.19 with SMTP id f19mr1127411rvn.1187336387139;Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:39:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.141.154.3 with HTTP; Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:39:47 -0700 (PDT) X-Message-Delivery: Vj0zLjQuMDt1cz0wO2k9MDtsPTA7YT0w X-Message-Info: 0jbW5ANosZLkrbVr2OVr/kLzukYF9tzdRqq+gy/wqx0kTYen9Zv9h0ptIN3wVFN+fyzEfoxrCAWPuNF6NYBPIw== References: <38e9c3450708151325m779481b4x14cd5c4641e5e987@mail.gmail.com><BAY106-F216C518CF99E114236B27EC7D80@phx.gbl> X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.9 X-BeenThere: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9 Precedence: list List-Id: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org> List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l>,<mailto:wikitech-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> List-Archive: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l> List-Post: <mailto:wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org> List-Help: <mailto:wikitech-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=help> List-Subscribe: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l>,<mailto:wikitech-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=subscribe> Errors-To: wikitech-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org Return-Path: wikitech-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org X-OriginalArrivalTime: 17 Aug 2007 07:40:27.0864 (UTC) FILETIME=[E15C7D80:01C7E0A1] Hoi, When the English Wikipedia insists on discriminating against people who have a user in a script other than the Latin script... The argument that such a name might be potentially obscene is one that does not assume good faith. You (and I) are not even able to recognise all the potential obscene names in the Latin script as there are so many languages you (and I) do not know. Many of these words that are perfectly fine in one language and are not in another. If at all it is the home project of a user that can determine if a user name is insulting. Thanks, GerardM On 8/17/07, The Fearow &lt;fearow00(a)hotmail.com&gt; wrote: sight wait wiki (PDT) _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Is it blockable as soon as it is used on a wiki, or as soon as it's registered? On enwiki, usernames deemed inappropriate are blocked on sight (mostly) - would this make that impossible, and make it so we have to wait until it edits (at which point, the potentially obscene name is permanently in the edit history). My main question is, what is the definition of "blockable". Is that as soon as it is globally registered, or as soon as they edit on a particular wiki they can be blocked on it?

When you own your own domain name (rather than using gmail or whatever) this requires no extra work (you can just make up the bit before the @ sign however you like), so a lot of people use this or a similar method to avoid being spammed to death.

There are a lot of people, like myself, who have started using different e-mails for every site they sign up to. For example, wikipedia_aug07(a)example.com would be the e-mail address I would use if I joined WP today.