According to the conflict resolution process, that the account with most edits is selected as a primary account for that username, this may sound reasonable for the username that is owned by the same person on all wikimedia sites.
But the problem will come when the same username on those wikimedia sites is owned by different person and they are actively in used. The active account that has registered first (seniority rule) should rather be considered the primary account. Since, I think the person who register first should own that username on the unified wikimedia sites.
Imagine, what if the wikimedia sites have been unified ever since the sites are first established long time ago (that their accounts have never been separated), the person who register first will own that username on all of the wikimedia sites. The person who come after will be unable to use the registered username, and have to choose their alternate username. This logic should also apply on current wikimedia sites, after it have been unified.
Hoi, This issue has been decided. Seniority is not fair either; there are hundreds if not thousands of users that have done no or only a few edits and I would not consider it fair when a person with say over 10.000 edits should have to defer to these typically inactive users.
A choice has been made and as always, there will be people that will find an un-justice. There were many discussions and a choice was made. It is not good to revisit things continuously, it is good to finish things so that there is no point to it any more.
Thanks, GerardM
On 10/12/07, Anon Sricharoenchai anon.hui@gmail.com wrote:
According to the conflict resolution process, that the account with most edits is selected as a primary account for that username, this may sound reasonable for the username that is owned by the same person on all wikimedia sites.
But the problem will come when the same username on those wikimedia sites is owned by different person and they are actively in used. The active account that has registered first (seniority rule) should rather be considered the primary account. Since, I think the person who register first should own that username on the unified wikimedia sites.
Imagine, what if the wikimedia sites have been unified ever since the sites are first established long time ago (that their accounts have never been separated), the person who register first will own that username on all of the wikimedia sites. The person who come after will be unable to use the registered username, and have to choose their alternate username. This logic should also apply on current wikimedia sites, after it have been unified.
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On 12/10/2007, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote:
A choice has been made and as always, there will be people that will find an un-justice. There were many discussions and a choice was made. It is not good to revisit things continuously, it is good to finish things so that there is no point to it any more.
I would disagree that it is "not good to revisit things continuously", at least at face value; certainly, if you have an issue which is causing significant discussion/angst, then it needs to be revisited. It is in the nature of software that "things" will be revisited.
I *do* agree that it's well past time for discussing how the primary issue should be solved, and implementation should be well underway; while there's still some scope for changing various things, the bulk of the automatic conflict resolution algorithm was pretty decided some time ago.
I have noticed a worrying trend where members of the community are leaping up and saying, "well, it should be done like this, not like that", which is a discussion that should have been held several years ago.
Rob Church
I have noticed a worrying trend where members of the community are leaping up and saying, "well, it should be done like this, not like that", which is a discussion that should have been held several years ago.
Could be a sign that the proper consultations aren't happening at the right time. (Could also be a sign that people are just a little late to the party...)
On 10/12/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
I have noticed a worrying trend where members of the community are leaping up and saying, "well, it should be done like this, not like that", which is a discussion that should have been held several years ago.
The thing is, the discussion *was* had several years ago. See the thread entitled "Single login - decision 2004" on foundation-l. And it seems that most people discussing it there, including Erik, Jimbo, Jamesday, Kate, and Daniel Mayer, said that they'd prefer not to rename any accounts.
Angela and Ant commented that they'd like for there to be a poll. AFAIK there never was such a poll.
The thing is, the discussion *was* had several years ago. See the thread entitled "Single login - decision 2004" on foundation-l. And it seems that most people discussing it there, including Erik, Jimbo, Jamesday, Kate, and Daniel Mayer, said that they'd prefer not to rename any accounts.
Angela and Ant commented that they'd like for there to be a poll. AFAIK there never was such a poll.
You can't do it without renaming accounts. It would be pointless. Why have a single account per person if they all have different names? It's not really even a single account, since accounts are pretty much defined by their names (yes, there is a numerical id in the database, but only developers care about it - and I don't think that id would be the same anyway).
You can only have a poll if there are multiple options. Edit counts is the only option I've seen anyone propose that stands a chance of working.
On 10/15/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
The thing is, the discussion *was* had several years ago. See the thread entitled "Single login - decision 2004" on foundation-l. And it seems that most people discussing it there, including Erik, Jimbo, Jamesday, Kate, and Daniel Mayer, said that they'd prefer not to rename any accounts.
Angela and Ant commented that they'd like for there to be a poll. AFAIK there never was such a poll.
You can't do it without renaming accounts.
Depends on what it is you're doing.
It would be pointless. Why have a single account per person if they all have different names?
Presumably at some point (maybe decades from now at the current rate) there are going to be shared preferences, shared watchlists, maybe even single sign on. In fact, until Single User Login was redefined to mean renaming of accounts, the whole point of it was supposed to be to prepare for these sorts of things.
You can only have a poll if there are multiple options. Edit counts is the only option I've seen anyone propose that stands a chance of working.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_login_poll
All three options would work.
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Anon Sricharoenchai wrote:
According to the conflict resolution process, that the account with most edits is selected as a primary account for that username, this may sound reasonable for the username that is owned by the same person on all wikimedia sites.
But the problem will come when the same username on those wikimedia sites is owned by different person and they are actively in used.
One point worth considering: Active users will, in the vast majority of cases, specify an e-mail address for their account. If these are two different, yet equivocally active users, even with the same username, they will most likely specify unique e-mail addresses. As such, and correct me if this has changed, the accounts will not be merged and treated as the same account, at least not without contacting both users first to find a resolution. If they have not specified an e-mail address, then either the accounts will not be merged or, if the accounts are eventually merged, the users will be more than capable of contacting Brion or another member of Wikimedia's technical staff to work out a resolution.
The active account that has registered first (seniority rule) should rather be considered the primary account. Since, I think the person who register first should own that username on the unified wikimedia sites.
This approach seems even more arbitrary than the edit-count approach. Consider that almost every Wikimedia project has a User:I They are most likely *all* different individuals. Why should the first registered User:I suddenly contain control and attribution for all of the other User:I's out there?
Naturally, the editcount approach does not present a much better solution to this problem, but since almost User:I's except for the one on enwiki have been virtually deceased, it seems appropriate for enwiki's User:I to be User:I on all projects. The conflict practically fails to exist if the other User:I's have specified e-mail addresses, as they can then be contacted to work out a resolution.
Imagine, what if the wikimedia sites have been unified ever since the sites are first established long time ago (that their accounts have never been separated), the person who register first will own that username on all of the wikimedia sites.
Idealism is a nice world to live in. Unfortunately nothing about SUL is ideal. It's taking nearly a decade worth of history on hundreds (if not now thousands) of sites, containing an uncountable number of conflicts and questions about who is who and what is what, and attempting to glue them together in to one unified Wikimedia. Regardless of what approach is taken, this is going to be messy and cause a lot of headaches. Thus, the approach that is the most likely to minimize these headaches and this mess, namely the editcount-based solution, has been chosen.
The person who come after will be unable to use the registered username, and have to choose their alternate username. This logic should also apply on current wikimedia sites, after it have been unified.
And the detriment of a quite inactive user who did not even feel the need to specify an e-mail address now having to go by a different username is ...? Naturally, accreditation issues can be quite easily resolved by developers, and no user is going to be revoked of his technical rights incorrectly nor is another user going to suddenly obtain ungranted rights on any project. As such, I fail to see what the real concern here is.
- -- Daniel Cannon (AmiDaniel)
http://amidaniel.com cannon.danielc@gmail.com
On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 01:07:01PM -0600, Daniel Cannon wrote:
One point worth considering: Active users will, in the vast majority of cases, specify an e-mail address for their account. If these are two different, yet equivocally active users, even with the same username,
Did you mean "uneqivocally" active? Or did you mean that they were equally vocal, a charmingly uncommon usage of that word? :-)
they will most likely specify unique e-mail addresses. As such, and correct me if this has changed, the accounts will not be merged and treated as the same account, at least not without contacting both users first to find a resolution. If they have not specified an e-mail address, then either the accounts will not be merged or, if the accounts are eventually merged, the users will be more than capable of contacting Brion or another member of Wikimedia's technical staff to work out a resolution.
"Brion doesn't scale."
Isn't that the First Law of Wikipedia?
How many such collisions are there going to be?
Cheers, -- jra
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Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 01:07:01PM -0600, Daniel Cannon wrote:
One point worth considering: Active users will, in the vast majority of cases, specify an e-mail address for their account. If these are two different, yet equivocally active users, even with the same username,
Did you mean "uneqivocally" active? Or did you mean that they were equally vocal, a charmingly uncommon usage of that word? :-)
Hrm .. a nice Archie Bunkerism that :) I meant "equivalently."
they will most likely specify unique e-mail addresses. As such, and correct me if this has changed, the accounts will not be merged and treated as the same account, at least not without contacting both users first to find a resolution. If they have not specified an e-mail address, then either the accounts will not be merged or, if the accounts are eventually merged, the users will be more than capable of contacting Brion or another member of Wikimedia's technical staff to work out a resolution.
"Brion doesn't scale."
Isn't that the First Law of Wikipedia?
How many such collisions are there going to be?
Who knows? Maybe Brion? My guess would be a lot.
- -- Daniel Cannon (AmiDaniel)
http://amidaniel.com cannon.danielc@gmail.com
How many such collisions are there going to be?
Who knows? Maybe Brion? My guess would be a lot.
Difficult to know, because there is no way to know which collisions are actually the same person just using different (or no) email addresses and can be fixed just by them typing in their password.
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