All,
The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users (like cross-wiki notifications). These changes will mean users have the same account name everywhere, will let us give you new features that will help you edit & discuss better, and will allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the pre-conditions for this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis.[0]
Unfortunately, some accounts are currently not unique across all our wikis, but instead clash with other users who have the same account name. To make sure that all of these users can use Wikimedia's wikis in future, we will be renaming a number of accounts to have "~” and the name of their wiki added to the end of their accounts' name. This change will take place on or around 27 May. For example, a user called “Example” on the Swedish Wiktionary who will be renamed would become “Example~svwiktionary”.
All accounts will still work as before, and will continue to be credited for all their edits made so far. However, users with renamed accounts (whom we will be contacting individually) will have to use the new account name when they log in.
It will now only be possible for accounts to be renamed globally; the RenameUser tool will no longer work on a local basis - since all accounts must be globally unique - therefore it will be withdrawn from bureaucrats' tool sets. It will still be possible for users to ask on Meta for their account to be renamed further, if they do not like their new user name, once this takes place.
A copy of this note is posted to meta [1] for translation. Please forward this to your local communities, and help get it translated. Individuals who are affected will be notified via talk page and e-mail notices nearer the time.
[0] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login [1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_User_Login_finalisation_announcement
Yours, -- James D. Forrester Product Manager, VisualEditor Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
jforrester@wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
All,
As an update, I'm afraid to announce that we will have to delay the process for some time.
As my previous e-mail states, we had intended to start the final renaming process in the week commencing 27 May. However, given the scale of the task, it now is clear that this would interfere with the community elections for the Wikimedia Foundation's Board, FDC and FDC Ombudsperson, which start on 1 June.
Voters' accounts would get renamed (and then possibly renamed further at their request), which would mean that the eligible-voter list would be out-of-date and need a huge amount of manual work by the Election Committee. As I'm sure you're all aware, the existing duties of the Committee are already taxing; adding this to their workload at the last minute would be highly unfair to them, and to the community who will wish to vote.
Although the finalisation of the Single User Login system is important, I cannot let it disrupt the community's voting. Because of this, I have decided to delay the renaming and the finalisation of SUL. This will not have an impact on existing features, though it will mean that non-global users may be unable to use new tools developed between now and finalisations.
Unfortunately, by the time the election is over, I will be focussed entirely on the wider roll-out of VisualEditor, which will continue for some time. I therefore intend to re-start the process in August, following Wikimania. I will let people know the updated schedule closer to the time.
Sorry for the disruption to everyone's plans. If you have any questions, please do ask.
J.
James Forrester, 12/05/2013 19:20:
Sorry for the disruption to everyone's plans. If you have any questions, please do ask.
Will you still make the lists and send out the notifications so that people can start planning?
Nemo
On 12 May 2013 10:40, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
James Forrester, 12/05/2013 19:20:
Sorry for the disruption to everyone's plans. If you have any questions,
please do ask.
Will you still make the lists and send out the notifications so that people can start planning?
Yes.
J.
James Forrester, 12/05/2013 19:56:
On 12 May 2013 10:40, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
James Forrester, 12/05/2013 19:20:
Sorry for the disruption to everyone's plans. If you have any questions,
please do ask.
Will you still make the lists and send out the notifications so that people can start planning?
Yes.
Lovely. This is very good news, many people will be happy. :)
Nemo
James Forrester, 12/05/2013 19:56:
James Forrester, 12/05/2013 19:20:
Sorry for the disruption to everyone's plans. If you have any questions,
please do ask.
Will you still make the lists and send out the notifications so that people can start planning?
Yes.
Any news on the notifications? Giving one or two months to affected users (from now to August) would be ideal. (The unifications on login should have improved stats https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Admin_tools_development/SUL_Audit but probably won't help much with the long tail?)
Nemo
P.s.: Non-English languages speakers: we'd use some translations of the two centralauth-finishglobaliseemail* messages at https://translatewiki.net/w/i.php?title=Special:Translate&filter=!translated&action=translate&group=ext-centralauth&tux=0#msg_centralauth-finishglobaliseemail_subject. If you don't have a translator account you can create one at https://translatewiki.net/wiki/Special:FirstSteps
James Forrester, 12/05/2013 19:56:
On 12 May 2013 10:40, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
James Forrester, 12/05/2013 19:20:
Sorry for the disruption to everyone's plans. If you have any questions,
please do ask.
Will you still make the lists and send out the notifications so that people can start planning?
Yes.
We're in August, so the account unifications may happen any time soon, but no notifications have been sent to users. Is the plan again to give them only few days to fix their accounts before they are messed up with?
Nemo
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org