When users are renamed, it is up to the user to find and replace all old instances of their signature to make sure that they redirect to the appropriate account if they want to put that much work into. The other option is the re-register your old username and redirect it to the new one. This is not feasible all the time, for instance if someone owns the SUL to the old username and comes over to take it before it gets re-registered.
I was wondering if anyone had the interest to build a tool on labs that would let a renamed user find-and-replace old signatures in an automated fashion? The tool would check against the rename log and the old timestamp to make sure it's the appropriate user, and substitute the old name part with ~~~ to insert the new username while preserving the timestamp.
I'm not a developer my self, so thoughts on feasibility and implementation are welcome. I think such a tool would be highly useful and I'm slightly surprised it hasn't been made yet.
On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:02 PM, Keegan Peterzell kpeterzell@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm not a developer my self, so thoughts on feasibility and implementation are welcome. I think such a tool would be highly useful and I'm slightly surprised it hasn't been made yet.
It wouldn't be hard to have a bot go through and fix signatures, the problem in the past has been getting community acceptance.
In the past on enwiki many have considered such edits to be useless edits that clutter watchlists and recentchanges, when someone is going around making edits to thousands of old discussion pages for what seems to them to be very little benefit.
And then there's the issue where if "Joe Wiki" renames himself to "CoolDude1234" and all signatures are changed, it gets much harder to follow things if people are calling this person "Joe" or "JW" in their comments. Even with the new style of using linked full usernames to trigger Echo notifications, would these get replaced since they're not signatures?
Yeah, I would say that a bot is a bad idea. Redirects are cheap and should be used On Feb 6, 2015 4:34 PM, "Brad Jorsch (Anomie)" bjorsch@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:02 PM, Keegan Peterzell <kpeterzell@wikimedia.org
wrote:
I'm not a developer my self, so thoughts on feasibility and
implementation
are welcome. I think such a tool would be highly useful and I'm slightly surprised it hasn't been made yet.
It wouldn't be hard to have a bot go through and fix signatures, the problem in the past has been getting community acceptance.
In the past on enwiki many have considered such edits to be useless edits that clutter watchlists and recentchanges, when someone is going around making edits to thousands of old discussion pages for what seems to them to be very little benefit.
And then there's the issue where if "Joe Wiki" renames himself to "CoolDude1234" and all signatures are changed, it gets much harder to follow things if people are calling this person "Joe" or "JW" in their comments. Even with the new style of using linked full usernames to trigger Echo notifications, would these get replaced since they're not signatures? _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 6 February 2015 at 16:37, John phoenixoverride@gmail.com wrote:
Yeah, I would say that a bot is a bad idea. Redirects are cheap and should be used On Feb 6, 2015 4:34 PM, "Brad Jorsch (Anomie)" bjorsch@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:02 PM, Keegan Peterzell <
kpeterzell@wikimedia.org
wrote:
I'm not a developer my self, so thoughts on feasibility and
implementation
are welcome. I think such a tool would be highly useful and I'm
slightly
surprised it hasn't been made yet.
It wouldn't be hard to have a bot go through and fix signatures, the problem in the past has been getting community acceptance.
In the past on enwiki many have considered such edits to be useless edits that clutter watchlists and recentchanges, when someone is going around making edits to thousands of old discussion pages for what seems to them
to
be very little benefit.
And then there's the issue where if "Joe Wiki" renames himself to "CoolDude1234" and all signatures are changed, it gets much harder to follow things if people are calling this person "Joe" or "JW" in their comments. Even with the new style of using linked full usernames to
trigger
Echo notifications, would these get replaced since they're not
signatures?
On the surface, I'd agree. The problem is that many of the people whose usernames get changed will have them changed because someone else is usurping the original username, so it's not acceptable to redirect the (original) userpage to the "new" name; it will now belong to someone else.This will become increasingly complex as users elect to use the global userpage that's now being tested per a separate email to this list today. Those old signatures will link to the wrong user, so there is now a much more valid reason to update them. I do agree with both Brad and John that it's not really been considered all that acceptable in the past on enwiki, but then again in almost all cases I'm aware of, the user was changing hundreds or even thousands of signature lines, as a result of an entirely voluntary change in username. I suspect that, with careful communication, even the enwiki community would come to see this as a net benefit for username changes related to the SUL finalization specifically. What would be needed is some script or bot that changes the signatures from prior to the date of username change, in particular, so that signatures by the "new owner" of the username won't be changed. Risker/Anne
On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:01 PM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On the surface, I'd agree. The problem is that many of the people whose usernames get changed will have them changed because someone else is usurping the original username, so it's not acceptable to redirect the (original) userpage to the "new" name; it will now belong to someone else.This will become increasingly complex as users elect to use the global userpage that's now being tested per a separate email to this list today. Those old signatures will link to the wrong user, so there is now a much more valid reason to update them. I do agree with both Brad and John that it's not really been considered all that acceptable in the past on enwiki, but then again in almost all cases I'm aware of, the user was changing hundreds or even thousands of signature lines, as a result of an entirely voluntary change in username. I suspect that, with careful communication, even the enwiki community would come to see this as a net benefit for username changes related to the SUL finalization specifically. What would be needed is some script or bot that changes the signatures from prior to the date of username change, in particular, so that signatures by the "new owner" of the username won't be changed. Risker/Anne _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
This.
If anyone is interested, do let me know. The idea for this tool is completely optional, just as its use, but I think it's one well worth pursuing. With SUL finalization and global userpages, as Risker points out, the English community might be willing to change its mind in the near future.
And I'm not even speaking specific to the English Wikipedia, this is a global consideration. If there's a bot with a web UI hosted on labs I'd expect it go through the same bot approval process as any other bot as needed, per-wiki to see if the communities accept it as an opt-in.
Il 06/02/2015 22:34, Brad Jorsch (Anomie) ha scritto:
On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:02 PM, Keegan Peterzell kpeterzell@wikimedia.org wrote:
I'm not a developer my self, so thoughts on feasibility and implementation are welcome. I think such a tool would be highly useful and I'm slightly surprised it hasn't been made yet.
It wouldn't be hard to have a bot go through and fix signatures, the problem in the past has been getting community acceptance.
In the past on enwiki many have considered such edits to be useless edits that clutter watchlists and recentchanges, when someone is going around making edits to thousands of old discussion pages for what seems to them to be very little benefit.
And then there's the issue where if "Joe Wiki" renames himself to "CoolDude1234" and all signatures are changed, it gets much harder to follow things if people are calling this person "Joe" or "JW" in their comments. Even with the new style of using linked full usernames to trigger Echo notifications, would these get replaced since they're not signatures? _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Agreed. I think this issue should be handled on a case-by-case basis.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org