Angela wrote:
Ævar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ævar_Arnfjörð_Bjarmason) made a tool recently that enables bureaucrats to rename users and told me yesterday that Tim Starling has just deployed it at the servers.
Therefore, any bureaucrat can change the username of users on their wiki using [[Special:Renameuser]].
For more details, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Changing_username http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Changing_username http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions#Requests_for_name_ch... http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards#Instructions_for_changing_usernames http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bureaucrats#Instructions_for_changing...
Please translate this into your language and let the people on your project know about this new process. People on wikis without bureaucrats can make their request at [[meta:Requests for permissions]] instead.
This tool has not been reviewed for security, and in fact a cursory glance does reveal some potential problems. (Additionally we have general concerns about database impact of renaming users with long edit histories.)
It should not have been turned on at this stage and I'm disabling it for now, so an announcement of availability is probably premature. :)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)