On Sat, Jun 27, 2015 at 2:30 PM, Leila Zia leila@wikimedia.org wrote:
For the article recommendation test, we queried user table to get editors' email addresses. We then excluded the emails that were not verified. We've received a comment here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research_talk:Increasing_article_coverage#Usage_of_user_database that suggests the user has changed his/her email addresse and we have somehow retained the old email address. I'd like to get to the bottom of this problem. Can someone help with this, in the Talk page or here? Are we looking at the wrong table? And in general, how can old information be in the user table?
Now that SUL finalization https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/SUL_finalisation has completed, you should use the global user table for email addresses (centralauth.globaluser.gu_email). When the user changes their email, it is not updated on all 800-something projects where they might have an account, only locally and centrally. User data on other wikis will be updated whenever the user next visits them.