On Sat, Jun 27, 2015 at 2:30 PM, Leila Zia <leila(a)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.