On Feb 19, 2008 5:57 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
This struck me as relevant to our interests. The extension referred to is very hacky and not ready for prime time at all. But of course it would be a Simple Matter Of Programming to make a suitable page on the toolserver for our own use, multi-image uploads (the way Commonist does), etc.
Uploads from the toolserver always suffer from the can't-get-user-password policy. I have two tools there that upload to Commons "anonymously", but they use either Wikipedia or Flickr-free-license images, which for a vandal is more trouble to go through than uploading stuff under throwaway user names.
I'm currently pondering a way to offer centralized authentication of user accounts on the toolserver. There was one tool that does it through a key given in an edit summary, but only for that tool. I was thinking: * Apply for a "authorized toolserver user account", e.g., as "Magnus Manske" on "en.wikipedia", with a /new/ password just for the toolserver * You get a link to a pre-filled edit on your user page. If you're logged in, just click save. * You go back to the toolserver page and click on "verify". It checks recent changes, your user name has edited with the key, you're confirmed to be that user. * Now, all toolserver tools that want to can verify that you are who you claim to be, and add this information to the upload/edit/whatever done through this tool.
Feasible in practice?
Magnus