[Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] Primary account for single userlogin

[Brion Vibber]

Henning Schlottmann wrote:
> Has there ever been a discussion if SUL really is the answer to any real 
> problem

To summarize:

* We run hundreds of wiki sites

* Many people are active on multiple sites, and we encourage this with 
eg Commons media and Meta discussion

* It's continually inconvenient to have to create accounts and log in 
separately on such tightly integrated sites

* The separate registration can result in name conflicts, which are 
confusing at best and abusive at worst


Creating a global space for usernames resolves these continual 
inconveniences and confusions of separate accounts, in exchange for a 
one-time migration process which will be minimally inconvenient for 
most, slightly inconvenient for a few, and rather annoying for a handful.

I selected this set of tradeoffs out of several possibilities, and I 
continue to stand by it.

> and if this had to mean non-latin user names on projects based 
> on latin languages?

That is a separate issue, not actually related to SUL at all (as shown 
by the fact that it came up in discussions long before we were near 
rolling out global accounts).

Tim's proposal for use of aliases neatly addresses this (and would 
address it just fine completely without any existence of SUL, as well).

-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)