[Foundation-l] Wikipedia Account Creation

[Fred Bauder]

>>> >
>>> > Hello,
>>> > Last month I was in Qatar and introduced some people to Wikipedia.
>>> While
>>> > they were creating their accounts, some of them had their initial
>>> > suggested username taken, so they had to repeat it a couple of times
>>> > until they finally found an available username. One of them had
>>> repeated
>>> > it around 3 or 4 times until he had gotten frustrated. Which is why
>>> I'm
>>> > asking if it's possible to add search type-ahead suggestions for
>>> > available accounts.
>>> > //Abbas.
>>>
>>> We have a page to do that at Special:ListUsers
>>>
>>> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Special:ListUsers
>>>
>>> or
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ListUsers
>>>
>>> Fred
>>>
>>
>> Special:ListUsers =/= list of all users with SUL
>>
>> przykuta
>>
>
> What does Special:ListUsers =/= list of all users with SUL mean?
>
> I thought the problem was to find account names that are not being used.
> If you search for a name you think you might want to use it returns a
> list of existing accounts.
>
> What is "SUL"?
>
> I know I'm supposed to understand Wikipedia acronyms, but I almost never
> do, unless I use them regularly myself, but I try to never use them, so
> never get practiced up.
>
> Fred

OK, here is a tool: http://toolserver.org/~quentinv57/sulinfo

This gives user info from every Wikimedia wiki. "SUL Info

This script gives a list of every account using a specified name on WMF
wikis, and displays SUL data if accounts have been merged."

The catch though is that if there is not an exact match it just returns
no account. Special:ListUsers shows most close matches.

It serves well enough for creation of an account on the wiki you're
running it on. But there might be someone on another wiki using the same
name, or one that is confusingly close.

Fred