[Mediawiki-l] external, integrated, or synched authentication?

[Stephen Bannasch]

In the medium term I'd like to use a single authentication system for 
a series services on deanbrook.org including mediawiki.  My goals are 
to integrate a suite of services appropriate for a community-based 
portal.  This is a volunteer (non-profit) service for our town. 
Initially I am setting up WordPress and MediaWiki.

Authentication is especially important to me because I have a policy 
that in order to post you not only have to be registered you also 
have to be using your real name.

To start I thought it would be easiest for users if at least have 
both systems use the same username and password.  In this synched 
authentication each system maintains their current user tables and 
changes are synched between the two however a user would have to 
login again when starting one service

What this means is that whenever someone registers (or updates their 
password or profile) on one system a call is made to the other 
application with the new information so that this system can also 
update their table data.

What would be better in the longer term is to have an external user 
and authentication module that presented a common UI along with 
managing session information, and user access-control/permissions. 
In addition I could better handle registrations from kids under 13. 
In the US there is a federal law which requires parent permission.

A hybrid approach is also possible where I integrate the two systems 
and end up using one schema.

I'm looking for comments, pointers, or implementations.

I'm also looking for a web community focused on design and discussion 
of community portals (not as much the nuts and bolts but how they 
actually work in a community and what services people use).

Thanks
-- 

-- Stephen Bannasch, stephen at deanbrook dot org