[Wikimedia-l] Single User Login finalisation: some accounts will be renamed

[James Forrester]

Fae,

Though I understand the concern that users will have, the need to
rename a relatively-small number of accounts is a technical
requirement that has been built into our system since SUL was designed
c. 2005; it was switched on in early 2008. This has (sadly) been on
the back-burner for too many years now, and efforts to finalise things
have repeatedly stalled. By waiting, and not wanting to bite the
bullet, we have increased (significantly) the number of accounts
affected by this, and discussing it further will certainly not reduce
that fact. That said, the vast majority of accounts affected will not
be actively used - and if your account is already global (as you will
be informed against "Global account status" in your preferences), this
will not affect your account in any way.

This is, primarily, a developer action necessary to improve the site
and provide better tools for our users (like cross-wiki notifications
and watchlists, giving limited editing rights to a tool editing
through your account, and others). Of course, we are sensitive to the
emotional attachment that users will have to their account's name, and
I do not want to make light of that. We have worked hard over the past
few months to help ameliorate this with better tools for renaming
accounts (so that users who are affected can pick a new name that they
like more easily), which will ease the transition. But discussing it
further will not make it go away.

Yours,

On 29 April 2013 19:38, Fae <faewik at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi James, thanks for the links.
>
> Keeping in mind that there will be users that unexpectedly find their
> much loved account name changed the next time they try to log in, and
> this may be central to their established online wiki identity, is
> there a community discussion that we can point to where this approach
> was consulted on?
>
> Thanks,
> Fae
>
> On 30 April 2013 03:29, James Forrester <jforrester at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> All,
>>
>> The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts
>> work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools
>> for our users (like cross-wiki notifications). These changes will mean
>> users have the same account name everywhere, will let us give you new
>> features that will help you edit & discuss better, and will allow more
>> flexible user permissions for tools. One of the pre-conditions for
>> this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900
>> Wikimedia wikis.[0]
>>
>> Unfortunately, some accounts are currently not unique across all our
>> wikis, but instead clash with other users who have the same account
>> name. To make sure that all of these users can use Wikimedia's wikis
>> in future, we will be renaming a number of accounts to have "~” and
>> the name of their wiki added to the end of their accounts' name. This
>> change will take place on or around 27 May. For example, a user called
>> “Example” on the Swedish Wiktionary who will be renamed would become
>> “Example~svwiktionary”.
>>
>> All accounts will still work as before, and will continue to be
>> credited for all their edits made so far. However, users with renamed
>> accounts (whom we will be contacting individually) will have to use
>> the new account name when they log in.
>>
>> It will now only be possible for accounts to be renamed globally; the
>> RenameUser tool will no longer work on a local basis - since all
>> accounts must be globally unique - therefore it will be withdrawn from
>> bureaucrats' tool sets. It will still be possible for users to ask on
>> Meta for their account to be renamed further, if they do not like
>> their new user name, once this takes place.
>>
>> A copy of this note is posted to meta [1] for translation. Please
>> forward this to your local communities, and help get it translated.
>> Individuals who are affected will be notified via talk page and e-mail
>> notices nearer the time.
>>
>> [0] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Unified_login
>> [1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_User_Login_finalisation_announcement
>>
>> Yours,
>> --
>> James D. Forrester
>> Product Manager, VisualEditor
>> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>>
>> jforrester at wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
>>
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>
>
>
> --
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-- 
James D. Forrester
Product Manager, VisualEditor
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

jforrester at wikimedia.org | @jdforrester