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

[James Forrester]

On 30 April 2013 01:01, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 4:29 AM, James Forrester
> <jforrester at wikimedia.org>wrote:
>
>> 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”.
>
> Why did you choose to insert the character  "~"? Many keyboards do not have
> such a key.

We picked a character which had very few clashes with the existing set
of account names, but was allowed in account names and distinctive.
Active accounts will be welcome to rename in the 'normal' process if
they do not want to remain at the name to which the script will move
them.

J.
--
James D. Forrester
Product Manager, VisualEditor
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

jforrester at wikimedia.org | @jdforrester