SUL finalisation/status

Last update on: 2014-12-monthly

2014-06-24
Chris Steipp and Rob Lanphier are working out a plan to complete this work in Q1 of fiscal 2014-15 (i.e. by the end of September).

2014-06-25
The MediaWiki Core team has committed to having the following work complete by the end of Q1 2014 (i.e. September 2014):
 * Completing the necessary engineering work to carry out the finalisation.
 * Setting a date on which the finalisation will occur (Note: this date may not be in Q1 2014).
 * Have a communications strategy in place, and community liaisons to carry that out, for the time period between the announcement of the date of the finalisation and the finalisation proper.

2014-06-monthly
The MediaWiki Core team has committed to having the following work completed by the end of September 2014:
 * Completing the necessary engineering work to carry out the finalisation.
 * Setting a date on which the finalisation will occur (Note: this date may be after September).
 * Have a communications strategy in place, and community liaisons to carry that out, for the time period between the announcement of the date of the finalisation and the finalisation proper.

2014-07-monthly
In July, the SUL finalisation team began work on completing the necessary feature work to support the SUL finalisation.

To help users with local-only accounts that are going to be forcibly renamed due to the SUL finalisation, the team is working on a form that lets those users request a rename. These requests will be forwarded onto to handle. The SUL team is currently in consultation with the stewards about how they would like this tool to work. When this consultation is wrapped up, the team will begin design and implementation.

To help users get globally renamed without having to request renames on potentially hundreds of wikis, the team implemented and deployed GlobalRenameUser, a tool which renames users globally. As the tool is designed to work post-finalisation, it only performs renames where the current name is global, and the requested name is totally untaken (no global account and no local accounts exist with that name).

To help users who get renamed by the finalisation and, despite our best efforts to reach out to them, did not get the chance to request a rename before the finalisation, the team is working on a feature to let users log in with their old credentials. The feature will display an interstitial when they log in, informing them that they logged in with old credentials and that they need to use new ones. We are also considering a persistent banner for those users, so that they definitely know they need to use their new credentials. An early beta version of this feature is complete, and now needs design and product refinements to be completed.

To help users who get renamed by the finalisation and, as a result, have several accounts that were previously local-only turned into separate global accounts, the team is working on a tool to merge global accounts. We chose to merge accounts as it was the easiest way to satisfy the use case without causing further local-global account clashes that would cause us to have to perform a second finalisation. The tool is in its preliminary stages.

The team also globalised some accounts that were not globalised but had no clashes. These accounts were either created in this local-only form due to bugs, or are accounts from before CentralAuth was deployed where the user never globalised. As these accounts had no clashes, there were no repercussions to globalising these accounts, so we did this immediately.

At present, no date has been chosen for the finalisation. The team plans to have the necessary engineering work done by the end of the quarter (end of September 2014), and have a date chosen by then.

Next month the team plans to continue work on these features.

2014-08-monthly
The SUL finalisation team continues to work on building tools to support the finalisation. There are four ongoing streams of work, and the team is on track to have the majority of the work completed by the end of September.

The ability to globally rename users was deployed a while ago, and is currently working excellently!

The ability to log in with old, pre-finalisation credentials has been developed so that users are not inadvertently locked out of their accounts. From an engineering standpoint, this form is now fully working in our test environment. Right now, the form uses placeholder text; that text needs to be 'prettified' so that the users who have been forcibly renamed get the appropriate information on how to proceed after their rename, and more rigorous testing should be done before deployment.

A form to globally merge users has been developed so that users can consolidate their accounts after the finalisation. From an engineering standpoint, this form is now fully working in our test environment. The form needs design improvements and further testing before it can be deployed.

A form to request a rename has been developed so that users who do not have global accounts can request a rename, and also so that the workload on the renamers is reduced. From an engineering standpoint, the form to request a rename has been implemented, and implementation has begun on the form that allows renames to rename users. Once the end-to-end experience has been fully implemented and tested, the form will be 'prettified'.

2014-10-27
In September, the team wrapped up the feature development for SUL finalisation. One part of the work (the steward end of the rename request form) is outstanding and will be finished in October.

In October, the team is planning to proceed into deployment and testing of the features.

2014-09-monthly
In September, the team wrapped up the feature development for SUL finalisation. One part of the work (the steward end of the rename request form) is outstanding and will be finished in October. In October, the team is planning to proceed into deployment and testing of the features.

2014-10-monthly
The major engineering development work for single-user login wrapped up this month and there are now three tools being tested on beta labs.

Special:GlobalRenameRequest is the form that users who are renamed post-finalization can fill out to request a new username and submit it to Stewards and global renamers. Special:GlobalRenameQueue allows Stewards and global renamers to manage rename requests in a simplified interface form for post-finalization requests to be sent to from Special:GlobalRenameRequest. Lastly, Special:GlobalUserMerge is in very early testing stages. This tool will allow Stewards to merge the accounts of two or more usernames owned by one person who may have multiple account names due to conflicting usernames.

Once these tools are tested out and deployed, outreach will begin by talk page contact and by email where possible with all accounts that will be renamed due to SUL finalization.

2014-11-monthly
<section begin="2014-11-monthly"/>Special:GlobalRenameRequest and Special:GlobalRenameQueue, special pages intended to help users and Steward and global renamers process SUL finalization name changes, are just about ready to move into production on Meta. Special:GlobalUserMerge required some more work this month due to database conflicts with beta labs. Once properly tested out, GlobalUserMerge will join the other two tools on Meta to complete the kit needed to process the anticipated large number of rename requests.

One last bit of engineering is being completed in November and executed in early December: contacting existing accounts with unconfirmed email addresses to request confirmation. This will allow for additional formerly globally unattached accounts to be attached without going through any forms or process before SUL finalization takes place. <section end="2014-11-monthly"/>

2014-12-monthly
<section begin="2014-12-monthly"/>Special:GlobalRenameRequest and Special:GlobalRenameQueue have tested and out are ready for production, Special:GlobalUserMerge continues to be problematic and buggy. An upstream HHVM bug that showed up in late December has caused us to turn off Special:MergeAccount, a vital function to getting unattached accounts to globalize. This is a blocker bug until it gets fixed (estimated late January).<section end="2014-12-monthly"/>