Talk:SUL finalisation

Community discussion of hierarchy for who has priority for a username
Where is it? If it doesn't already exist, why hasn't this already been done? This can be done now before the software is written, the scripts run, and the usernames changed. Risker (talk) 02:55, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * You're one year late to the party: m:Talk:Single User Login finalisation announcement. There is m:Talk:Global rename policy in some activity now (you probably saw messages on local wikis by stewards). --Nemo 05:36, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay - so show me the hierarchy. Risker (talk) 07:42, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * You asked a discussion, I linked it. Precedences for global accounts have already been set in 2008, see m:Help:Unified login. --Nemo 07:47, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * So in other words, no, there hasn't actually been a discussion with the community specific to the hierarchy of which of multiple accounts will get custody of a username that has actually come to any resolution. Nemo, you know this is what I wanted to know; it would have been okay to simply say "Risker, there is no hierarchy agreed to by the community, or even discussed or proposed to the community".  We both know that the software that will run through and change usernames to create SUL accounts needs to be programmed according to the hierarchy.  We both also know what happens when Engineering, in solving a technical problem, creates a social problen directly involving tens of thousands of users - in this case, potentially on every project, not just the noisy ones. Usernames are a big deal, and this is a serious editor retention issue.  This needs to be resolved. This is what they have their community liaisons for, to lead these kinds of discussions and obtain this kind of consensus.  Risker (talk) 08:01, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Nope. The hierarchy exists, this doesn't mean it wasn't discussed on the talks I linked. --Nemo 08:13, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Nemo, do you know what the hierarchy is? If so, please publish it or link to it.  Risker (talk) 15:14, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Hello both! Jumping in quickly - the Community Liaisons have a planning meeting early next week to begin discussing the communications plan surrounding this project. There will be hierarchy with clashing usernames, which we will be discussing with the community soon. We have a lot of work to do surrounding this change, and I admit I don't currently know all of the ins and outs of it, but I trust that I'll learn with your help :). Risker, absolutely, usernames are a big deal and something that we need to handle as sensitively as possible. More information coming soon. Rdicerb (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 26 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Hello . I think the most useful suggestion I could give you at this point is to follow the lead of the Legal and Community Advocacy team in the manner in which they have handled large-scale discussions of global policies (terms of use, privacy policy, etc); they've got some pretty good practices, and there's no reason to re-invent the wheel. I know it is possible to run a script to identify how many users/which users have conflicting usernames now, although as I recall the last time it was run there were over 100K users involved.  From that list, it should be possible to run another script that will cross-reference to the "home wikis" of the users.  That can give you a list of wikis that you want to target with your messages/invitations to participate. In fact, gathering as much info as possible about the users who have conflicts and being able to present that information in the discussion will be useful, provided that it comes with a caveat that the number of users involved is fluid.  Things to consider reporting: how many users on various projects are affected; how many by user category (steward, checkuser, oversighter, bureaucrat, other permissions - there are a whole pile of them, autoconfirmed, editor, etc); number of editors affected in various strata of activity/inactivity (e.g., highly active, active in past year, inactive in past year, inactive in past 5 years, inactive more than 5 years, etc); your team can probably come up with a few other ways of slicing and dicing the affected users.  Ensure invitations go to every bureaucrat noticeboard/renaming noticeboard on every project. And so on. Risker (talk) 05:29, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Don't fail to update the English Wikipedia
It should not have to be my or anyone else outside your team's job to have to update en:Wikipedia:Unified login/Finalisation with the latest status of your project, such as this new commitment to setting a date for finalisation by the end of September. —  Scott  •  talk  22:17, 17 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Good point, duplication is very bad. Fixed: . --Nemo 22:41, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

Notifications
I would be interested to know how affected users will be notified. For example, I have a local account in around 100 wikis and use a different username in 10 wikis, and there is another person who uses the same username as me in those 10 wikis. The issue is that this second person is active, but responds neither to messages on his talkpage nor to emails (he has no email in his preferences but has a valid email on his user page). Thus my questions are the following: This is a very important change (as all edits are attributed to usernames, thus attribution of all article edits and talk page comments should change) and this is significantly different to regular user rename process (as in most projects only inactive accounts could be usurped), thus I believe users should be adequately informed of the process and be aware of the outcome — NickK (talk) 22:25, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
 * What will be the notification policy — will users receive emails and messages on talk pages for each accounts, will users receive one message or email per group of accounts or will there just be some CentralNotice message?
 * Will lists of concerned accounts be available somewhere — for example, for local communities may be in better position to reach and help affected but active and experienced users?
 * Will users receive information whether their account will be renamed in case of clash or other accounts will be renamed?
 * What will be done with renamed users? Will there be any disambiguation for both concerned users (they will not have access to their talk page anymore and their login will change) and other users (who may still find links on discussion pages to the page already belonging to a different person and still try to send an email to a concerned user but contact a different person instead)
 * You might get a faster reply if you ask at m:Talk:Single User Login finalisation announcement instead. I would also recommend you to go to Special:MergeAccount and merge your account. That way, it will be easier to see where the user name belongs to you (those accounts will be attached to SUL) and where it belongs to someone else (those accounts will remain local).
 * I'm not sure exactly what the developers are planning, but it seems that users will be notified in some way. --Stefan2 (talk) 14:20, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the pointer, Stefan2. It also helps others that will come to that page and ask the same questions - we'll have a nice FAQ soon.
 * NickK, to the points:
 * The plan is to notify accounts that are not attached, all accounts, individually and not as a group. There's no real good way to parse which person owns which account on which wiki, and also it is imperative that every account is told individually. There can be no opportunity for "No one told me!" in this significant process.
 * A list of accounts per-wiki to post for the community's help is a wonderful idea. If feasible, I'll see what I can do to make this happen. Any and all help is sought and appreciated.
 * Yes.
 * Like the current process, all edits in page histories will have their attribution changed to point to the correct account. Old signatures is tricky - I think a nice solution would be if a WMF or volunteer developer would write a tool that a renamed user could run through their brand-new global.js on Meta that would crawl through the wikis and replace old signatures. We'll see how that goes.
 * In summary, proper communication of information is what will make this whole thing work and it is a dedicated process. Most of this work will pick up in October once the engineering is finished and the timeline is more clear. Hope this helps. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:38, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Stefan2: thanks for advicing this, but I do not know whether it will be easier to ask accounts to be usurped or deal with merging two global accounts one by one (i.e. I will definitely have to attach local accounts once I have freed global ones).
 * Keegan (WMF): thanks for your reply. I guess it will make sense to, one hand, notify affected users (it would be better if one would be able to send one message per user only, for example, by checking emails, matching passwords or checking pairs of interwikis, as receiving dozens of mails, one per account, will be annoying), on the other hand, notify local communities (that would be particularly interested in selecting users with high contributions and/or any advanced rights, as hardly anyone will try to track users with 1 or 2 edits) — NickK (talk) 22:04, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't imagine sending multiple emails. If there are email matches, that's an easy step to eliminate. Accounts will probably still get multiple brief messages on their wiki talk pages as well. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
 * But talk messages trigger enotiftalk :); and many users pay more attention to talk page messages than to emails so it's not a trivial decision to skip either of the two for users with email set. --Nemo 10:46, 4 September 2014 (UTC)
 * About the last question, is there going to be something like 61074, or is that abandoned? --Stefan2 (talk) 22:15, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
 * the ability to login with old credentials is essential to this process. It's not this particular patch, though. You can find the current one under review here. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:04, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Wrong wiki?
If I am not mistaken, this does not affect any of the millions of other users of the Media Wiki software, and does not belong on this page at all. Where this does belong is on Metawiki, the cross wiki page for all of the Wikipedia projects. Anyone can download and install the Mediawiki software on their website, and no one using those sites will ever be able to use a SUL account on those, in my understanding. I would suggest deleting this page and importing it to Wikimedia (leaving only a redirect). Apteva (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi, this page is in this wiki due to the coding/engineering tasks involved. Your objection is understandable, but it comes about 4-5 years too late, see Category:WMF Projects. If you believe the page confusing there are probably ways to improve that: as for the title, "SUL" is a nickname used only on Wikimedia projects, isn't it? The extension is called CentralAuth. --Nemo 19:57, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I have no problem if someone wants to create a page here called "CentralAuth implementation", but this statement, "Resolve any remaining clashing user names, so that in the future every user may have a single username to log in with on all wikis" has absolutely no relevance to MediaWiki, and is only referring to the Wikimedia projects. I have no reason to be referred to a MediaWiki page for an issue that only affects the Wikimedia projects. So the only part of this page that is relevant to MediaWiki is the implementation of CentralAuth - which is something that can be used by any assortment of wikis. Apteva (talk) 20:25, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Better? --Nemo 20:44, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Much better, but the issues of how to unify user names on the Wikipedia projects does not belong here, but on Meta wiki. Only the software issues of doing that belong here, not the user issues. Apteva (talk) 21:10, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The main announcement pages and user-help pages, are already at meta: Single User Login finalisation announcement (which has 7 talkpage archives) and m:Help:Unified login. This page is indeed, primarily for the software issues (although most of the Stewards and Bureaucrats who are involved, are also technically knowledgeable, hence there is a lot of overlap). HTH. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 01:30, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The finalisation announcement page is a bit strange place for discussion about the finalisation as a whole. Bever (talk) 03:55, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Finalisation, when?
I'm pretty excited about the prospect of SUL, and I was wondering when I will be able to have my global watchlist? --LT910001 (talk) 00:04, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * When I just reviewed the list with contributions of Bevers, I got the impression that the six conflicting accounts with my name have less contributions than before. Is this a result of the finalisation project, or is my memory misleading me? Bever (talk) 09:33, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Deletions and other events can reduce the visible edits of a user, but the editcount field is not necessarily updated. To run the finalisation scripts, most information in the databases has been verified and updated, so it's possible that the editcounts of those users were updated and decreased. Now they are closer to the truth. --Nemo 06:24, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Format of new names
I would like to ask attention for the comments which have been made half a year ago about the format of the new names of users who are forcibly renamed. User Wnt criticized this format even in May 2013 on Meta, but there has not been a real answer. See also meta:Talk:Single User Login finalisation announcement.
 * The tilde is an awkward choice, some people may have difficulties with typing this. For example, when followed by an n or a vowel, the tilde is places above the character (ñ, ã, õ) instead of before it, on many computers. Also the suffixes are rather long. Therefore I support Wnt's proposal to use a hyphen instead, I think there will be little cases where this would result in a new conflict.
 * Also for Wikipedia names, the suffix could be shortened to -en or -enw or -enwp instead of ~enwiki, which is not very informative anyway, aren't all WikiMedia sites wikis? Bever (talk) 11:32, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, again that choice was probably made thinking nobody would actually need to type the username on login. I hope this will prove correct...
 * The "enwiki" format for IDs is a historical thing, the databases have been called like that since the time MediaWiki was born. --Nemo 06:24, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Password safety
There is the idea that a user who is forcibly renamed, can still log on with his/her old user name and password. At least once, so that the user has an easier transfer to the new situation. But what happens when both users have the same password (12345, for example)? I think the idea is hazardous. Bever (talk) 11:38, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Practically speaking, the risk might be minimal because most conflicting accounts never cross, for instance a French-speaking user who only ever visits French wikis and an Italian-speaking user who only ever visits Italian wikis. So in most cases the login attempts will come from the correct user.
 * As for intentional "attacks", we can't do anything about them when the user chooses a weak password. In your example, the local account could already have been "stolen" by any user with the same name on another wiki by entering that password on Special:MergeAccount. So in the end the "institutional" answer is probably that accounts with weak passwords can't be protected. --Nemo 06:24, 28 March 2015 (UTC)