Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Archive/Merge user accounts

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Merge user accounts

  • Problem: Two user accounts of one person cannot be merged.
  • Who would benefit: Everybody: to get back an overview with whom we are working.
  • Proposed solution: Develope a version of the Mediawiki-tool that is also functioning in Wikipedia.
  • More comments:
  • Phabricator tickets:

Discussion

  • Could you point to any instances where this would legitimately be used? Otherwise this sounds like an amnesty for sockpuppets. Cabayi (talk) 09:15, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Slaney: mw:Extension:UserMerge is already deployed on Wikimedia servers, but Global User Account merges are not possible according to phab:T49918. Could you clarify which specific situation(s) you have in mind? Thanks! --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 15:02, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • There are users who use other accounts for some time. I would not like to judge about the reasons. Maybe there was not a rename-function and they changed from editing with real name to editing with pseudonym, or vice versa, or they chose to do so to have more distance from community and more focus onto the articles. In these cases putting 2 accounts back to 1 should be a good option: statistics about user activity, started articles, number of hits would be one. There would be only 1 account that is confirmed with the right to vote. What I heard was, that it was planned and tested, but after a test the login failed to unknown problems. - Slaney (talk) 15:12, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Personally I had begun with my real name 10 years ago, before creating a pseudo (I didn't know about the renaming possibilities). So I could use it. Moreover, I can see that the situation to edit anonymously before realizing that the browser wasn't logged, often happens. JackPotte (talk) 11:33, 1 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Cabayi, Slaney, and AKlapper (WMF): There are valid and allowed situations for creating another account by the same user. Our use-case in WMCZ are the Wikipedia courses – I have created 3 new accounts during the last 2 years, because I need to show to the "students" of the course (senior citizens in our case), what exactly happens when you register for the first time, what will happen with the account after my/theirs first edit and so on. All these 3 account are completely useless for me after the end of each course, so it would be nice to merge them in my primary, personal, account and tidy the usernames for others. Ping at Vojtěch Veselý, 'cause we have discussed this before --YjM (talk) 00:12, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    That doesn't seem like a great use case. You should show what happens when you create a student account. --Izno (talk) 01:21, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    There are cases with some thousand edis per account. The MediaWiki-Feature has been developed many years ago anyway (like renaming accounts as well). The last particular problems could and should be solved. -- Slaney (talk) 07:04, 10 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    @Izno: I don't fully understand what you mean by "student account"... --YjM (talk) 14:33, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree. Right now, I have roughly 20 of these useless "show-how-it-works" accounts. I need some five or seven new every year... If I can use only one, merging it at the end of the course and re-register it at the beginning of the next one and so on... that would be nice. --Vojtěch Veselý (talk) 10:48, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    However, there is the problem with these onec created sandboxes and userpages. After the merging, these should be deleted (and not redirected) to clear the space for new creating the next time.--Vojtěch Veselý (talk) 10:51, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Legoktm and Keegan (WMF): has anything technically changed in this area since it was last significantly discussed (early 2016? T49918), which might make it more feasible to look at again? (i.e. an investigation, if not actual development). If not, we'll have to decline it. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 14 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    Not really. The main change has been the introduction of the actor table, but that will only make renaming users easier, not merging users. I wouldn't say anything is technically impossible, but I can't imagine any scenario in which the development cost is worth the value provided to users. Legoktm (talk) 01:27, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]