Help talk:Unified login/Archives/2008

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Approximate wait

It's been a long time since I read about the Unified login. I also heard that it will be running in test mode in December, but there was no notice of it. I wanted to know when, approximately, will the trial period start? Thanks for responses in advance! Artyom 14:39, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Next April 1st the UL will be up and running. Best regards, Alpertron 22:29, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
The test mode does actually work: it's available at http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MergeAccount if you have an account on the testwiki. It doesn't actually do anything to your account, yet, though; it gets as far as calculating what it would do if it were running, but won't actually do it. Ais523 17:55, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

April 1st?

Users have concerns over the date that Alpertron mentioned above, suggesting it'd be pushed back a day or two. You may read them at w:en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions#Unified Login. - Mtmelendez (Talk) 13:05, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

sorry just talked with Tim on IRC and he says that its a hoax and anyways, there is a good chance that SUL will be available sooner than you think and most probably before April..I hope Brion remembers to do so :P ..--Cometstyles 13:22, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Given the number of questions of the date when UL will be deployed, since we are no futurologists, I've given that date. It appears that only a few people knew that April 1st is the fool's day. Best regards, Alpertron 14:11, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I can't quite tell what you're saying, or if this is all still a joke... but the idea of non-namespaced unified login should be seen as a joke. If someone proposed on a non-buried policy page to arbitrarily rename tens of thousands of accounts, particularly those of people who didn't inflate their edit count enough, I'm sure it would meet with an appropriate amount of hilarity, no matter whether it's April 1st or not. Rspeer 05:25, 7 February 2008 (UTC)


Using LDAP?

Can't this be implemented just using Extension:LDAP_Authentication and use the same LDAP for all your wiki's? Or am I missing the point. Vic 23:26, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

How can you tell?

Hey guys, I'm M Johnson from Wikipedia. I'm just wondering, is there a way of telling if people have registered identically named accounts on other wikis, which share your account name? Eg. a tool of some sort where you enter an account name, and it comes up with every wiki where that account is registered?--121.221.228.148 07:29, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is. Global user contributions for M Johnson on tools.wikimedia.de - M132T003C 10:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help.--121.221.97.52 05:55, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I had forgotten where all I had set up accounts apparently. Laura Scudder | Talk 19:36, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I use Find me! It's a nifty tool. It's also common for users to track their accounts in a matrix. EVula // talk // // 20:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Unified Login is working now !!

It seems SUL is working now and you can see how it works by clicking on Special:MergeAccount.--Cometstyles 13:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

There's no such special page. It only exists on the Test Wiki, where it is in testing and does not actually implement the merge. —{admin} Pathoschild 15:59:59, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Cometstyles isn't crazy; I know for a fact that I saw that page on the 13th over on en.wp, Commons, Meta, Wikispecies, and some non-English edition of Wikipedia. EVula // talk // // 23:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I saw it too; it ran checks on accounts but did not actually do the merge. Random832 19:09, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm a sysop on en wiki, and it's actually working there (en:Special:MergeAccount). I was able to unify all my Wikimedia accounts to my home account on en wiki, despite only being a sysop on en wiki. So if you're a sysop somewhere, you should be able to do unification now. For regular users, it says, "Sorry, you don't have permission to access this page." I assume it will be opened to everyone soon. Superm401 | Talk 08:33, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
I can confirm this as well, I just unified my accounts. --Winhunter 12:04, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Potential problem

If I was a less honest Wikimedian, could I potentially make an account on a obscure language Wikipedia with the same name as a respected admin on the English Wikipedia, edit my userpage until I had more edits then them, and steal their account when the merge happened? --Arctic.gnome 16:59, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Possibly. And you would be busted for it. And the admin would get his name back. Deliberately trying to take over some established user’s name would not be worth it, at all, in terms of the effort you would have to put into it. Jon Harald Søby 09:13, 14 March 2008 (UTC)


In this case, you would have a different password and authenticated email address from the admin, so if I understand right an automatic merge won't happen. Since you have more edits, you will become the primary account. The admin still won't be merged into your account unless they confirm. Instead, they have a fixed period of time to rename their account or have a bureaucrat forcibly rename your account.
However, on the other hand, if the admin has more edits (likely), they will be the primary account. You could then log on on another wiki and confirm that your account belongs to the admin. However, I think all that would do is lock you out. You wouldn't know the admin's password, so you wouldn't be able to log in as them, and since you claimed to be then, your old account is now gone.
So the only real way to steal A's account is if A has fewer edits, ignores the ongoing merge until too late, and then their account is automatically merged into yours. This is unlikely to work for an admin since we tend to pay attention at least occasionally.
As noted, bureaucrats can always intervene manually, and will probably have to do in a few cases. Superm401 | Talk 08:25, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

What will I be able to do when this test starts?

When the test for admins starts and I set it up through my admin account, will I be able to sign in to any project without making an account there first or is it just merging existing accounts? --130.15.164.77 01:54, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm an admin at en wiki, and I ran the unification there. I'm now able to log in anywhere, including cbk-zam.wikipedia.org, which I never even read before. Superm401 | Talk 08:36, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Tool to list the username in all wikis

I have registered on many Wikimedia wikis over the years, mostly to add pictures from commons or to place interwiki links. The problem is I do not remember where exactly I registered my username. I thought it might be useful for me (and for others) if there were a software tool which lists all the wikis where a certain username is registered, like the tool on Commons which makes a list on which wikis a certain image is used (in the header of each picture file in Commons). Perhaps a helpful soul could create something like that. Then it would be much easier to check if all the email addresses in the accounts are properly set, or all use the same password. Thanks, Longbow4u 11:08, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~vvv/sulutil.php --Ptr ru 12:54, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Another tool would be FindMe. Once you find out what all the accounts are, I suggest saving them in a wikimatrix. EVula // talk // // 13:49, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, Ptr ru's tool worked for me. Longbow4u 16:50, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Usurp not possible when unification has started?

I just experienced the following: I started the unification process on my home wiki. I then saw that my username was taken on spanish wikipedia, but the account had zero edits. I created a new account on spanish wikipedia named "Kju (de)" and then asked a bureaucrat of them to usurp this to "Kju". This however proved to be impossible because the system prohibited renaming "Kju (de)" into "Kju" because "Kju" is blocked by the already started unification process. The bureaucrat then just renamed the "wrong" Kju into some other username which freed Kju for me, but my new Account "Kju (de)" remains.

This is not a problem in this case, but it will become a problem regarding a usurp request i made on english wikipedia. I am also "Kju (de)" there, because "Kju" is also taken by another user with zero edits there. However because of the problem described above, it will not be possible to rename "Kju (de)" to "Kju", therefore my account on en wikipedia (with edits!) can not be unified with my other accounts. I believe this is a bug or at least a serious shortcoming. Burocreauts should probably be able to override the unification lock on a rename for situations like this. -- Kju 16:54, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I also came across that problem at three projects where the ursupation was done after I activated SUL. It was not possible to merge my old account with my global account anymore. In those project it didn't matter much because it were about no more than 30 edits each, but there are still three other accounts (where I haven't asked for ursup yet since I still have no answer from the owners) where I have partly several hundreds of edits. -- Cecil 16:58, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
See Bug 13507. --MiCkEdb 17:41, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Clarification

Any documentation on this so far is either vague or case-specific, and I have been unable to find anything similar to my situation regarding different names on multiple wikis. Given that it appears this will be enabled for all users in the near future, I'd like to know what will happen to my accounts when I want to merge them.

My situation is:

  • My main account is en:User:MTC.
  • I also have accounts named "MTC" on the es, fo, fr, is, it, nl, pt, sv and tr Wikipedias, and on the English Wiktionary and Wikiquote.
  • Accounts named "MTC" are also registered on the German and Polish Wikipedias and on Commons, but they are not mine. The Polish and Commons accounts appear to be the same person.
  • I have accounts named "МТК" (Cyrillic characters) on be-x-old, ru, sr and uk Wikipedias.
  • I have accounts named "M132T003C" here and on the German Wikipedia.
  • I also have ja:利用者:マシュー・カトラー, sk:Redaktor:MTK and el:Χρήστης:ΜΤΚ (Greek characters).
  • I have a second account on the Greek (el) Wikipedia named "MTC", created to claim back edits from an article imported from the English Wikipedia.
  • All my accounts have the same email address and password. (Even the two Greek accounts, I previously thought it was impossible to have the same email address on two accounts in the same wiki…)

I would like all my accounts to be unified into a global account named "MTC". It will obviously be simple enough to unify the accounts currently named "MTC", but that's where it gets tricky, so here are my questions:

  1. Will all my accounts that aren't named "MTC" have to be renamed in order to be unified?
  2. If so, will they need to be renamed before I create a global account? (Will creating a global "MTC" account prevent an admin/bureaucrat/steward from renaming any one of my other accounts to "MTC"?)
  3. Do global accounts have to have unique email addresses? For example, if I were to run the merge on the English Wikipedia to create a global account named "MTC", and then try to run a merge here on meta to create a global account named "M132T003C", would it fail because they have the same email address?
  4. Can global accounts be merged with other global accounts? For example, if I can make global accounts named "MTC" and "M132T003C", can I then merge them into one global account named MTC?
  5. (Not specific to unified login) Can local accounts be merged with other local accounts? For example, can el:Χρήστης:ΜΤΚ be merged with el:Χρήστης:MTC, considering both have contributions? If not, then why hasn't this been implemented?
  6. What will happen if Polish/Commons MTC (or even German MTC) tries to create a global account before I do? (Considering I have far more contributions on the English Wikipedia than he does in total).

I await the answers with interest, hopefully they will come before unified login is enabled for all users. - M132T003C 20:39, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I have two answers for you, perhaps someone else will provide the rest:

  1. Yes, I think so
  2. They should be renamed prior to the unification, or else renameing is prevented (see Bug 13507 for more info).
  3. No answer I'm afraid (but I don't think so)
  4. No answer I'm afraid
  5. No answer I'm afraid (but I think that "first come, first served" is the way this works).
  6. No answer I'm afraid

--MiCkEdb 20:53, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with MiCkE regarding answers to questions 1-3, and will try to provide answers for the remaining questions:

  1. Probably not.
  2. I found an archive of an interesting feature that was being implemented on English Wikipedia a couple of years ago, see Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. So I guess it is technically possible. You might want to ask a developer to do it for you, probably a developer on the local wiki.
  3. Although the H:UL article used to say that the user with the most contributions will get the global username, I think you would be better off if you try to unify your accounts before someone else with a username identical to yours does it on other wikis. But I'm almost sure that if you ask a steward (or whoever will have the right to do so) to give you the global username and offer a new one to the user with fewer edits than you, it won't be a big deal.

Cheers, Artyom 22:25, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks both of you for answering, I've now requested a username change on all wikis where I didn't have MTC. - M132T003C 06:17, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Will it be possible to tell which users are unified?

Will it be possible to tell which users are unified? For example, if I encounter user JohnSmith on fr, can I verify that he is the same person as JohnSmith on en? Will I be able to tell which Wiki is his home wiki? Or will this all be private information? Bovlb 23:03, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

You can't at this point. It's not private information since everything is still local to the different wikiws except the login. --Winhunter 16:41, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually, check out http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/ca.php 207.145.133.34 22:10, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Grammar issue

When account unification is complete from the English Wikipedia, I get the following message: 'The account named "Graham87" on each the following sites have been automatically attached".... This should be changed to 'The account named "Graham87" on each of the following sites has been automatically attached". Thanks, Graham87 23:42, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Spelling

As there is no page edit facility Help:Unified login#Frequently asked questions can an administrator correct "wikis seperatly" to "wikis separately"? Ergateesuk 10:07, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Done, thanks for pointing this out. (No administrator needed here, any user registered at meta at least four days ago can edit this page.) --UV 11:53, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

What happens to users who do not unify their accounts?

What will happen to users that do not unify their accounts? Or to usernames that are registered on just a few wikis, all with 0 edits? Will they be unified automatically if they have the same email/password? For example, if username WhateverUser123 is registered on enwikipedia, commons, ruwikibooks and frwikiversity, but none of these accounts have edits, can another user register the global username (in 2 months from now, let's say) WhateverUser123, or will the system tell that the username cannot be registered because accounts already exist on several projects? Artyom 23:43, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Anyone? Artyom 14:10, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Anyone? Snorre 04:32, 20 June 2008 (UTC) (en:User:Snorre)
Eventually, the plan is to forcibly unify all accounts.  – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 13:02, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Different passwords

Hello, I'm an admin at the nl-wiki and some time ago I made my password on the nl-wiki a little longer to make it more difficult to guess (the old one wasn't easy to guess but still better safe than sorry; especially if you're an admin). On the other about 40 Wikipedia's and related projects I kept using the old one. For unified login it seems they all have to be the same so I temporarily changed my password on the nl-wiki back to the old one and merging went OK.

My main question is can I easily change the passwords on all the projects by doing it at a central page? If so, how can I do that? If not, can I change some passwords locally and in the future do the rest or do they have to be identical?

Best Regards, Robotje 12:43, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you need to have the same password to unify accounts. I am an administrator at en.wp and I've done something similar to you - a longer/complex password here and simpler ones elsewhere. Special:MergeAccount still lists all my accounts even though the password may be different. I think the check is done both through passwords and email addresses. All accounts with the same password or the same email address are returned. But this is just my guess, you'll have to get this confirmed by someone knowing about SUL. - 59.95.231.199 15:38, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't know how Special:MergeAccount lists the accounts, however, I'm quite sure the password is a global setting in SUL - i.e. if you change the password on any project using the global username, it will change the passwords on every other project as well. — Timichal 15:42, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
I think Robtje meant changing password before merging. I would say just try to run Special:MergeAccount first, it also prompts you to enter the different password in case it cannot merge automatically. --Winhunter 16:40, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
In my case the merge wasn't possible until after I changed the password at nl-wiki to the same one as on all the other 40+ projects. Now I want to restore the previous password on nl-wiki. If that would mean it changes automatically on all the projects, that's good. On the other hand if it can only be changed locally (i.e. changing needs to be done 40+ times on all projects I made an account for in the past) is something I hope to avoid. If really needed, that's OK with me too. If there is a special page to change it in one go, it would be great to know. I will you posted when I find out more. - Robotje 17:15, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
It turns out that if I change the password on one project, the password is changed on all the projects. The only strange thing is, if I try to change it on the nl-wiki where I'm an admin, I get the question if I want to change it for user "<>" of for user "Robotje". Maybe some more translation is needed. Anyway, it now works fine, on all the projects I now have the password that is a little harder to guess. Thanks for all replies/advice/help. - Robotje 17:32, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
When I merged, it prompted me to enter the passwords for accounts where the password was different. However, after the merge all my passwords were the same as the initial one I used to merge the accounts. --EncycloPetey 20:36, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Changing passwords

Is it possible to change my password once my accounts are merged? Will this change the password for just the one account, or for all accounts at once? --EncycloPetey 20:34, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

If it's handled like it is at Wikia, your account is just that, a single account, which works across all projects. You'd only need to change it at one place. EVula // talk // // 20:37, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
Once your accounts are merged, changing the password anywhere will change it everywhere. I've just tested this with my own unified account, and I understand this is one of the main effects of the current unification code. Superm401 | Talk 01:35, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. --71.202.255.136 18:46, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Problem password in french WP

All of the accounts that I've registered for came up correctly during the preprocessing for unification, except my account in the French wikipedia[1]. For some reason, it doesn't seem to use the same password as my other accounts, and I'm tried every combination I can think of. I asked it to mail me a new one, but apparently for some odd reason I didn't give it an email address when I created an account there--which seems strange, I'm pretty sure I did so in all my other accounts.

I double-checked my contribution list there[2]; all I did was a bunch of dog-related edits, as my French isn't that great and I was working heavily in the english dog articles during that time. So--has someone else doing unification somehow preempted that account? (If so, they haven't made any edits since then.) There are a lot of User:Elfs in other languages that aren't me. How do I find out whether someone else has taken over my account? Or how else do I get my password reset? I don't understand French well enough to be able to navigate there and get assistance on that wiki. Anyone? Elf 20:18, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Since the userpage links to Your en.wiki account and this link was added by the fr.wiki Elf, it should be no problem to have the account merged to Yours as soon as the merging is opened again. Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 18:59, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Question

Is it working now? Zlllll 23:53, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes for all sysop. --Winhunter 12:38, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Special:MergeAccount missed one

Because I had forgotten most of my passwords, I spent some time over the last couple of days getting new passwords for all of my various accounts and changing them to match my primary (en) account.

Then I went to Special:MergeAccount on en, and it worked alright, except that it missed my account on lmo.wikipedia.org.

Is there a better place to report this? Do I need to get a bugzilla account? [Apparently bugzilla is not included in my new SUL, although meta is]

Thanks. ~ BigrTex 00:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Bugzilla is not a wiki, so that should not be included. As for a missing account, that should perhaps be asked about in #wikimedia-tech, or reported to bugzilla if you're sure that the account should have been merged (ie was the same username, same email and whatever other criteria there are). – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 01:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
It will only automatically merge accounts with edits, and lmo:Utente:BigrTex has no edits. Up until yesterday, cases like this were being handled at Steward requests/Usurpation, but that appears to have been stopped for the moment. - MTC 06:16, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your help. According to sulutil, I had 27 edits on lmo. After further review, it looks like those 27 edits were to pages that have since been deleted. I made some edits to my userpage at lmo, and now it appears on my Special:MergeAccount page - I'm not sure if it was the edits or something else that caused it, since I didn't check until after I made the edits. I didn't really expect to get a bugzilla account with my unified account, but I've never really wanted a bugzilla account either. Now to get back to work... ~ BigrTex 00:52, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Howto

The page should have a howto: i.e. how to actually go about unifying your accounts. I'll start a section for this. Superm401 | Talk 07:20, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Rename blocked user

Let me know if this is already solved or asked matter. I'm a bureaucrat on ja.wikt and ja.books. After you rename User:A, a blocked account, to User:B, A is still displayed in Special:IPBlockList but B isn't. Even though A has not been blocked and B has probably. To solve this matter we have to unblock once and reblock, but it's complicated. IMO, current IPBlockList specification should be fixed. Thanks, e-Goat 15:42, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

bugzilla:13555VasilievVV 16:48, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

What's the significance of the home wiki?

I contribute mainly on en:Wikipedia but since I pushed for the creation of tl:Wikipedia in 2004, I was made a bureaucrat/sysop there. I could try merging my accounts from tl:Wikipedia but I read that that would become my home wiki, but I prefer my home wiki to be en:Wikipedia. Is there any significance for the home wiki? Can the home wiki be changed later? --seav 01:29, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is changeable later. Mønobi 02:13, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. What about the significance? Is there anything special about a user's home wiki when he's logged in it that's not present in other wikis? --seav 05:26, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
As far as I see, the settings of the gobal username itself in your preferences. Bináris 12:47, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
No I think that has to do with wether or not you are an admin or not. I can see the global username settings on both wikis where I am an admin, not just the home wiki. The significans of the home wiki has to do with the merge process it self, as far as I can tell. The password and e-mail settings of your home wiki becomes your global settings once you have merged your accounts. --MiCkEdb 14:00, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
You can only merge your account from your home wiki. I've tried merging my account from another wiki where I'm a sysop and was told that wasn't possible, because that wasn't my home wiki. --Erwin(85) 10:46, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
I just wonder how to change my home wiki if I would like to.--Jusjih 04:20, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
You can’t do that yet. Jon Harald Søby 06:35, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I merged my accounts on English Wikiquote, where I am an admin with some other user rights, but the system said meta was my home. Another admin of us who is however no English Wikipedia admin said he was indicated English Wikipedia as his home (see q:WQ:AN). There may be no substantial harm but looks a bit twisted. --Aphaia 07:32, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Home wiki home page usurping others

There are several things I do not understand in the documentation. (Since I'm not an administrator, I don't have to worry personnally for some time, but anyhow I'd like to get this right.) I have a number of accounts in different languages, with identical user names, confirmed e-mail addresses, and passwords; but different user pages. It should be great to merge the accounts in several ways; but I really, really want to retain a user page in German on dewiki, one in Swedish on svwiki, and a Latin one in lawiki. Now, the documentation on this page doesn't seem to say that i couldn't do this; but one of the bug reports quoted the following system message at merging time:

The password and e-mail address set at this wiki will be used for your unified account, and your user page here will be automatically linked to from other wikis. You will be able to change which is your home wiki later.

Does this mean that all my user pages but one will be replaced by redirects???-JoergenB 21:07, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

No, your user accounts will be linked to the global account. I will change this for clarity. – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 22:30, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, things feel better now:-)-JoergenB 13:40, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
The page now makes no mention of 'user pages'. I guess user pages should be listed among the things which are not affected (?) -- Harry Wood 14:46, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Unified watchlist

It would be nice to have one page where one could see all his/her watchlist. --Steinninn 11:49, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

See Bug 3525. Titoxd(?!?) 08:32, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Availability for non-Admin Users

when will this become available for all users?--Pewwer42  Talk  16:12, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes please! I'm a regular contributor to both commons and en.wikipedia, and an occasional contributor elsewhere and would love to get a unified account - assuming I don't collide with someone else. Is there any timeframe for potentially making it available to regular users? Karora 02:49, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
SUL will be available for all users, but AFAIK there's no timeframe. --Erwin(85) 07:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Some questions

I've read through all the pages about unified login, but I still have some unanswered questions:

I am User:Sam on Enlish Wikipedia (admin), commons, wikimedia and mediawiki. I've unified these accounts. I usurped "Sam" at Wiktionary. I have an account on German Wikipedia, with a different name, someone else registered as "Sam", but there are no edits. I could usurp, but I don't speak German well enough to figure out how to find where to ask. There are OVER SIXTY other projects that have a User:Sam who is not me. I don't mind, because I have no intention of editing on those projects just now. But what should I do if I change my mind, and there is an active user on the other project? Down the road will we get to a point when there cannot be more than one user with the same name? Will those 60 users have to be renamed?

The biggest question I have is about transparancy. If eventually, all the other Sams out there have to be renamed, how will those users be distinguished from me? If they get renamed, will User:Sam on their project be a redirect to their new name? What If I want to start editing on that project? Should I warn some of these users of the problems ahead of time so they can establish a new identity soon? For now, I will just edit anonymously on projects that I cannot log into using "Sam", but I'm still wondering what will be happening down the road. Any clarification and advice would be appreciated. Sam 06:43, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

From what I understand, at some future point in time (after numerous opportunities for renames and warnings have passed) there will be a scripted unification. One of the Sams will "win" the name (likely you), and the others will be force-renamed by the software if they still haven't been renamed by then. It's likely that a large number of emails will be sent notifying users that this process is about to occur. As none of this is set into stone yet, many things about this may change. I'd suggest just watching this page for details. ~Kylu (u|t) 06:59, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
At the German wikipedia, the place to ask for a zero-edits account to be renamed is [3]. 1= username to be usurped, 2= your current username, 3= reasons and diff-links if necessary.--UV 13:02, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Would it make sense to have some multi-language templates to use to help this process along? Does anyone have an idea how many users will be in the same situation that I describe above? With a template I could post a standard warning readable in many languages, warning the users that their username is likely to be lost due to SUL, and they would probably benefit by renaming. The template could be copied to every project, so someone like me could easily post the warning on the 62 user-pages that share my name. Then the person would know what is coming, and they could talk to me, or request a rename. Is this worth doing, or are cases like mine fairly rare? -- Sam 11:13, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
As a start, we should focus on translating Help:Unified login and linking to it. I requested at Talk:Communications_subcommittees/Trans#Help:Unified_login that this be made a high-priority translation. Superm401 | Talk 02:42, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Comment

I just added links to a Commons page on many different languages. It was easy to log in to each language's Wikipedia (some for the first time), but my favorite part was being able to change the preferences so I could see most of the menus in English. I love not having to guess which button to hit by location! Royalbroil 13:54, 5 April 2008 (UTC) (English admin)

I don't want to decrease your happiness, but this was the case earlier, too. I was able to change the language in my preferences before SUL, and I had to guess only once which was the tab of the preferences, but that could be seen at the bottom of the screen while moving the mouse. :-) Bináris 14:17, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
You can change it without even having to log in. Try appending ?uselang=en (or &uselang=en for pages that have index.php in their URL) and you'll see the same effect. Titoxd(?!?) 08:34, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Changing e-mail after unifying accounts

I have a global account and would like to change my e-mail address associated with my accounts. When I change and confirm the new e-mail, I can see it reflected in my preferences on that site, but when I log out and log back in, it reverts to the address listed when I created the global account. Does this happen to anyone else? Is there a trick to this that I don't yet know? WODUP 16:10, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Have you changed your address on your home wiki? If not, please try so. Bináris 16:44, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I have. WODUP 19:24, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Just a quick note to note that this has now been resolved. :) WODUP 07:50, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Deselect account

It may has some accounts of the same username that are not owned by the same person, but accidentally have the same password. For these accounts which have same password, but particular user does not own all of them, and don't want to merge all, is there the mechanism for this user to deselect those accounts during the unifying process? --Ans 14:14, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Extremely good question! :-) IMHO this should not be the responsibility of the user that he doesn't steal other users' account. The good solution is if the system does not accept passwords that are too simple or too similar to the username. Bináris 04:33, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Finding foreign language bureaucrats

I want to usurp my username on some foreign language wikipedias. Shouldn't be too hard, as on several they have no edits/are indef blocked etc.

Trouble is my Russian/Italian/Spanish etc isn't so hot (!). Is there an easy way to find bureaucrats in those languages who'll speak my language, or am I better off finding a Wikimedia steward who can do the lot for me? --Dweller 11:55, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi, normally it is no problem to find out a users language because lots of people use bable templates, if not, try a shot in the blue with English, use a simple language so that they could make use of babelfish-like services to understand what You wrote. If You have sul already activated but want to have some userpages renamed to the global name You will have to ask for deleting Your global account first because of a bug. If the accounts just have to be moved out of the way it is no problem.
I would also suggest to write the burocrat You want to contact via Special:Emailuser because in my experience this is much faster.
Hope that helped, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 13:20, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Not sure I understood all of that. How do I find bureaucrats in other language Wikipedias? I cannot navigate the Wikipedias because I don't understand them. --Dweller 13:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
You just find them with xx:Special:Listusers/bureaucrat, replace xx with the correct language code or paste Special:Listusers/bureaucrat in the searchfield of the wiki in question, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 13:38, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
It is alwaays a good idea to login to the wiki in question. The login/account creation pages allow you to switch to a language you understand and after login this language is used as your navigation language permanently. --I 15:26, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. I'm making (slow) progress. --Dweller 09:27, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I could help you with Russian. Drop a message at my English Wikipedia talk page if you need help :) Artyom 15:24, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

SUL for bots in the second step

I suggest registered bots beeing the second group who can unify their accounts before SUL opens for every editor, because

  • many of the bots really do need to be able to edit in many projects
  • this solution could make possible an extended test for SUL/usurpation/bcrats with new testers before the whole population appears ante portas :-)
  • editors who maintain a bot are more educated in technical processes and more familiar with Wikimedia than the avarage of people, which was also a reason to select admins in the first step
  • local admins and bcrats could find the owners of the bots in an easier way if they forget to give their data on a certain wiki.

And a question on the last item: is there any possibility to determine the home wiki of an editor? -- Bináris 12:31, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

You can check the home wiki of an editor by running sulutil. If you run it, it will display the home wiki at the bottom of the list. I guess by default a user's home wiki is the wiki where the user has the most edits (or had at the time of unification). Artyom 12:00, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! Bináris 13:26, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

SUL pilot over?

It appears SUL is no longer up, have mergers been removed, or is the interface just down? xaosflux Talk 04:25, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to Tim Starling for restoring this (was inadvertently disabled on some servers). xaosflux Talk 11:52, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Bug, or misunderstanding?

I'm an admin on en.wiki. I set up my global account several weeks ago. Today, out of curiousity, I logged out, deleted all my cookies, cleared my cache, etc, and tried to set up the account "Barneca" on it.wiki, with a completely different password, mostly to see what the error message looked like. To my surprise, it.wiki allowed me to create the account. I did it again on no.wiki, just to be sure. I thought one of the advantages of a global account was to call "dibs" on that name on all the remaining wiki's (unless someone already had that name somewhere already), to help prevent impersonations on other wikis. Why wasn't I prevented from creating a new "Barneca" account unless I used my global password (so it would know it was me)?

  • Did I misunderstand, and my global account does not prevent someone else from creating an account with my en.wiki name on other wikis?
  • Or did the software know that I was making the request from the same IP I usually edit from on en.wiki, so it allowed it?
  • Or is it a bug?

Thanks. --Barneca 18:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Do the projects show up when you (logged-in) check w:en:Special:MergeAccount? (fastest way is to load the page and then use your browser's Find feature to look for "it." and "no." EVula // talk // // 19:17, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, they showed up as "unmerged" or something similar, and it was seamless to incorporate them into my Global account; I just had to give the password. But my point is, I didn't think it was possible to create them at all, unless I used my global password. (and I don't have to search that many; I'm no EVula. I've only got 11 accounts, and there's only a realistic chance I'll edit 5-6 of those.) --Barneca 22:21, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Er, yeah, as soon as I posted that, I realized that you probably wouldn't have as many accounts to sift through that I do, what with you being a sensible human being and all...
I'm guessing that the password is what allowed you to bypass the username filter. What about registering somewhere with a totally different password? I'd try it myself, but it'd take me too long to find a site I'm not already registered at. ;) EVula // talk // // 22:27, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, didn't explain well. Let's say (don't panic, I'm not an idiot) that my global password was "fred". I created barneca on it.wiki with a password of "ralph". It let me do it. I then changed the password to "fred" (because I didn't want to screw anything up and prevent eventual absorption into the Collective), logged into my global account, and the it.wiki account was listed under "not merged". I entered the password "fred" in (because I'd changed it), and it joined the global account.
But this means that anyone could have created the account with "ralph", and started editing independently. --Barneca 22:32, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
Must have either been a temporary bug, or a bug that someone fixed (if so, thanks!); it's working the way I expect it to now. I was just prevented from creating "Barneca" on other wiki's unless I used my global account password. All is well. --Barneca 19:03, 13 May 2008 (UTC)


ya that is exactly what I wanted to say ... I have created my global account Chaos ..with some exceptions on some wiki cause of registration .. but I expected that this global account will prevent anybody from registering with the same name ... surprisingly before few days some one register with my username in sl.wp .. I tried to register with different pass in some wiki,s ..and it works .... that should be fixed or i will have to upsurp 20 accounts rather than 10 accounts after few monthes :) --Chaos 18:26, 15 May 2008 (UTC)


apparently u have to login once in some wiki with ur global account to register some login ..that what could prevent another guy from creating an account with ur name ... i hope that sul developed rapidly to check the SUL before it permits some guy from registration --Chaos 19:16, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I did what Barneca explained right now, and it’s true. Someone could steal my name, and with my not having the password, I can’t merge them. And, since the global account is already created, it will require an unmerge to usurp the account! See bugzilla:14248 (forgive me if someone has already mentioned the bug). It’ll be fixed in rev:35340 — H92 (t · c · no) 22:00, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Fixed in rev 35340. en.wikipedia is at rev 35266. Kagee 22:02, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

SUL on other projects than wikipedia

Hi all! I've just completed the procedure for the SUL, and the login works on all the wikipedias, but on other projects (wikisource, meta, etc.) I cannot login anymore neither with the old nor with the unified password. And yes, the SUL process was completed on all my logins and no conflicts showed up. The problem appears to be shared by other users having it.wiki as the main login --212.50.147.101 20:30, 27 May 2008 (UTC) (AKA User:Rutja76, who cannot login here anymore due to the above)

Update: now it allows the login, although it's not automatic --Rutja76 10:01, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
It's designed that way since each wiki is still a seperate wiki, SUL allows you to use a common username/password but you still need to login to each individually. --Winhunter 12:03, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Yesterday evening (EET) I was automatically logged on all the wikipedias I tried (non just the ones I was already registered in), but on the other side I could not log on in other wikipedia projects, not even here on meta. Today I can login everywhere, but only manually --Rutja76 15:00, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
That is because the configuration was changed for a while. AFAIK, it is now set so you will be logged in wherever you go (except fishbowl/private wikis and the wikimedia.org domain, where you will have to log in explicitly).  – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 22:43, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Home wiki changing

How can I change my home wiki? ro:User:Remigiu

That's not possible currently. And it isn't really important – it only has a function in the database, not for anything else. Jon Harald Søby 20:44, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Example: My 'home wiki', for some obscure reason, is the one where I don't participate. Any logic out there? commons:User:NVO / en:User:NVO / ru:User:NVO. 91.78.103.81 20:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Important or not, it would be nice: my enwiki and frwiki accounts have almost the same number of edits, but frwiki has a few more, so Unified Login designated that as my home account even though I would have preferred enwiki, I started the procedure from enwiki, and the Unified Login procedure told me, before I agreed to the changes, that "I would be able to change my home page later". I understood that as meaning that as soon as my accounts would be unified, I could select some preference or something, to change my home account. But I cannot, and feel like having been lied to. If I had understood the implications, I might have temporarily cancelled unification, found enough enwiki articles with typos in them to let me increase my enwiki editcount to just above the threshold, and only then have unified my accounts. — Tonymec 12:40, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree that we should be able to change our home wiki. Mine is set as Simple Englsih Wikibooks, even though I only have five edits there and I don't plan on editing there anymore. --Andrew Kelly 10:55, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Unified login

For some reason I thought that by logging in at one place, I would be logged in everywhere I have an account. Will this be implemented in the future? Also, if they will be implemented, how long till we get a unified watchlist, userpage, talkpage? Jkasd 05:07, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

This is already the case. There's a shared cookie. So logging in at one place will automatically log you in at another wiki assuming you have a global account. You might have to log out and log in again to create the shared cookie though. I don't know about the watchlist etc. --Erwin(85) 06:54, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Seems to be working now. Jkasd 14:57, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

searching for conflicts

Is there a way for users to easily search for conflicts? This may involve Special:CentralAuth, which non-stewards may not access. Thanks. here 12:37, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

You can use Special:MergeAccount or get a list of wiki's with a certain user name with SUL util. --Erwin(85) 15:09, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

SUL attempt conflict

The tools available to me indicate that I registered this username earliest on both the English Wikipedia (User ID 27731, which I registered sometime in 2003 or 2004, I believe) and the English Wikiquote, have more edits (593 on my Wikiquote account, 24 on Wikipedia, plus a few edits on 8 other English Wikimedia wikis), and yet after several attempts beginning within an hour or two after the SUL became generally available I was not permitted to create the SUL because it was declaring a more recently created account than mine on the Turkish Wikipedia with only 527 edits was being considered as the Home account. Even before some recent activity in the last day my count was well above the Turkish one, at about 572, and though the Turkish account is an active one which I have no desire to usurp, there is no indication that this account has even been used this week, and I am assuming that no effort to consolidate the accounts was made by this account. I don't know what policies exist or are being devised about such conflicts, but I do wish to register the situation that exists and, if it is still possible, to claim the SUL rights. ~ Silver Surfer 17:58, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I checked into this wiki yesterday hoping to find some info as to how I might proceed, and if it was still possible for me to claim the SUL, but didn't know where to post the situation, and decided I would just go on editing. Today I noticed my preferences on a site indicated I was an "autoconfirmed" user, and I knew I had not succeeded in doing any Unification. Just for additional info: I registered Silver Surfer at the English WIkipedia in 2003 or 2004, at English Wikiquote in February 2007, and on the other English Wikis in June 2007, and have been editing on them since before the Turkish account was ever even created (in July 2007). ~ Silver Surfer 18:14, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

If you check [4] you will find that the Turkish account has the greatest number of edits, so that user can actually ask for the SUL and usurp your accounts. Best regards, Alpertron 19:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for that info. It seems the tool I was using to monitor the situation was deficient and had given me a false sense of security, and left me perplexed when I initially failed at getting the SUL. The situation is now resolved to my satisfaction. ~ Silver Surfer 00:22, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Someone's using the same name as me

I've just unified my account on the English wikipedia and the commons to discover that somebody on the German wikipedia is using my name [5] who is most definately not me. As I don't speak German, I don't know whether this person has chosen this name independently, unaware of my existence, or is trying to impersonate me. What should be done in this situation. I don't mind as such, as long as no-one gets the impression that we are the same people. G-Man 22:20, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

You should request that the username be usurped for you, probably.  – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 22:44, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
  • The German is most of a year newer than you, has about a fifth of your edits. I'm shocked -- shocked -- to find that two people thought of that name [wink], but if they're pretending to be you, they're doing a lousy job of it, since they say they're from SW Germany and you say you're from the UK. Open the acct de:User:enG-Man and introduce yourself in English, which they claim to speak pretty well. If you can't reach a mutually satisfactory approach, you'll presumably be able to shut him down (guessing, since i haven't researched :de:WP's usurpation policy), but i'll bet you'll like each other.
    (There's another Jerzy out there with 200+ edits; i'm sure he's pretending to be me, since why else would someone who speaks Polish want to use "Jerzy" as an ID, huh?[wink] My plan, tho, is to tell him that if he really likes the ID enuf to forgo the option of having a unified-login, i won't try to usurp it out from under him as long as we can agree on a notice to go on his user & talk pages that mentions explicitly that he's not me. Of course, YMMV.)
    I assume you know the German is the last fly in the ointment: old G-Man accounts can persist if not usurped, but no new ones can appear, i'm pretty sure.
    --User:Jerzy·t 08:11, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Future features

Are there plans for the inclusion of a feature, in the future, that will make it possible to add accounts to the global account that were not renamed prior to merging? Unfortunately, I forgot to have one of my usernames renamed prior to merging. Kal (talk) 05:53, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

You can have your global account deleted temporarily, have that account renamed, and then re-merge the account. See Steward requests/SUL requests. Cheers, Daniel (talk) 05:55, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Which wiki is home?

How is the home wiki assigned? My understanding was that it is the wiki where you initiate unification. However, the page currently says it is the wiki where you have the most edits. Superm401 | Talk 20:32, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I also think and have been told that is it the wiki where you initiate unification. Addshore 07:29, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
No, it's the one with the highest privileges, or failing that, the one with the most edits. I started merging from enwiki but got my frwiki account as the home account because it has a few more edits. However, the merge page told me I would be able to change my home wiki after merging and I believed it. I vainly searched for how to do it. Now, after reading this discussion page, it seems it was a lie or at best a case of wishful thinking. IIUC, changing your home wiki will perhaps be possible at some future time but no one's willing to venture even a roughly approximate ETA. -- Tonymec 21:14, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Different names, no name conflicts

Hi, Some confusion remains about a simple question. Suppose I participate on two projects with two usernames, and noone else has those names anywhere. To be concrete, suppose I'm Izzy53 on en:wp and Izzy54 on es:wp; and suppose that I have more edits on en, so that will be considered my home wiki. Is it expected that going through the SUL merging process would begin with a request to a bureaucrat on es to change my username there from Izzy54 to Izzy53? Thanks, Jeremy Tobacman 11:52, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

It would begin
  • either with a request to a bureaucrat on es to change your username there from Izzy54 to Izzy53
  • or with a request to a bureaucrat on en to change your username there from Izzy53 to Izzy54
  • or, if you wish to take the trouble, with a request to bureaucrats on both projects to change your username from Izzy53 or Izzy54 to IzzyTheGreatAndWonderful [supposing that SULutil tells you that IzzyTheGreatAndWonderful is not yet taken on any project]. --UV 19:33, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Help with SUL

I have merged most of my accounts under the name de:User:Esmerálda, but forgot to rename my account nl:Gebruiker:Esmeralda first (there it doesn't have the acute accent!). Can I unmerge my accounts again so I can rename my account on nlwiki and than remerge all the accounts? I'd also like to know how my chances are to take over other "Esmeralda" accounts if they have 0 edits in almost all wikipedias. Your help is much appreciated. Esmerálda 20:20, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Can someone clarify this usurpation stuff?

I always understood that the SUL woul imply that when more than one people registered with a name, there would be a procedure determining who is entitled to the name. This principle is reminded for instance in the section "SUL attempt conflict" above, but it seems to be just that: a principle with no implication.

My SUL failed for a good deal because of a massive identity theft that happened 2 years ago, linked to Vandalism reports/BogaertB. See this explanation on a WP:en buraucrat talk page for more details (further to that message, I could usurp on WP:en).

With the passing of time, I could usurp the most used of these accounts, and I left the rest to the SUL. Now the SUL is here, and I see that the issue is not solved. There are still some 40 fake Bradipus users out there, some without edition, some with 2 or 3 quick ones made in a couple of minutes (generally on December 4, 2006).

I went to Steward requests/SUL requests, where I was told I had to go on each Wiki with bureaucrats. In other words, I am told that I should loose my time and, more important, the time of dozens of bureaucrats all over the WP galaxy to sort out the mess created by the worst vandal WP:fr ever had!

Worse, although I recently could usurp 2 more accounts on french wikis, the usurpation was refused on the german WP because the vandal made 2 edits in december 2006! They put the request in some page for "possible future solution".

As far as I am concerned, while I was already reluctant to do a lot of work to solve an issue created by a vandal, I just do not see a solution any more.

Redux made a clever suggestion on Steward requests/SUL requests:

As part of the SUL initiative, we might consider a joint effort with all the local Bureaucrats, so that we can get a special dispensation to process such cases, where it is clearly identity theft performed in multiple projects, without the need of having the good-faith user contact God-knows-how-many local Bureaucrats and deal with the problem on a one-by-one basis.
We might create a SUL subpage and invite all the local Bureaucrats to present any opposition to this being allowed for SUL purposes only, and see if we can work something out. The interested party (the victim) would still have to present the evidence that the accounts are numerous (very important, otherwise the user can simply ask 1 or 2 local Bureaucrats and have it taken care of) and were all created as part of a vandal attack (identity theft), showing, for instance, that all of the accounts are inactive, or were used only a few times (usually for vandalism).
After all, if the process is made impossibly difficult due to vandalistic actions from the past, then the vandals eventually win out and, for the victims, it is as good as not having SUL at all.

But there was no reaction to that suggestion.

So, what about that suggestion? Or what about the proverbial easy usurpation based on the number of edits? Or what about having a policy that will make sure bureaucrats work the same all over wikis? How can I solve that german issue or any future issue? Honestly, I am getting tired of this, and knowing that the vandal, who is still active and still stalking me (he created en:Mlle Vincent Bradipus dévergondée a couple of days ago), is out there laughing because he does control my user name on 40 wikis is part of my bad mood (my contributions slowed down terribly these last months, because of this harrassment and of the lack of support I perceive). Bradipus 10:36, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

A bit confused

I'm a bit confused about this, can someone please clarify?

Say I have two accounts on two projects: user:Emu54 on en-wiki and user:Ostrich76 on fr-wiki. But I would like to have Emu54 as my username for everything else; keeping Ostrich76 for fr-wiki only. Could I have Emu54 as my SUL, but use Ostrich76 only for fr-wiki? Would this mean I have to log in and out each time I visit fr-wiki? 203.122.102.163 12:15, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the user-impact of SUL is nearly as heavy as you fear:
  1. You seem to have no interest in using both Ostrich76 and Emu54 on :fr:, and while i think you can't unify those names, there's no mention of having to unify all your IDs (even tho that choice is more likely to suit most of us).
    (You don't need to log off :fr: to use your SUL on :en: or :m:, any more than you would to be logged in to Google-mail or myYahoo, right?)
  2. If your terminal is shared, or not secured, you'll want to log out both the single and the unified acct when you leave it unsupervised. But you're more like two users, one on :fr: and one on all the others, than needing to put one identity to sleep while the other works. You can stay signed in to one or several WMF wikis, same or different names, never log off, and only log back on when you go to another terminal or the server reboots. It sounds like logging on or off a unified-acct wiki may do the same for all the others you've edited on, but that doesn't mean you can't have other accts.
--User:Jerzy·t 08:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Question

I recently set up my account for unified login, with the exception that there were already accounts using the same username as me on de: and zh:, but in reviewing the edits on de:Benutzer:Bearcat I've confirmed that while there are a few talk page edits in German that I definitely didn't make, almost everything else under that user name is an edit in English that I did make on en:. It's not overly important to me that I get control of that account, since I'm not a German speaker and would never have opportunity to use it, but I am curious to know how this kind of thing happens since it doesn't seem to have happened anywhere else. (I don't understand enough Chinese to even guess at what the deal is with zh:User:Bearcat, which doesn't actually seem to have any edit history at all from what I can tell.) Bearcat 16:58, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

The de: edits from your en: account are the result of a page being transwikied. I've had that happen to me twice. - MTC 18:55, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Minor bug unified login

I noticed that when I log in at Wikipedia it logs me into all my other accounts except for Wikispecies (http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jeepday). If I log in at Wikispecies it logs me in to Wikipedia and all the others. Jeepday 20:03, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

This appears to have been corrected. Jeepday 13:07, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

"Login" is not a verb

The "How to unify your accounts" section contains the text "you will be able to login at any public Wikimedia wiki". Please replace this instance of "login" with "log in". Watom 05:00, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Done Islander 18:24, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Question about Language

Whenever I go to a language I don't want to become a member of on wikipedia, I become a member of the language just by visiting a page of that language. I don't want this. How can I fix this. Please reply on my Wikipedia talkpage Juthani1 20:26, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

CheckUser vs. SUL

See Talk:CheckUser policy#CheckUser vs. SUL Balabiot 09:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Incorrect password

My bot stayed 3 days opened but it didn't made any edit because of this global accounts I think! When I try to enter the password, it tells me that it is wrog. Please help me!--FiriBot 19:19, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

You're using pywikipedia, I presume? This is a bug. See the bug report. According to Melancholie this problem has now gone away, so try to update your software. –Ejs-80 23:35, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Btw, I just ran svn update and now login.py works correctly. I had the same problem previously. –Ejs-80 23:38, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
How can I update the svn (I'm quite noob in using this svn) --FiriBot 16:56, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Done--Firilacroco 18:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Automated conflict resolution

Right now, if a name is used on 2 different projects and is owned by different users, the local crats of each project (or the stewards), must intervene and decide when to rename according to local policy. I would like to suggest a global naming conflict resolution process, that I think could be implemented by a software fix. Specifically it would follow the following hierarchy

  1. User with highest userright on any project, gets the name, so Crat/Checukuser/Oversight > Sysop/Bot > Other rights flag (rollback, patrol, accountcreator, surveyor) > unflagged account > non-autoconfirmed account. If both have the same terminal right, move to rule #2
  2. If both users have the same userrights' level, than the user with the same userright on the most projects gets the name. Thus a user with sysop on 2 projects would get the name over a user with it on 1 project. If none of the users have any flags, move to rule #3
  3. Each user, on their home project is assigned a point score based on this formula: 1 point for every 1,000 edits, 1 point for ever 3 months as a registered account. User with the highest point total gets the name. If both point totals are equal, move to rule #4
  4. User who is on the project that has the highest number of mainspace pages gets the name, so en.wiki > de.wiki > meta, etc
  5. Assuming they have the same userright's level, the same point score, and their home projects have the exact same number of mainspace pages, let the Cross-wiki arbitration committee would be activated to decide who gets the name.

Realistically, the odds of a dispute going past rule #3 are extremely unlikely.

One the software determines which user should have the global name, it could automatically rename the non-prevailing user from "User:Foo" to "User:-Foo-" or some other similar name. MBisanz 04:10, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

  • I don't think those criteria are crazy, but there are other relevant ones that bureaucrats may want to apply. For instance:
  1. I heard a high-contrib editor who thot they'd get SUL, but seemed to accept a objection to usurpation from a developer (i think on the basis of that status alone) and asked to be renamed.
  2. I expect to win any challenge for the SUL rights to Jerzy, but i would hope that the 200-edit user on a project i've never worked on would get a sympathetic hearing if he protested proposed usurpation, and it were the case that he was willing to add a "user-Dab'n-hatnote" box linking to my (unused) acct on that project but i refused to provide the same courtesy to him as a condition of his acceding to usurpation. I don't think your program could manage that case, nor numerous others, by Solomonic principles.
Trust to the bureaucrats, and ask for wider attention, within project or across projects, if and when it turns out you feel screwed.
--Jerzyt 06:47, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

IZAK requests about Afrikaans "Izak"

Hi. I have asked for help on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:WJBscribe#Single_User_Login_Request, perhaps someone here can help me and this will be a good test case to see how this works out:

Hi WJBscribe: Can you help me please. The latest edition of the Wikipedia Signpost article Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-05-26/Single User Login offers an important option for regular Wikipedia editors. I have been an editor since 2002 and have over 54,000 edits to my credit [6] I now wish to have the User name "IZAK" work as my default whereby it will "allow a user to reserve an account on all public Wikimedia wikis simultaneously; that is, nobody can create an account with the same username as you, and you can log onto any wiki without having to explicitly create an account there. etc etc" However, "a user on another project has the same name as you, then only one of you will be able to create a single user login account for the time being (the software will choose based on permissions (i.e. bureaucrat, administrator, etc.) and edit count)." It is indeed the case that there is another user on the Afrikaans Wiki who uses the name "Izak" ("him")-- not "IZAK" ("me") as I do but the software reads them the same -- which creates a conflict. I looked up that other user and found that he has made only TEN edits [7] from 15 November 2005 to 20 July 2007 which is about as close as any user can get to being a near-to-dormant account. I would proceed to requesting a "usurpation" of that account based on Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-05-26/Single User Login: "Note that if the other user has no contributions, it may be possible to usurp their account to resolve the conflict; however, check the usurpation policy on the relevant wiki first." -- But I am not sure who to contact here or at the Afrikaans Wiki and I would appreciate your help in resolving this or in guiding me to the right person to deal with this issue, (note, in South Africa, English is one of the official languages). See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help_talk:Unified_login for some discussions. Thanks for your help in advance. IZAK 07:18, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

A few ideas

Can we have Unified watchlists, unfied message system, unified default prefernces?

Unified message system; like on wikia

ThatWikiGuy 15:20, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

This is a great idea -- Damërung ...ÏìíÏ..._ΞΞΞ_ . 10:04, 31 June 2008 (GMT-5)

Make absolutely sure all your accounts are renamed before migrating to unified login!

I hope i'm not wasting time by requesting usurpations before migrating. The unqualified, unexplained, and (sorry!) intimidating instruction

Make absolutely sure all your accounts are renamed before migrating to unified login! Currently, bureaucrats are unable to rename users to reserved (already migrated) usernames!

at en:Special:MergeAccount and Special:MergeAccount leaves me in doubt just what accounts should be renamed.

  1. The confusion begins with the absurdity of treating it as a precise statement of what it is addressing: Surely if i am both en:User:Jerzy and m:User:Jerzy (as i am), and there were no other Jerzys in the WM family, i would be stupid to rename both my accounts before migrating. So something imprecise has instead been said.
  2. Well, it would make sense, if were i both m:User:Jerzy and wikt:User:Rumplestiltskin, that i should have one of those accts renamed to match the other, before migrating. (BTW, i've been an admin for 4 years, and never found need to learn how to do such a rename; it might be nice to put the surge of users presumably needing it done now in a position to go to any admin, rather than facing admins like me who'd say "Sure, glad to help -- uh, what do i have to do?)
  3. I guess it probably amounts to the same thing, in the case of commons:User:Jerzy, with whom i'm about to discuss the use of that acct. I probably have to get that settled, with two renames, before i migrate: if the current holder of that acct is happy to relinquish it in order to get their own unified acct, they will need a rename, and i will then need one from commons:User:enJerzy.
  4. Who knows, maybe i've missed a case; it's hard to be absolutely sure without seeing a single example of what is really meant by an instruction that would be implausible if its statement were assumed to be precise.

So i'm glad i've got that discussion on the Commons (probably) needing to get done, while waiting to become absolutely sure.
--User:Jerzy·t 23:18, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Here's #5, i guess; perhaps this is what it's all about, but that's still not obvious.
Some of the bureaucrats route usurpation requests to a page where they make no mention of usurpation, but offer renaming of accounts. I think i saw someone put down just one acct name, instead of To and From, but a lot of making accts available to those holding the same name on another WMF site is being done by renaming an acct they control to that name. So at least part of what we should be absolutely sure about is that we've gotten control of any existing accounts with our unified-login name before pulling the unify trigger.
But i could be wrong ; especially so in light of #Anomaly, Work-around, and Royal Mess below .
--User:Jerzy·t 07:09, 6 & 06:50, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Anomaly, Work-around, and Royal Mess

  1. The Starting Point
    Something like 36 hours ago, i started getting serious about unifying my accounts, and usurping a few others. I used both Special:MergeAccount and the "SUL username collisions detector" to get a handle on the situation. I found
    Accounts i already owned:
    1. m:User:Jerzy
    2. en:User:Jerzy
    3. de:User:Jerzy
    4. it:User:Jerzy
    5. sv:User:Jerzy
    6. si:User:Jerzy
    7. wikt:User:Jerzy
    8. wikiquote:User:Jerzy
    9. wikiquote:simple:User:Jerzy
    Others' accounts, without listed contribs:
    1. fa:User:Jerzy
    2. fr:User:Jerzy
    3. pl:User:Jerzy
    4. sl:User:Jerzy
    5. wikibooks:pl:User:Jerzy
    6. v:es:User:Jerzy (The tool said 1 edit; perhaps the page it was on was a deleted one?)
    Others' accounts, with listed contribs:
    1. nl:User:Jerzy
    2. cs:User:Jerzy
    3. commons:User:Jerzy
    The first usurpation action taken on my behalf was the nullification of fr:User:Jerzy, in response to my request as fr:User:enJerzy; that temporary "enJerzy" acct, however, was not renamed but left apparently unchanged.
  2. Anomaly
    I inferred that my next step should be to simply re-create fr:User:Jerzy, supplying my unification password. A few tries convinced me that fr:WP's refusal to create a "second account" for me was triggered by my trying to use the same IP address for both (and not by the same password). It was probably at this point (but perhaps between the nullification and that attempt) when i started the new accounts ja:User:Jerzy, es:User:Jerzy, and pt:User:Jerzy (with the same password).
  3. Work-around
    I went to a terminal with a different IP address, and did the recreation of fr:User:Jerzy, without incident; i probably created it using the unification password (rather than creating with a substitute and then changing password).
  4. Royal Mess
    I don't recall (except that it was after the nullification) at which point i resumed examining listings from the Special:MergeAccount and SUL-username-collisions detector, but from the first such check following the nullification, the number of accounts listed was obviously reduced. The three Special:MergeAccount listing i printed out came after recreation of :fr:User:Jerzy, and all three listed only the four accounts created by me between the nullification and the check: i ran the Special:MergeAccount check logged on both to m:User:Jerzy and en:User:Jerzy, getting a result that showed "fr.wikipedia.org" as home wiki; logged on as fr:User:Jerzy, i got one showing "es.wikipedia.org" in the home wiki role instead. I found no accounts listed by the SUL username collisions detector.
    I've got personal inquiries out to the 12- and 18-edit, probably inactive, "Jerzy" editors, prior to consensual or possibly without-objection usurpations; i hope for a dialog with the 200-edit one; and i have 7-day waiting periods in progress with some no-edit ones. So this doesn't immediately grind me to a halt, but i hope someone can hint at what to do about this transition to chaos from what was looking like a merely tedious process. Can someone offer a hint at what's going on and the expected timescale to resolution?
--User:Jerzy·t 07:09 & 18:57, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm pleased to announce that the 7 accounts owned by others and the 14 owned by me are now correctly shown on the Special:MergeAccount "Login unification status" listing. (I also now know that the collision detector -- as long as it is running at all -- reflects all the accounts i expect). I went thru the ones i own, making sure the EMail addresses were there, but i don't think there was any correlation between reappearing accounts and newly EMail-associated ones. So i'll simply thank the developers active in the last few days for their work well done.
    --Jerzyt 06:19, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

All in order?

My preferences are now telling me my global account status is "All in order!", even though I still don't own de:user:MTC (usurpation request is still waiting on de:Hilfe:Benutzernamen ändern/Problemfälle). Surely it should still be saying "Unconfirmed accounts with your name remain on 1 project"? - MTC 16:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

This has happened before. It should be in the archives of en:WP:VP/T somewhere, if they have archives that is. So I guess it'll be fixed soon. --Erwin(85) 16:40, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
It happened to me also. The status is "All in order!" and "Login unification complete!", but I still don't own the accounts on 2 wikis: af.wikipedia and ru.wiktionary (none responded properly to my requests). ^^ ~REX••talk•• 00:30, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I have now reported this at bugzilla:14478, as this may cause rev:35997 (the fix for bug 13507) not to work properly. - MTC 10:40, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
For the record, I also have the same problem. -- EmilJ 15:29, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
This was originally reported as bugzilla:14456, and has been marked resolved by Brion today. KTC 20:14, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I have a bunch four accounts on foreign wikis that I don't know anything about.

This is my first edit here, so please reply on my en.wikipedia talk page if can answer my question. I clicked on "manage my global account" under "My preferences" and found four accounts on foreign wikis. My username is unusual so I'm not sure how I could have these accounts. Can someone explain? Here's my en.wikipedia talk page. Thanks. - Peregrine Fisher 05:51, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Here's an overview of all your accounts. As you can see, the foreign wiki accounts have been created when you logged in for the first time on those projects. This is the way the global account works: when you login with a global account, it'll create a local account with the same name in case it doesn't exist yet. Simeon (nl.wiki) 12:21, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm actually seeing the same thing happening. The past couple of years I've created accounts on 14 wikiprojects, usurped two more during SUL recently and accidentally logged in on one wikiproject (thus creating a local account) when the global account was created. Two more accounts are awaiting SUL unification and that was it as far as I was aware.
The week after I started SUL however, an account on the russian wikipedia suddenly popped up as well, marked as 'unified', even though I had never visited it (can't even read half the cyrillic characters). The past couple of days two more appeared, on af.wiktionary.org and on is.wiktionary.org, in both cases I hadn't even visited the *sites* before, let alone created accounts there.
Could it be that some wikis aren't properly tied into the SUL system and automatically usurp accounts with 0 edits, even though the user initiated the SUL process days, even weeks ago? Thinking out loud here, it just puzzles me. -- MiG 22:31, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
I see what it is. Sometimes I click on one of the foreign links an english wikipedia article, and it automatically creates that account. Interensting. - Peregrine Fisher 04:51, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

SUL attempt failures

I've been trying to secure the SUL for "Ken" for several days now, without success.

The SUL utility indicates the SUL for "Ken" has not been created, and that my account as Ken at wikiquote should be the home wiki, but even though I log in in okay with my password, the password I log in with has not been accepted as the password to create the SUL. Is there any way for a steward or developer to reset or clear whatever password the SUL database it is registering so that it will read mine correctly?

After my earlier attempts to secure this name failed I also attempted to make an SUL for another username account, with only 2 edits, which also failed. Yesterday or earlier today, by creating an account at another wiki with the same name I did obtain the SUL for that other name by making only 3 edits, and it consolidated the account with 2 edits correctly, even though I never was able to use that earlier account to create the SUL. Making over 200 edits to attempt the secure the username Ken on another wiki by the same strategy is not very practical one for me. I am not interested in usurping the account of any other "Ken" who actually uses their account, but I would like to secure the SUL for myself as soon as possible. I will make a message on my talk page at Wikiquote confirming I am also "Kensword" here. ~ Kensword 22:47, 8 June 2008 (UTC) aka Ken at wikiquote

Hello Ken, Your SUL is not activated. To be honnest I don't understand what You are reporting, maybe could You please tell us exactly what You have done and what the errors were?
Were You at q:en:Special:MergeAccount, did it not show all of Your accounts or what happened exactly?
Thanks, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 23:02, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I simply can't do the SUL from my Wikiquote account, even though the utility says that should be the home account from which a password is used. It tells me the password I use there is the incorrect password and won't let me unify anything. ~ Kensword 00:44, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

It uses the same password as the login password, did You use that? --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 00:51, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes — even though I can log into Wikiquote with it, it simply refuses to accept my password there as the valid password for unification, despite the tool indicating my Wikiquote account should be the home wiki. ~ Kensword 01:18, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

There were some reports now, that they got a different homewiki from what it should be, maybe this is the same problem here, I would suggest to try with the other passwords You have too (if they are different), --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 01:27, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

This is VERY odd, but I succeeded at creating the SUL indirectly from another Wiki using the password it was rejecting when I attempted to use it from the wiki I actually work on most. I created an account at Wikispecies, made 2 edits, went to do the Unification, and it accepted the same password there that it had been rejecting when I was trying it at Wikiquote, and thus allowed the unification to occur. I logged in at Wikiquote and merged the account there, but the Utility is ambiguous about which one is my home wiki, at the top saying my Home wiki is specieswiki, and at the bottom indicating it is Wikiquote. I expect this indicates some bug yet to be worked out, but at least I have created the SUL. Thanks for the help. ~ Kensword 01:46, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Also worth noting is that when I go to "manage my global account" in preferences it says "all is in order" and "unification is complete" and is thus far totally ignoring the reality of all the other wikis with a "Ken" on them, showing only the accounts at Wikispecies and Wikiquote. ~ Kensword 01:55, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Other users has had similar problems with "all in order!", it is reported as bugzilla:14456 and bugzilla:14478. /Ö 12:55, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Please try now -- Tim Starling 15:01, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

"Incorrect Password" Bug

Password incorrect?

Recently the account User:Simeon on ja.wiki was renamed and now it tells me at Special:MergeAccount that my password is incorrect (at the first step of the process).. but it isn't because I can login with it at various projects. I can't tell if the renaming is related to this but it's the last thing that I know of that happened before this started to occur. Any idea what it could be? Thanks, Simeon (nl.wiki) 22:10, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

According to this tool, the account Simeon still exists on ja.wiki but according to the local user list, it doesn't? Only Simeon-usrp exists.. - Simeon (nl.wiki) 22:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
The tool now also tells me that the account at ja.wiki doesn't exist but the problem with a somehow incorrect password is still there. Simeon (nl.wiki) 07:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Incorrect "Incorrect Password" Message?

I am trying to set up a unified account. When I enter my password in the box captioned "Begin login unification" on the "Login unification status" page on Wikipedia (where I have my only account) I get a message "Incorrect password or confirmation code entered. Please try again." The password is correct as it gets me on Wikipedia. Can anyone help? 70.114.21.19 13:09, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

My Wikipedia username is Ecphora. 70.114.21.19 13:12, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
I have the same problem, but says "Incorrect password entered. Please try again.". Any help appreciated?--Froztbyte 18:21, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
In my case the password-error seems to have been corrected. I now get "Login unification complete!" :) Comment: Just for the fun of it, I created a few extra accounts yesterday. I tried the merge-tool once again, but afterwards it only listed all the new accounts. Some minutes ago, it listed "all" my local accounts so I hit the button immediately. --Froztbyte 22:43, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

False "Incorrect Password" message prevents creation of SUL account

I am having the same password problem as the three users above (Simeon, Ecphora, and Froztbyte), so I am placing all these posts under the same heading. I cannot create my SUL account because of this false error message when I submit my password at this page en:Special:MergeAccount: Incorrect password or confirmation code entered. Please try again. The password is not incorrect because I can log in normally at all my registered accounts. Retracing my steps:

  1. On 2008-05-28 I tried to create my SUL account at en:Special:MergeAccount but I stopped because the SUL utility detected a conflict on the ruwiki. My global account was not created, as I awaited usurpation at ruwiki.
  2. On 2006-06-07 ruwiki bureaucrats granted usurpation and renamed the conflicting account.
  3. On 2006-06-08 I tried again to create the global account, but this time I was repeatedly blocked with the above error message. There wasn't a password problem when I went in the first time on 2008-05-28.

Additional info: All my accounts have the same password. Only my home wiki (enwiki) has my email address. I understand that the verification looks for either password or email, not both. Thanks, --HYC, 06:56, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Update: The problems seems to have been solved. I was able to merge my accounts.--HYC, 22:44, 10 June 2008
It finally worked for me too. Apparently the message is "keep trying." 70.114.21.19 21:43, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Cookie problems

Unification with my username NL-Romaine worked perfectly well when I unified with my administrator-account earlier. The situation is that I use the name "Romaine" on my homewiki and because this name already was used by someone, I use on all other wiki's besides my homewiki the name "NL-Romaine". As said, unified login works perfectly (from wikinews). Until I recently noticed that there is a unified cookie which decides that I can't login at the same time with "Romaine" on de nl-wiki and "NL-Romaine" on the en-wiki (as I worked the past years). I need to log out from account 1 on nl-wiki and log in account 2 to work on that other wiki, and vice versa. As my useraccounts with NL- and without can't be usurpted, I wish to determine where the login-cookie is active and where not. NL-Romaine 18:00, 9 June 2008 (UTC)


How is it going to log me into other projects?

This sure looks like a mess with all the dots jammed together:

Logging you in to Wikimedia's other projects:
.wikipedia.org.wiktionary.org.wikibooks.org.wikiquote.org.wikisource.orgcommons.wikimedia.org.wikinews.org
.wikiversity.org.mediawiki.org

And how am I magically now logged into zh.wikipedia.org? Do you somehow set a cross site cookie? Or maybe you use my IP, but I am behind my ISP's ever changing proxy. All these mysteries are not told to the user. Or maybe there is some javascript assumption. No I have not clicked on the implementation details page yet as I want to let you know how it looks to basic user me first. Jidanni 22:25, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

The same thing's happening to me. I set foot on the Arabic wiki just now for no reason; now, my unified login is showing NINE fricken' projects, including said ARwiki, among others. It won't be long before a user welcomes me in a language I can't even read. What now? 21655 ωhατ δo γoυ ωαητ? 01:58, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I conclude that despite all the hype, all that is new is Wikipedia et al. has this new system to reserve my login name on their various machines, and that's all. One still has to login as before. Jidanni 02:08, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Do you have images disabled? You should be seeing the project logos, not the text ".wikipedia.org.wiktionary.org....". If you can see the logos, then you will be logged in to all of those projects. Angela 03:10, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I can see the logos and it says that it has logged me into the other projects, but it hasn't! DineshAdv 00:24, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

English Wikipedia Login Problems

I have noticed the following problem:

For the past couple of weeks, SUL has worked properly for me for all websites except for the English Wikipedia. But at en.wikipedia, even if I am logged in at other websites, I am not logged in. So I log in successfully. But then when I try to view any page, I am suddenly not logged in again.

This has happened dozens of times. But on the other hand, sometimes when I go to en.wikipedia I am logged in. Has anyone else experienced this? Dovi 16:43, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Usurping zero edit accounts

Do these still need to be done locally by contacting all local bureaucrats? There are 17 other Cassandras who have zero edits. I know that the Commons one at least has email enabled, which is a hurdle, and I guess that requires talking to them, but the others...yeah, it's going to be very time-consuming if I need to contact 17 other wikis on top of the 7 other wikis that have Cassandra accounts with edits. Cassandra 06:22, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

On Commons at least, if they have 0 edits and don't respond to an email within a week we go ahead and usurp as requested. I think that, at least on other wikis with 'crats, you're going to need to talk to them. giggy (:O) 06:26, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
On wikis were you are not planning on using the account soon, it may be worth waiting for bugzilla:14416 to be resolved. /Ö 22:29, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
On EN:WQ we have no problem with usurpation on zero edit accounts (but we have no Cassandra!).--Cato 21:56, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
There are over 60 projects with user accounts with my name who are not me. It would take me forever to usurp all of them. All but a handful have no edits and are several years old. As things stand now, it is not worth the time to try and usurp these accounts. SUL has had the effect of discouraging me from leaving comments on other projects. -- Sam 01:07, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
It's never too late to remedy your ill-considered choice of handle by renaming to a longer acct; i suggest you make your nick Sam. Some of those sixty projects surely have priorities more important than responding to editors who don't even speak their language but conceive impatience as reason to intrude on their local autonomy.
--Jerzyt 03:38, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
I love my handle and don't plan on changing it. I don't see any reason to pursue using it on those 60 projects, and do not plan to bother anybody in those projects. If I want to leave a comment, I'll do so anonymously and point them to my English talk page. -- Sam 19:50, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Home wiki

The help page says "The wiki where the account of that username have the most contributions will become the home wiki (however, the sysop status take higher precedence than edit count), and its email address and password will be exported to all other accounts."

Apart from the e-mail address and password from the "home wiki" being exported to other accounts at that particular time does "home wiki" have any particular status? I'm wondering because I could find that a wiki I've edited less so far becomes more interesting at a later stage. Stratford490 20:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

See other sections on this page. AFAIK, no it hasn't, and it is said that at some TBD future time you'll be able to change your home wiki but TTBOMK there's no known ETA. — Tonymec 13:03, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for replying - though I admit I had to go here to understand your reply! Stratford490 20:15, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
Ah, sorry: for later readers:
  • AFAIK as far as I know
  • TBD to be determined, to be decided
  • TTBOMK to the best of my knowledge
  • ETA estimated time of arrival

Tonymec 08:32, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't work

I just unified all my wikis, and it does show them and give links to them. When you sign in to one it shows the icons of all the other ones and says 'signing you in to all of them' yet when you actually go to those wikis, you are not logged in to them. Users are not remaining logged in. I think there is some sort of error with the cookie process. Tyciol 14:59, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I have the exact same problem. DineshAdv 00:27, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Works on some sites and not on others

In the last day or two, since merging my accounts, I've noticed that when I click on a link to another wiki (Latin Wikisource, French Wikiquote, whatever) I automatically find I have an account there and am logged into it, despite perhaps never having visited the site before.

However, there have been exceptions. I wasn't too surprised to find that I didn't automatically get an account just by virtue of visiting bugzilla, incubator, Wikimania, and the Foundation site, as they seem kind of different, but I was very surprised to find that I didn't automatically get one on the Latin Wikipedia. (I previously got one, automatically, at Latin Wikisource, and used it, and I'm still logged into all my accounts, as far as I know.)

Is this some bug, or is the Latin Wikipedia meant to be different? Stratford490 20:15, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

It did apparently work well on the Latin wikipedia, see [8]. --UV 08:15, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes, but that was after I posted here. I found that I wasn't logged on to the French Wikipedia when I went there yesterday (after posting here), although an account had been automatically created for me the day before just when I visited it. I went back to other wikis to see if I had somehow been logged out of all of them, and I was still logged on - here, at English Wikipedia, at Wikisource, at Wikiquote, etc. Puzzled, I went back to French Wikipedia and logged on with my username and password, which the site recognized. Then I went back to Latin Wikipedia just out of curiosity, and found that my account was instantly created when I arrived at the site. It looks as if some Wikis recognize you if you come from certain sister sites but not if you come from others. Or perhaps it was a temporary glitch that has now been fixed. Thanks anyway. Stratford490 12:58, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Trying to create unified login...

But it says someone on pt has my username so it can't complete the merge. Enigma 05:15, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Ask one of the pt bureacrats to move pt:User:Enigma out of the way for you. It should be no problem since the account has no contributions. MiCkE 07:25, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
I actually was trying to create a SUL for Enigmaman. Someone stole the username Enigma on en.wp and made a few edits with the name, so I can't usurp it. Enigmaman I have, but the username exists on pt. I don't speak the language, plus I don't have an account there. Not exactly sure how to go about it. Enigma 06:52, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
It seems ja:User:Enigma has the right to the unified account og Enigma(SUL:Enigma is that you? If so you could probably usurp it on en.wp since they have changed their policy). pt:User:Enigmaman has no contributions either (SUL:Enigmaman), so I would try to ask one of the pt bureacrats (in english) for help with moving pt:User:Enigmaman out of the way. By the way, if you choos "Enigmaman" for your SUL, see to it that you rename all your accounts called "Enigma" to "Enigmaman" prior to merging that account. MiCkE 11:01, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the help. I suspect those various Enigmas on various projects are at least three different people. Not me. I'd have to request the SUL under Enigmaman. My problem is I don't have an account on pt. I don't want to post as an IP. I can't register as Enigma or Enigmaman there, obviously. I suppose I should register with another account name to make the request? Enigma 16:35, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
I'd say that that is pretty much the only option if you don't want to leave the request as an IP. I'd also leave a message at en:User talk:Enigmaman (logged in to that account) confirming that it is really you who's leaving the request at pt.wiki (e.g. "I confirm that I want to take over the account "Enigmaman at pt.wiki"), and than leave a link to that confirmation-diff when you make the request. MiCkE 17:00, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
I tried to do it. Registered an account, went to post at a crat's page and got a long message. I have no idea what it says, but it probably means the dude protected his page. [9] I guess I'll try a different one. Enigma 17:12, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Finally got it to work. Turns out you can't create a new section on the talk, but you can edit. Enigma 17:16, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
I tried two 'crats, and they both ignored me. Enigma 06:21, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
I found this for you: pt:WP:PAB#SUL_Instructions, and it's in English (kinda)! MiCkE 19:32, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
OK, filed a request there. Thanks again. Enigma 05:47, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Users with usernames in Latin and equivalent Non-latin characters

Hi, I am in a quandary that I assume I'll have more than a few companions in! I have the username Shushruth on the en wiki with nearly a 1000 edits. I am also an admin on the kn wiki under the username ಶುಶ್ರುತ which is the same name but in Kannada script. My problem now is that I have to log in as ಶುಶ್ರುತ to keep my admin privileges on kn wiki. But I'd like to edit at commons, en wiki, meta, etc. with the username Shushruth at the same time - which is not possible with SUL. So I now cannot edit many of the semi-protected pages on en wiki. But I read that accounts can't be merged on the SUL. Can anyone advise me as to what would be the best option for me? Anyone else in a similar predicament? Thanks, Shushruth 23:19, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Would you consider changing username to "Shushruth" at kn.wiki? In that case a bureaucrat could move "ಶುಶ್ರುತ" to "Shushruth" and you would keep all your contributions, priviliges and be able to unify your account. MiCkE 07:21, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
I didn't know that was possible! I thought since I now have SULs for both names, they can't be merged anymore. Thanks a bunch for the advice. ಶುಶ್ರುತ 15:14, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
If you have enabled SUL all ready you'll have to go to SRU and have your global accounts deleted, rename them as you see fit and then re-merge using Special:MergeAccount. Please make sure you have a valid e-mail address specified for both accounts before you delete the global accounts though. MiCkE 16:59, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

renaming to unified account

I have done global account for the name Kinkku Ananas, but I still have a Commons account named CW32. Is it possible that I request for account rename on Commons to Kinkku Ananas? Or have I made a mistake not renaming it beforehand? Thanks. --Kinkku Ananas 14:06, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Because of a bug bugzilla:13507 Your sul must be deleted before they can rename You to the global name, please request sul deletion in Steward requests/SUL requests, best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 14:09, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
So I really made a mistake. 8-D. Thank you very much. --Kinkku Ananas 14:35, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Renaming a unified account

I would like to rename myself. My nick is too much related to my real name. I want to be really as invisible as possible on the net. It says "When the need arises a renaming possibility might be developed". I have the need. Sorry. Could someone please develop this possibility? Thanks Londenp 21:01, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Currently, the solution seems to be:
  1. Delete the global account
  2. Rename each local account
  3. Re-unify the account under the new name
This is onerous, but not impossible. I agree this should be implemented in mw:Extension:CentralAuth, so I have created bugzilla:14721.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 01:35, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
And how would one delete a global account? Londenp 20:54, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Add a request at Steward requests/SUL requests. --UV 21:40, 5 July 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, did it. Londenp 19:11, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

How do I find a users primary account?

I am involved in a clarification request at Commons:Image talk:ConfucianismSymbol.PNG which involves users across multiple languages and communities. I left a message for one user at s:User talk:百家姓之四 and for another at W:it:Utente:Tinette, but I am not sure I have placed messages where they are most likely to be found. How can I confirm the best location (i.e. highest and most recent contribution history) to leave a message? Jeepday (talk) 02:30, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

You might look at tools:~luxo/contributions/contributions.php and examine where the user was active recently. Alternatively, you might look at tools:~vvv/sulutil.php to find out where the user has the most edits in total. --UV 08:16, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Perfect, that is just what I needed. :) Jeepday (talk) 10:56, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Login

May I know why when I am logged into a Wikipedia, I'm also automatically logged into another language of Wikipedia, but not another Wikimedia Project such as this Meta-Wiki or Wiktionary? I have to perform a separated login! --אדמוןד ואודס自分の投稿記録 05:23, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you are using a text-only browser or you have disabled the loading of images in your browser? Can you see the nine small logo graphics on the "Login successful" page, just below the text "Logging you in to Wikimedia's other projects:"? The login cookie for the other wikimedia projects is actually prompted by the loading of these nine images. --UV 18:41, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Another situation may be that many browsers disallow cross-site images, which are used by SUL to provide global login. Many users have cross-site images disallowed as a security measure. Depending on your browser, you may be able to either allow this behavior for these sites or only for certain sites. Kylu 05:43, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Privacy & merging different usernames

Upon Unifying an account, this doesn't reveal your personal e-mail address to the public does it and would this enable me to unify my Terra accounts. Dark Mage 19:52, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

It does not reveal your email. You can only unify accounts with the same name.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 23:17, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Fine by me - I was just checking, I'll unify my accounts. Dark Mage 08:01, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Your E-Mail-Address is never revealed unless You reply or write an email (logical! only the addressee sees it!) or write it on Your userpage, no matter if You have sul or not. Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 12:50, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Your e-mail address might also be revealed when someone sends you an e-mail but there is a problem with e-mail delivery. In that case, the sender might receive an error message that contains your e-mail address. But again, this has nothing to do with whether SUL is enabled or not. --UV 19:31, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for explaining it to me. Dark Mage 19:42, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Hebrew vesion

Hey, there is also a Hebrew version of this page: he:עזרה:חשבון משתמש מאוחד. FYI. Aviados 18:58, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

If you'd like to copy it to Help:Unified_login/he and tweak it for this location, please do. I have never quite managed to figure out how to do mixed-rtl/ltr links without risking insanity, though. Leave me a note on my talkpage and I'll make sure it's properly linked in the language bar. :) Kylu 03:34, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Usurping accounts on wikis

I am a crat on en.wiki and we're having a discussion there about what rules of thumb to use when users are requesting to usurp an account, especially in regards to SUL. Just how old and how few edits does the account need to have in order for it be usurpable? An account who has 5000 edits and has not edited in a month would clearly not be usurpable. But an account with 3 edits all 3 years old and blocked as a troll would be. But where in the middle should we draw the line? RlevseTalk 23:57, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you can draw a clear-cut line, where one edit difference would make an acount "usurpable" or not. General guidelines, maybe; but nothing that a bot could apply mechanically in all possible cases. I think conciliation should be attempted, but of course you can't always bring two users to agree that one of them should, or shouldn't, yield his username to the other. — Tonymec 00:20, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree a clear cut line would not work, but I'm looking for something clearer than the fuzzy picture of it I have right now.RlevseTalk 00:46, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
It would, perhaps, be a good idea for a number of bureaucrats from various wikis and the stewards discuss this, preferably at RFC here. We could compare notes and determine good rules-of-thumb, that way we have a fairly consistent usurpation policy across all projects. Wikimedia projects are notorious for lack of consistent policies, so this would be a benefit to us. Kylu 00:56, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
Here on Meta-Wiki, I would personally decide on a case-by-case basis. Rlevse, you were elected for your good judgement - you should use it here. If you can't decide, discuss with your fellow bureaucrats, or even better bring it here. Majorly talk 01:00, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

On Commons we will generally usurp an account that has made no GFDL significant edits (eg. vandalism) if it's been inactive for about 6 months (there's no hard and fast rule... we have good judgement, apparantly ;-)). If there are GFDL significant contributions, I generally ask that the requester leave a note on the target account's talk page, and email them (if enabled). Then I generally wait a week. However, if the account has made significant contributions in the last 6 months (other 'crats will say a year... again; no hard and fast rules - I won't always stick to the 6 months thingo either) I won't touch it. EnWP is different to Commons, though, but hopefully this helps. —Giggy 01:34, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

This all helps and I invite more input. I agree with Kylu that especially since this can affect SUL/global accounts, that this is a good case for meta-wide basic guidelines and rules of thumb, with the understanding this won't be a topic where we can make hard and fast rules and will need good judgment and common sense (where can I buy common sense ;-). RlevseTalk 01:40, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I am a bureaucrat on en:wiki, and would like to place a moratorium on all further SUL-related usurps till a cross-wiki RFC is created and issues meted out. There are several things that need to be addressed including just plain courtesy to a contributor. The issuesis just not a number of edits or a limited period of inactivity. I've chalked up some scenarios:

  1. Contributor A has been on enwiki since 2003. Edits average 100 per year with a total ~1500. Last edit Feb 2008. Edits GFDL significant. Contributor A" has the same name on say mr: wiki. But contributor A" created that account in March 2007, also has an account on hi: and ta: wikipedias, has 3500 edits raked up through an automated scripting process, and is an admin on a smaller wiki, where becoming one is simple. Who gives way? -- A long time contributor or a contributor recently active?
  2. A 1 week notification period is too short. There are too many reasons why I may not read an email. I may be on vacation, may have tremendous offline responsibilities. I do not want to check my mail after my vacation to be greeted with a message that I have lost my account because there was no response.
  3. If, as a bureaucrat, I carry out a usurp, what would happen when the owner of the old account logs into wikipedia. How would he locate his former id?

Nichalp 06:52, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

My fellow en.wiki crat makes good points but I'm not sure we need to put a moratorium on accounts that only have a few edits, such as 2-3 and are over 2 years old. RlevseTalk 12:09, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I think what we need here is a good set of rules-of-thumb. What do you think of the following?

  • Unless there is a very good reason for the opposite, whoever has the account keeps it.
  • There shall be no usurp whatsoever without an explicit request from the "usurper" (but it should be possible to place such a request once at metawiki for several accounts on different wikipedias).
  • The following factors are to be taken into account:
    • Number of edits
    • Quality of edits
    • How old is the account
    • How recent was latest edit
    • Not having been banned for trolling or vandalism
    • Not having committed trolling or vandalism even without being banned
    • Existence of a user page
    • Number of different wikis where that user has an (active) account
    • Does the user reply to emails (not counting school holidays in his home country)?
      • In my home country (Belgium), the longest school holiday starts before the end of June and ends begin September (for high schools) or even begin October (for universities); high schools also have two weeks at Easter and two weeks around Christmas and New Year; slightly less than a week around All Saints' Day (Nov. 1); the rest are shorter.
      • I agree with Nichalp that one week is to short. I would suggest one month excluding school holidays of the user's home country.
    • etc.

Tonymec 14:27, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm wondering if banned status means anything. For instance, Isis on the English Wikipedia was a respected sysop before she was banned by Jimbo Wales. We have an simple:User:Isis on the Simple English Wikipedia. Will the Simple one never be able to usurp the English one? Cassandra 19:09, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

If its the same user, then she can be temporarily unbanned so that she could usurp that account but if she isn't then no, its not possible (not technically, but policy wise) to usurp accounts with 100+ edits(depends on the wikis policies)..--Cometstyles 20:11, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

At en: we take a very strict line (I've discovered - I'm the second-newest Crat) and will not usurp an account with GFDL-significant edits, unless the original owner permits the usurpation. Discussion and rationale (and my bafflement/enlightenment) can be seen at [10]. --Dweller 16:58, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Non-wikipedia sites are not logging

When I enter in wikipedia, the loggin works for the other languages there, but the other wikimedia projects remain in log out. If I switch to en.wikibooks (for example), I´m no longer in acount -- Damërung ...ÏìíÏ..._ΞΞΞ_ . 10:16, 21 July 2008 (GMT-5)

Requested edit

{{Template:editprotected}} Please update the out of date information in section What it is the 2nd paragraph which currently reads as:

The upcoming unified login system.....

As I understand it, it has been fully implemented. So please change this to read:

The unified login system....

Thank you Dbiel 05:11, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Strange, when I log in and viewed this page it only gave me the view source option, which is why I posted this request. But when I went back to the page after posting this request, the page was now editable. So I made the change myself. Dbiel 05:17, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

'In migration' forever?

Looking at the SUL account status page for my SUL username, I can't imagine ever being able to usurp all those accounts, because:

  • making usurpation requests for that many is too much hassle
  • the account on zh.wikipedia.org is from a fairly active user, and from my interpretation of the SUL policies, a usurpation request for that account would never be granted

So, will my global account remain in the 'In migration' state forever, and if so, does that matter?

Aya T C 15:09, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Hidden and locked

Hi, can anyone tell me what "hidden" and "locked" mean on this page? Thank you. Stratford490 14:37, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

A hidden account is hidden from Special:Listusers, as with vandal account names. Locking an account is similar to blocking the account from all wikis – again, this is mostly used for vandal accounts. --UV 12:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Is the code available to the rest of us?

I run a number of Wikis (v12) on my own servers and a few others as well. Is the code available to the rest of us? If so, where? Is it an Extension? This would be extremely useful. --Slamlander 07:08, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

See mw:Extension:CentralAuth. --UV 12:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Global "new messages" notify box

Is it possible to have a global new messages box? For example, if unified login is enabled, a user may receive a notify like the one below:

You have new messages in English Wikipedia (last change).

It will be a good idea to get notified when you receive a message on any Wikimedia project. Wikia already uses this system, and I think it will be ok for Wikimedia Foundation projects. macy 19:35, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

You may use gWatch for this.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 20:37, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Ran into a problem

Hi, I am interested in unifying my accounts after a lengthy break on the English WP and a somewhat shorter break on the Dutch one but there is one problem. My homewiki is nl:wikipedia but I lost access to my password for it (my own fault) and there is no email set to the account so I cannot recover it by conventional means. Is there any way to remedy this and regain access to my Dutch account? --Kalsermar 14:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Hm, looks bad, only devs could reset passwords, but the problem is You can't prove, that this account is Yours, and they could not make a checkuser because it's contributions are too old. If You have another idea how to prove Your identity You can contact a dev at #wikimedia-techconnect. Please people always set emails - You don't have to allow emails from other users, if You don't wish that. Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 14:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. Is there a way to contact a developer other than on IRC? --Kalsermar 15:13, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
User:Brion VIBBER might be able to help You (You would need a dev with shell access anyway afaik), best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 15:15, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
The issue has been resolved :-) Thanks for the pointers.--Kalsermar 18:09, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Have I burned my boats?

I very much regret falling for the invitation to go for a unified login. I have Wikipedia accounts in eight languages, mostly with different usernames. Now when I switch between different language Wps I frequently have to log out and log in each time in order to use these accounts. I don't wish to rename these accounts even if I could (new accounts using my main, English-language name have been set up without my asking for them).

Is there any way I can undo the unified login process so that I can be returned to the happy state I was in before I ever heard of unified login? If not, let this be a reminder to others of the value of the advice "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". :{ -- Picapica 11:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, You can, please request it here, also make sure to have a valid, confirmed email in Your special:preferences for Your own safety, thanks, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 11:26, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

How do I de-link from an acct that isn't mine?

I have merged my accts on 5 projects, but the process also linked me to an acct on pt.wikipedia.org that isn't me, and that I don't have any need for (I'm not planning to learn Portuguese any time soon). It appears to be an empty account. How can I get delinked from it? -- Mwanner 00:37, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

The account is yours, it was created for you when you visited pt.wikipedia.org, there is no harm in it existing. You might even decide to use it at some point, you don't need to learn a new language to contribute to a foreign-language Wikipedia. - MTC 16:34, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

De-unifying login

In my Wiktionary account I accidentaly hit the unify button, and now I have to log in and out all the time as I use a different account in Wikipedias. How can I remove Kalevos from Wikipedias? Kalevo 23:17, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Make a request to the stewards at Steward requests/SUL requests. --Erwin(85) 07:41, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Issues with SUL

According to the account creation management, one account on the wikimedia sites cannot be merged - this seems to be on the Russian Wikipedia however a lot of my usernames have now started to merge together but unfortunately that account on the Russian Wikipedia site is preventing SUL to be completed, could anyone try and assist me - My native and only language is English and cannot speak in Russian could someone assist me in trying to unify that account if possible, all of my other accounts have merged together but this one is preventing it to be completed. Dark Mage 18:01, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

To solve this, you can ask at ru:Википедия:Запросы на узурпацию (the Russian version of en:WP:CHU) for that account to be renamed to make way for your SUL account. Not knowing Russian isn't a problem, most of the recent requests are in English anyway. MTC 05:40, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
I've placed the request by the name Dark Warlock - hopefully they'll grant the request and allow the SUL process to finish since that's preventing it to be completed. Dark Mage 07:12, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I am having significant trouble in completing the unification process.. there are 18 projects in which my username is still not under my control.. I was able to usurp only on de.wiki and fr.wiki. In some of those projects, local users have made edits, including en.wiki, and local policies do not allow usurpation in that case. Moreover, the user on en.wiki has not been active for 10 months, and he has not set an email address, so it is higly unlikely I will be albe to communicate with him to ask for his cooperation. So I am stuck I guess.. How are conflicts like mine gonna be solved? There will be an official policy from the foundation or something? --Twilight 21:23, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

SUL Compatibility

Why is it, whenever I use Safari I don't get automatically logged-on on all wikimedia projects it works with Mozilla but not safari - could the SUL developers have a look at this, I'm currently using the windows XP version of Safari which you could see on Apple's download Centre if you try it on the XP or Vista version you'll see what I mean, it may even be a new type of Bug but I'm not sure. Dark Mage 17:22, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

SUL across wikis

I really wish WMF would come out with a complete SUL policy for all wikis. There is much inconsistency in the way it is enforced on various wikis, especially in regard to usurps. RlevseTalk 01:48, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

"WMF" wouldn't do it, the global Wikimedia community would have to — which is the problem, each community wants to handle it themselves and global political items are difficult. Cbrown1023 talk 01:59, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Disabling unified account

I unified my accounts, but I discovered that doing so re-enabled a message I dislike ("successful login"), therefore: 1) is there any way to keep my accounts unified and disable this message? or alternatively 2) how can I disable the unified accounts, thus also disabling this message, but still be able to login as local user with the same name in all wikis? NerdyNSK 22:20, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I also want to know how a unified account can be disabled in the cases where it's being used for vandalism and impersonation purposes. -Jéské Couriano 23:06, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
IIUC, you should request it from the Stewards, at Steward requests/SUL requests, with convincing evidence of why you want the account disabled. OTOH once you've unified your logins, no-one should be able to log into that username on any wiki without your password or your login cookie. -- Tonymec 23:50, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Different ID, same password

I am registered originally in it:wiki, and with the same ID (Ub) in several other wikis thanks to the unified account. But I am also active in en:wiki as UbUb - there used to be a user Ub registered before my attempt. Is it possible to merge this too? thanks --Ub 21:39, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Problem

Not sure if anyone will be able to give a satisfactory answer or if a question of this type has already been answered above, but I'm too tired to read all the posts on this page :)

Anyway, I'm user fi:Käyttäjä:Orri from the Finnish 'pedia. I have a global username and I have several edits in several wikis, mostly in the Finnish wiki (+ 6000 I think, others are negligeable). The problem is that there's also is:Notandi:Orri, who has several edits in the Icelandic wiki, a few in the English Wikipedia (see en:User:Orri) and one upload in Commons ([11]), so my global accout doesn't work in these wikis (I have different usernames there). I would really like to have a complete global username, as it woud make my life here much easier – I find that nowadays I rarely log on to en-wiki or Commons because of this situation: I find it a hassle and I don't like the usernames I have in these wikis. I would definitely like to be able to work more in en-wiki and Commons, at present I mostly just add interwiki links unlogged. I have twice asked is:Notandi:Orri if he would possibly be willing to change his username, IMHO in a friendly manner, but his response was to remove my messages and blank his discussion page after several months.

So, what are my options here? Apparently it's not possible for me to rename my account at this point, so I should delete the global account and rename ALL the individual accounts (seems awful)? Or just rename myself in the Finnish wiki and SUL that account, and leave the others be? Or wait fore a more relaxed usurpation-procedure in en-wiki and Commons? This really sucks because I like my name and I'm really bad at coming up with nicks. Orri 20:25, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Atm there is no satisfactory solution to such a situation (and I doubt there ever will be). To being able to create sul does not mean that one is able to take over existing accounts of other users.
You asked the user and obviously he declines Your proposal, so if You wish a fully working sul account now, the only option You have would be to have Your accounts renamed to a totally new name (check for free names with this tool).
I would recommend to
  1. check if the username is completely available (no accounts)
  2. not tell anyone the new name (or as few persons as possible)
  3. go to special:mergeaccount right after the first rename (this might be slightly annoying for You because if You forget to log out it will autocreate Your acconts anywhere You go, so be careful with that - reason: to protect the nick, no one else can create an account with Your name anywhere then)
  4. have the old sul account deleted (to avoid autocreations from this one)
  5. only ask for renames for accounts which actually have edits or log entries [12]
Hope that helps You a bit to decide what to do.
Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 20:33, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. But are you saying that I can rename an accout before deleting my old SUL account (sorry, I'm a bit lost with this)? Orri 20:40, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, You can, it is Your choice when to delete the old sul, if ever, but I would have it deleted, to prevent autocreations ~
Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 20:44, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Same problem as others: Automatic login for other site does not work

Hi,
I seem to have the same problem some other people are reporting . Namely, I did successfully unifiy my account - or at least so I was told. When I login (at my home wiki, Commons) I can also see the pretty little icons that are supposed to tell me I get logged in to the other Wikimedia projects. However, when I try to access any of them, I am not logged in! The only projects where I was automatically logged in were Meta and Wikispecies (at the latter, an account was automatically created, since I never had one there). It does not work for projects where I already had an account that was merged (for example the Wikipedias (EN and DE), Wikinews (EN and DE), etc.) and neither for other projects where I did not have account (for example Wikibooks or Wikiquote), with the exception of Wikispecies.
First I thought this was just a cookie problem - so I set my browser to accept all cookies, JavaScript, etc. It did not change anything. Can anyone point me to a solution, or does anyone have any idea how to make this work?
For reference, here is my system information: Opera 9.62 (build 10467) running on Windows XP Pro SP 2 with standard cookie settings ("Accept all cookies", although I delete them on close, which should not affect this) with no special settings for any Wikimedia projects. Searching the Opera forums did not turn up anything about this. One more thing that might be useful: Apparently the instructions said I should have the same e-mail address and password for all accounts to be merged. I had the same e-mail address everywhere (and also confirmed everywhere), but did not use the same password. The merging went fine, though, and I can log on independently on all projects with the same password without any problems.
Puzzled, Florian Prischl 21:00, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Did You check the checkbox "remember me"? Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 21:09, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
I did not use to, but now I did - it did not solve the problem or change anything about it. I appreciate your help, though. :-) Note: I made a minor amendment to my original post (I do get logged in to Meta automatically as well). --Florian Prischl 21:22, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
Hmmm, I did try to reproduce Your problem, but I couldn't:
I created 4 accounts with different passwords ("User:Foo-3333") and merged them afterwards, I had no problem staying logged in with Opera 9.62 (10467), using XP professional sp2.
OK, that probably means that that was not the problem, thank you! --Florian Prischl 10:56, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
I would recommend to contact the devs with that problem, either at bugzilla: or #wikimedia-techconnect.
Thanks, I think I'll try to talk to someone on IRC later when I have more time. I don't want to file a bug report before I have at least some hint about what the problem is. ;-) Thank you very much for your help! --Florian Prischl 10:56, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
I asked for the "remember me" thing before, because I had problems with that in the past, but that seems solved (I was logged out at the very same wiki immediately without that).
Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 22:41, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
P.S. It would be very interesting if it works for You with another browser, can You try? Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 22:47, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
It did not work with any other browser (Firefox 3.0.4, Internet Explorer 7). Sorry I had forgotten to test that earlier. --Florian Prischl 10:56, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
Did you try with a clean profile? Also verify that Accept only cookies from the site I visit is disabled. --Brownout(msg) 22:50, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
I did not try with a clean profile (I use a single profile, so I would have to install a new copy, which I can't do at the moment, but maybe later), but at least with other browsers (see above). My cookie settings are as follows: "Accept all cookies" is enabled, with no exceptions or other special settings for Wikimedia project sites. I let Opera delete new cookies on exit. When I login on Commons I can see cookies for Meta and Wikiespecies being set (which, see above, are the projects where I am then properly logged on).
  • I just tried something different: I logged in on en.wikipedia. After that, I was automatically logged on to de.wikipedia, as well as to two other WPs I checked where I never had an account. However, I was not logged on to Commons, Meta or Wikispecies or any other project. Also, let me say that all your help is really appreciated. Thanks guys! :-) --Florian Prischl 10:56, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
Hm, if it does not work with other browsers either, then this can't be the problem, and I guess a new Opera profile will not help, are there any settings for cookies in the windows settings, or with any other external program, such as ccleaner etc.?
It should work when logging to en.wiki first or from commons (not from projects as incubator, which are not included in the automatic login system).
Another thing that would really be interesting testing out: if You have access to (safe) other computers, to see if it would work from there. I still think that might be a problem locally, and it seems many others have similar problems, but for many it is working well, so that might be a very common setting.
Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 12:53, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
I am writing this from someone else's MacBook with Safari 3.1.2 and here it works just like expected, perfectly fine! Which means it must be some local problem for me - I will try it with a clean Firefox (and, if I can, clean Opera) profile later and report back. I will try to figure out what the problem is. :-S Thank you for your help, I am sorry to have bothered you with this. --Florian Prischl 16:24, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Problem solved through deinstalling Opera completely and starting fresh with a new installation (I only copied some essential profile files). I do not know what caused the problem, but probably some configuration left over from any of the many Opera upgrades I had in this installation's life. Unified login works fine now. Thank you very much for all you guys' help, I feel a little stupid now. ;-) --Florian Prischl 00:49, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
Glad that it works now :) Too bad that we could not find out what exactly was the problem, since You are not the only one who had problems with that, but at least we could advise this procedure to other users now too, many thanks for letting us know (and please do not feel stupid).
Happy editing with Your now fully working sul account :) and best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 04:15, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

More issues

I'm having issues with SUL as well. I'm being logged into each project, but not all projects (ie: I log into the English Wikipedia, and I'm logged into all language editions of Wikipedia). Right now, I'm logged out on Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikibooks, (I did a random language sampling on each project and verified that I'm totally logged out) and Mediawiki.org, after having already logged back in on Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and Wikiquote. Mac OSX 10.5.5, Safari 3.1.2, no recent configuration changes, and I did check the "remember me" box (as I always do, since there's never anyone else on my computers). EVula // talk // // 18:21, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Same question here: have You tried on other computers with other configurations?
Have You tried other browsers?
Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 15:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Userpage

Do I need to (or indeed am I allowed to) create a page redirect to my main page at Wikipedia on each and all of the WikiProjects? At present, I have a blank user page on all but the Pedia. Jubileeclipman 11:29, 18 December 2008 (UTC) (or click here if you end up at a blank page from my signature...)

You are allowed to, You don't need to ;) Best regards, --birdy geimfyglið (:> )=| 08:07, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

chaque cent est la bijoux pandora colonisation éligibles

En début de l'été, à distance de marche de la chaleur, mais aussi de porter une robe à manches courtes ou sans manches de la saison, ne oubliez pas de profiter de la fraîcheur du temps de poignet "nue" plus petit œil chose. Large bracelet est un bon choix, visuel accrocheur, variété de design, cet été pour ajouter de la pandora bijoux couleur à votre poigne 2014 Basel Watch International et de la Bijouterie a pris fin. Bien sûr, comme le plus grand montre et de la bijouterie de l'année, en plus le charme de montre étonnante extérieur, bijoux protagoniste naturellemen Que les marques horlogères ont lancé une série de bijoux, de bijoux ou comme le charms pandora noyau de bijoux de famille sont des œuvres magnifiques, des gens ébahis. Perles de Tahiti, perles et pandora soldes perles des mers du Sud, contrairement au Japon, décrit comme une prime. Parce que la bracelet style pandora perle se est faite d'un précieux moules plat noir (un seul grandir dans un, non polluantes moules naturelles rares eaux polynésiennes) d'élevage de ses nuances de gris, et avec la Symphonie différente la couleur, et faire ainsi plus de perles avec une différence. Plus requiert son environnement d'élevage,

et le processus de la perle est très rigoureuse, chaque cent est la bijoux pandora colonisation éligibles perles noires moules plat, que cinquante cultivées avec succès une perle, ce qui est parfait et il ya seulement cinq ans, de sorte que chaque perles sont inestimables. Perles de Tahiti sont les cristaux cultivés élevés huître perlière Pinctada margaritifera. Cette coque est noire, principalement cultivé en Polynésie française dans le lagon. Leur épaisseur aragonite de collier pandora pas cher nacre par composition, contenant de la matière organique et de carbonate de calcium. En Polynésie française, que dans la greffe locale de cumingi perle élevés pour le droit d'utiliser la «perle de culture de pandora bijoux Tahiti" est le nom dans le commerce.

<a href="http://www.fr-pandora-soldes.com/">http://www.fr-pandora-soldes.com/</a>