Single login

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki
This is an archaic and now irrelevant discussion of implementation details for single user login. For more information, see the single login documentation page.

This document is intended to provide a break-down of issues and a framework for discussing them. It should not yet be considered a description of planned action, only of possible approaches.

Wikimedia is preparing to change from a login for each project to a single login which will work for all Wikimedia projects and languages. This presents a number of technical challenges, which also have legal and community ramifications; some of these are listed below, with possible solutions.

This page provides a summary of the issues and of the proposals. For an in-depth technical discussion of this transition, see single signon transition.

Issues[edit]

  1. It must comply with the requirements of the GFDL.
  2. It must be fair to all contributors when a name is used in more than one project and must be allocated to only one person.
  3. The site should be unavailable for the shortest possible time.
  4. MediaZilla uses e-mail addresses, not usernames, as logins.

Proposals[edit]

Some proposals on the subject:

Proposal Summary Status
/Kowey Indefinite transition. New users created in global. Old users can migrate. Duplicate logins must be reconciled. deprecrated
/IMSoP Indefinite transition. insert summary here
/Kate Indefinite transition. Create global user id namespace and provide user with preference to link local account to global. E.g en wikipedia User:Kate links to Global:798
/Omegatron Zero transition. Every one has a home wiki, and a login like Omegatron@En.Wikipedia for the other wikis. No such thing as duplicate logins (Omegatron@Fr.Wikipedia != Omegatron@En.Wikipedia) Can still register the same username on multiple wikis if desired.
/Bilbotron Indefinite staged transition. 1. Registration:All active users edit pre-merge masterlist, (conflicts resolved by number of edits). switch active from local to global namespaces. 2. Transition: Allow temp-trustees to make symbolic associations between remaining new id with old id(s). 3. Post: Full re-attribution of uncontroversial inactive name/edits per local context. Differentiable symbolic links suffice otherwise. vilified
/Jdavidb Indefinite transition. Suspend creation of new accounts that would conflict with existing accounts on other wikis. Automatically merge accounts with the same username and email address on multiple wikis. Rename all other accounts with a suffix indicating the wiki (ex.: User:Jdavidb becomes User:Jdavidb_en on English Wikipedia and User:Jdavidb_meta on Meta if they do not have the same email address). Reserve the names of accounts renamed in this manner. Provide renamed users the chance to confirm accounts are the same and have them merged and renamed. Provide users who share the same username the chance to negotiate among themselves and decide which one, if any, shall keep the name; as well, provide them the chance to just have their account renamed to something brand new.

See also[edit]