https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19161

--- Comment #33 from Philippe Verdy <[email protected]> 2011-03-23 21:23:28 
UTC ---
So it seems that what is needed is a private log for autocreated accounts, that
can be administered from any other large wiki that has enough admins to detect
them.

Given that accounts are unified by default in SUL now, any abusive username
should be administrable from any wiki.
May be a new privilege could be created, allowing to view all new SUL accounts
wherever they are created, so that even small wikis could be protected by
admins working on larger wikis.

The main problem of course is how to detect abusive account names : a name
could be abusive in an unexpected language, and not at all in another where the
account was effectively created. So instead of just denying the creation of the
SUL account (not necessarily abusive from the view of the smaller wiki, it
could be denied on each wiki where admins are working. After several wikis have
rejected the creation, using their own local filters, the SUL account could be
deleted, and it would just remain the non-abusive account on the local wiki
where it was created).

It would also be interesting, if a new SUL account is detected in one major
wiki, that a list of potentially abusive account names be posted for review on
all other wikis where this user has also been connected, and each time he
connects to a new wiki. This list could be automatically updated on each wiki,
and could be accessible to specific admins (admins of the local wiki, and
global admins).

And anyway, if an account is not abusive on the source wiki where it was
created, and as long as it has not been rejected there, the user could still
appeal from the decision of being deined accesswith the same account on the
other wikis.

----

This also reopens something that was highly wanted, but not implemented, in SUL
when it was initially released: the possibility of merging under the same SUL
account, several user names that are distinct in other wikis: this would mean
that the SUL database should be able to store the effective user name used on
each wiki.

And given that SUL will still continue to autocreate accounts when navigating,
if an account is still valid on the origin wiki, the account names that are
considered abusive on another wiki should not just be deleted, but just
administratively blocked (but still reserved), and linked to another visible
account name which could be autogenerated with a numeric pattern, possibly in
another namespace like "UserId:12345" using only the existing account numeric
id, and its talk page becoming "Talk UserId:12345" too (the link from the old
account name would remain hidden in the list of references for the general
public). Then if the user connects to the specific wiki where he has no account
accepted username would be offered the option to assign a new acceptable name
there.

Note that if SUL had implemented distinct usernames on separate wikis, we would
have not needed to rename administratively so many existing accounts just to
merge them (some unrelated accounts were forced renamed, and I think this was
abusive, even if the unrelated user was not active since a few months : it has
broken the needed references for tracking licences). The only valable rule to
allow unifying several accounts on different wikis would have been to just
check that they had a common email address, with a verification by email, to
assert that the other account being unified into an existing SUL account from
its home wiki, is effectively accessible by the person asking for this
unification (so an email confirmation should be sent to both the email address
of the account on the source wiki asking for unification, and the email address
currently registered on the target wiki to unify, in the case they are
different, because not all people will want to receive email notifications from
distinct wikis on the same registered email address).

And given that we will no longer autocreate accounts with GET requests when
just visiting a foreign wiki, if a user ever starts editing any page and his
account is still not created, posting would still be possible and visible in
the log within the autocreated "UserId:" namespace. Not everyone would even
need to have a user name, registering a user name would be only an option in
the user settings of each wiki.

Another note: the association between a user id (local on each wiki) and its
visible name needs not being kept secret. When a user registers, he still has
an immediately accepted numeric user id, and if he asks for a user name,
"UserId:12345" would be an internal alias/synonym of "User:Username". Edit logs
from that user could still associate all contributions under the same user id,
even if he has changed his username once or several times, or if one of his
user name was rejected locally (in that case, the publicly visible logs would
replace the rejected/old username by the user id).

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