Help talk:Unified login/Archives/2006

User preferences remain local

Hello,

Will there be a possibility to make one's preferences uniform on all projects or to change one preference on all projects simultaneously ?

Grasyop ^✉ 09:24, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Read the page : User preferences are local, although the email address only needs to be set and confirmed in one place. You can continue to have different preferences on different sites.. le Korrigan →bla 09:27, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I did read that sentence. But I'd like to make and keep my preferences uniform without changing them manually on each project. Grasyop ^✉ 09:33, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Alternatively, it would be convenient if one could specify a personal default set of preferences, with the possibility to deviate from that on a specific project. Most of the work related to creating an account is setting the preferences.--Patrick 10:04, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I think the home wiki preferences should apply, unless a particular preference is changed on another wiki. In other words, the other wiki's preferences would shadow the main preferences. Superm401 | Talk 08:39, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Feedback

• I saw that feedback would be appreciated, so here goes. I was able to succesfully log into testwiki: with my username from en-wiki even though I have never been there, nevermind register. So, I guess it's working! -Royalguard11(Talk·@en) 23:55, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
• It successfully changed my password :) Same username and email on both wikis --Werdan7^{T @} 23:28, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
• I have the same user name and password in Commons and Wikipedia in English and Spanish. Now I also created an account here, but the account in test was not automatically created. --Alpertron 18:33, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

  Meta accounts are not unified with the test wiki yet, since the system hasn't been implemented on Meta. The accounts on the test wiki were all automatically migrated at one time. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:20, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

  I created the user account on Meta to post feedback. I have the other accounts (Commons, es:wikipedia and en:wikipedia) for about a year. --Alpertron 17:41, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

  Unified login is not yet active. There was a one-time test migration on 04 December 2006; all accounts created before that date should be able to log into the Test wiki. Any accounts created after that date cannot log into the Test wiki, since they were not migrated. When unified login is implemented (but not now), all new accounts will be automatically migrated to all projects. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:58, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

  The three accounts cited above have the same user name (alpertron) and password and they were active the last year (you can check my first contributions on the different projects here, here and here). It appears that the test didn't work for me. Best regards,--Alpertron 15:42, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

What's new

about unified login ? Does that work anywhere ? Arno Lagrange ✉ 11:58, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

It only currently works on testwiki:, not on any real "project" wiki. -Royalguard11(Talk·@en) 22:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Misleading name and no consensus

The names "single login" and "unified login" (I see both used in page titles about it) are misleading. They get people behind this overcomplicated proposal because they hallucinate that once it's implemented, they'll be able to log in once and edit any Wikimedia wiki, or maybe look at a watchlist that spans several wikis. If it provided useful features like that, it would be worth it. But it doesn't.

All the proposal provides is a single username. Shouldn't it be renamed to that?

Also, has this proposal gone through the proposal process and earned a consensus on any major wiki?

Rspeer 00:55, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

WTF? This has the consensus of virtually every editor that has registered on more than one wiki. The only people who have opposed it are monoglot English-speakers who don't need an account on more than one project. For people like me, and virtually everyone that has even a second language, this will be extremely valuable. And who says the proposal won't include a global watchlist? Sure, it won't in the beginning, but I'm positive that there will be one in the near future. Jon Harald Søby 09:16, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I see a vague consensus for a single login -- something that would make it easier to move between different wikis -- but not for a single username, a messy process without real benefits. In fact, I see good arguments against a single username by people who edit in multiple languages: they want to be able to write their name in different character sets. (See people's comments on Talk:Single login specifications.) I don't think this "consensus of virtually every editor..." exists: you'll have to show me. Be sure you're not sampling the self-selecting group of people who bothers to read Meta.

Regarding a global watchlist: I think that's one of the things that people really want, and the developers could easily work on that instead of single usernames. There could be a procedure to link watchlists between accounts you control, and then we'd have better collaboration between projects without having to wait for a 21-step username shuffle to be completed. Rspeer 18:43, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

You're wrong. Unified login will NOT restrict users to one account, it will just make each account work across all Wikimedia projects. --Rory096 19:45, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

You misunderstood me. I wasn't saying that anything in the proposal would stop people from having multiple independent usernames, like they can on any project right now. Just that the system won't consider you the same person unless you have the same username on different languages. If, in fact, later features actually do build on linking watchlists or something between wikis, people who already edit under different usernames in different character sets are going to be left out. Rspeer 23:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

No, you misunderstand him. There's nothing preventing you from creating an account with a Hebrew name on he: and then manually merging it with your Latin script account on en: -- the only difference is that the system tries to match accounts with the same name automatically, and that you have to manually merge others. There's *NOTHING*, I repeat: NOTHING preventing you from having accounts with different names and a single log-in with global preferences (and later a global watchlist) to all of them. At least that's how I understood it. —Nightstallion (?) 08:20, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I quote from the implementation notes: "Are not trying to achieve ever: Different usernames on each wiki." Rspeer 22:23, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting, because that's obviously possible if I manually merge an account named αβγ on el: and one called abg on la:... —Nightstallion (?) 18:04, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Where is this "manual merging" process described? One of the problems with single login is that everyone's talking about a different version of it, and what's on the Wiki apparently doesn't correspond at all to what developers are actually advocating. This makes it hard to discuss. Rspeer 22:02, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree there is no consensus for this. Why are the details so obscure? How will it be determined who gets a username? The old proposal page at least said outright that you would have to "compete" for it. This detail which will affect a lot of users is not mentioned directly here. Where is the proper support procedure for this? Biophase 00:19, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Confused

Well, my username (Thunderhead) is registered on every project except Wikipedia, because someone took it before I could get to it. Would that user be renamed, and the account I use (Thunderhead1) renamed to Thunderhead? Thunderhead 19:58, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

See Help:Unified login#Conflict resolution and the implementation notes. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Dates

Notification
Excerpt from Article page
Notification when you receive a new message is still local; you will only see the "new messages" box for the site you're looking at. This may change in the future.
Can we get a rough idea about the future date.

Log in
Excerpt from Article page
Log in although registering an account does so globally, it is still necessary to log in on each site separately (with the global username and password). Future development may allow users to log in globally as well.
Can we get a rough idea about the future date.

Watch List
The feature of showing recent changes to multiple watch lists at a single place, will this be part of Unified login feature. If yes, great else can we get a rough idea about the future date. —unsigned by 59.94.240.224 00:16, 28 December 2006.

Nope. There is no set schedule; development time depends on how much free time the developer has, what difficulties arise, and how many other projects the developer works on. As a pure guess, those features might be ready between 2008 and 2010. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:52, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

May be in this large time frame of 2-4 years, you can mentor me to contribute to Wikipedia/Wikimedia as a developer so that timeframe for such important features can be shortened :-) Wikipedia user name Vjdchauhan. —unsigned by 203.200.99.67 10:10, 29 December 2006.

I'm not a developer. The developers are probably too busy to mentor users, but you can learn for yourself. If you already know programming (particularly PHP and MySQL), a good introduction to MediaWiki is the administrator's guide. —{admin} Pathoschild 04:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)