Last modified: 2007-10-16 15:57:37 UTC
I have performed a set of username changes (5 of them altogether). It is kind of like an username upsurption, though it actually is a bit more complicated than that. I first describe three strangeness related to this set of username changes, and then supply further details. ===Three problems=== 1) Username is changed, without the contribution record changed In one of the changes made, the username User:Alice is changed to User:Bob, and on the Log, it is shown that 6,381 edits of User:Alice is changed to User:Bob. But upon checking Special:Contributions/Alice and Special:Contributions/Bob, I notice that the edits are still tied to User:Alice, as if no username change has occurred. 2) Contribution records merged? I also changed User:Charles to User:Alice after the above change of Alice to Bob. User:Charles had 14 edits, and now looking at User:Charles, it seems that those edits are moved to User:Alice properly. That means, I think, that Alice now claims both Alice's and Charles' edits. This is virtually a merger of two accounts, something that MediaWiki does not support, if I undrestand correctly. 3) User:Log and page histories attribute page moves to different accounts. Another anomaly I see is that while User:Alice's contribution records did not move to User:Bob, User:Alice's Logs, such as page rename log, moved to User:Bob. So if you see Bob's Log, it shows page moves and other things Alice performed before. But then, when I go to the pages that were moved by Alice, the move on the page's revision history is still attributed to Alice, not Bob. So there is now a series of inconsistency between what Special:Log says and what page history says. ===An Additional Oddity=== Another bureaucrat performed a series of experimental username changes after this incident. Log of the username change automatically inserts the edit count of the user whose name is changed. 3) Inconsistency between username change Log and user's contribution records According to that count, User:Alice, whose contribution records seem to include both Alice's and Charles', adding up to approx. 6,400, has made only 14 edits. That the # of edits Charles made. When Bob is changed to another username, even though Bob's contribution record does not include any of 6381 edits that must belong to Bob, (originally made under username Alice) and shows only 5 edits (made after the strange username change), the log says that Bob has 6386 edits under him. So, somehow, even though the contribution record is messed up, along with revision histories of pages, the edit counts associated with the involved accounts are kept correctly. ===Details=== The username change involves one request and an interruption. User:ぶた (User:Buta in the following for convenience) requested the account be changed to User:伊集院聖 (User:Hijiri hereafter again just for convenience). User:Buta has made 6,381 edits so far, it seems. Someone else took User:Hijiri. There were 14 edits from this account. User:Buta made another request, this time move to User:伊集院千尋 (User:Chihiro hereafter) User:Buta created the account User:Chihiro this time, so that nobody can interrupt the change. Tomos (me) made a series of changes, but first in a wrong way. I fulfilled the original request in a way, which I should not have. rename 1: User:Hijiri -> User:Renamed20071012 rename 2: User:Buta -> User:Hijiri Then, I realized the mistake. So I performed another username changes to correct what I have done and fulfil the second request. rename 3: User:Chihiro -> User:Renamed20071012b rename 4: User:Hijiri -> User:Chihiro rename 5: User:Renamed20071012 -> User:Hijiri After this, if things had went as expected, User:Hijiri would remain the same as before the renames, User:Buta's user pages, contribution record, and password would be transferred to User:Chihiro. Obviously things did not go that way for some reason. Another bureaucrat, Ks aka 98 conducted an extensive experiment and reproduced some error in some instances - the contribution records did not accompany the username change in some cases, he reported. User:Buta, whose username is now User:Hijiri, can log on to User:Hijiri, but cannot log on to User:Chihiro, where most of his edits are attributed. User:Chihiro is someone elses. ==Links== User:伊集院千尋 (User:Chihiro, User:Bob in the simplified story) http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%89%B9%E5%88%A5:Contributions/%E4%BC%8A%E9%9B%86%E9%99%A2%E5%8D%83%E5%B0%8B http://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E7%89%B9%E5%88%A5%3ALog&type=&user=%E4%BC%8A%E9%9B%86%E9%99%A2%E5%8D%83%E5%B0%8B&page= User:伊集院聖 (User:Hijiri, User:Alice in the simplified story) http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%89%B9%E5%88%A5:Contributions/%E4%BC%8A%E9%9B%86%E9%99%A2%E8%81%96 http://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E7%89%B9%E5%88%A5%3ALog&type=&user=%E4%BC%8A%E9%9B%86%E9%99%A2%E8%81%96&page= ==Other notes== Wrong attribution has a problem that has a legal dimension (because of GFDL's requirement for attribution and moral right under Japanese copyright law), so I set the "severity" to be "major."
Some contributions updates are done in the background and will not appear to update immediately. Logs are not changed as they record what was done at the time.
Hi, Brion. Thank you for your attention. I performed the username changes on Oct. 11, around 21:00 (UTC). 4.5 days later, the contribution records and page histories are still not right. Will this be resolved as a matter of time? Another related instance is reported since then: oldest part of a user's contribution record remains with the username before a name change. This is approximately 2 days old since the name change happened, it seems. Tomos
It might be possible to set up a job runner that loops through all wikis looking for rename jobs, since no-one seems to want to correct the mistake that's being made using the job queue to update the `revision` table in the background.
