Last modified: 2014-11-18 18:07:19 UTC

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Bug 13798 - Imported edits can be incorrectly attributed to whoever creates that account
Imported edits can be incorrectly attributed to whoever creates that account
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 7240
Product: MediaWiki
Classification: Unclassified
Export/Import (Other open bugs)
unspecified
All All
: Low major with 6 votes (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Nobody - You can work on this!
:
: 18163 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2008-04-20 13:52 UTC by Mike.lifeguard
Modified: 2014-11-18 18:07 UTC (History)
8 users (show)

See Also:
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
Assignee Huggle Beta Tester: ---


Attachments

Description Mike.lifeguard 2008-04-20 13:52:34 UTC
If a user from another wiki has had some of their edits imported, anyone who creates that account will have those edits attributed to them (possibly this will be incorrect!)

Ghost accounts (with imported edits, but which have never been created) should not be permitted to be created unless the user has a global account which includes all wikis where the imported edits came from. So if User:A@enwikibooks consists of edits imported from User:A@enwiki and User:A@meta, then it should be joined to User:A@global if they "own" (as defined by SUL) the accounts at enwiki and meta. If not, then some bureaucrat/SUL admin/steward/whatever intervention should be able to override this, and force the account to be merged (as appropriate).

Until then (SUL merge time for the involved accounts) the account User:A@enwikibooks should not be possible to create, as this makes it possible for edits to be incorrectly attributed. Again, it'd be ideal if this could be overridden by bureaucrats/SUL admin/steward/whatever.
Comment 1 Mike.lifeguard 2009-03-26 01:04:15 UTC
*** Bug 18163 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 2 Mike.lifeguard 2009-03-26 01:05:14 UTC
Could we at least have a reason why this is INVALID?
Comment 3 brianna.laugher 2009-03-26 01:18:51 UTC
I think it's a separate issue to SUL. SUL is another level of complication, which would be nice to address, but to solve the basic problem, edits should just be attributed to the user at the exporter-wiki instead of the local importer-wiki.
Comment 4 Melancholie 2009-03-26 01:30:28 UTC
When importing a page, the user attribution should just point to the originating wiki.

Read Brianna's blog entry at http://brianna.modernthings.org/article/193/edits-in-unexpected-places ;-)
The same happened to me on Wiktionary, where I first wondered where the h*** some edits of mine came from, and why.

Make an import process even more transparent and traceable (as well as correct) by just adding :en: (etc.) to 'imported' userlinks!
Comment 5 Melancholie 2009-03-26 01:38:56 UTC
Raising severity to (at least) 'major', as this can be a severe GFDL issue!
Added 'easy' tag, as this actually should just/mainly be a simple XML output issue (adding a ":project:lang:").
Comment 6 Chad H. 2009-03-26 01:41:59 UTC
Removing easy, because it's not that easy :)

Adding a project:lang: to the export format wouldn't make sense for the vast majority of wiki installs out there; nor can we assume that a given interwiki prefix is defined on the target wiki.
Comment 7 Melancholie 2009-03-26 05:05:05 UTC
(In reply to comment #6)
> Adding a project:lang: to the export format wouldn't make sense for the vast
> majority of wiki installs out there; nor can we assume that a given interwiki
> prefix is defined on the target wiki.
> 

@wiki prefix: Oh, of course; you can export on any wiki and import on any wiki; I forgot that ;-) Just had our cool automatic on-the-fly importing tool in mind. So, when interwiki prefixes aren't suitable, why not just adding the URL of the wiki in front of the user (making an external link)?

<username>Foobar</username> => <username>http://foo.bar/User:Foobar</username>

Or *if* this should break anything (backwards compatibility) maybe use the <base> tag as input information:
<base>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page</base>

By the way, <base> should not point to the (movable) main page, instead just use
<base>http://en.wikipedia.org/</base>

Isn't it possible to make an external link (http) within a recentchanges table, revision table etc.?
Comment 8 Angela 2009-03-27 12:44:46 UTC
Here's an example http://scratchpad.wikia.com/index.php?title=User:Simetrical&action=history (a mockup - not a working feature)

The advantage of using @ is that it's a banned character in usernames (at least within Wikimedia projects) so someone else can not make that account and claim such edits as their own.
Comment 9 Nemo 2011-11-14 15:51:39 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 7240 ***

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