Last modified: 2014-09-13 14:19:16 UTC
The user.user_registration field is NULL for all users predating its addition circa 2005 (except on enwiki). This causes the API to return blank strings for user lookups[1], and causes all sorts of inconvenience for Toolserver scripts. The field has been populated retroactively on enwiki, but not on other wikis. Presumably the script or query is still lying around somewhere; could this be done on all wikis? [1] http://de.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=users&ususers=DerHexer|Pathoschild&usprop=registration
(In reply to comment #0) > The field has been populated retroactively on enwiki, but not on other wikis. No, I don't believe so. See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=users&ususers=Dobriain|Versageek&usprop=registration This sounds like a direct duplicate of bug 18638.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 18638 ***
(In reply to MZMcBride from comment #1) > (In reply to comment #0) > > The field has been populated retroactively on enwiki, but not on other wikis. > > No, I don't believe so. Probably only partially. Pathoschild's stalktoy very clearly displays that for some users there is precise registration date on en.wiki even before 2005, when there wasn't any. Should be trivial to verify. Bug 18638 is not really a duplicate unless the script runs itself on its own, better separate the two issues even though this is blocked by that one (-shell because this is not actionable yet).
(In reply to Nemo from comment #3) > Probably only partially. Pathoschild's stalktoy very clearly displays that > for some users there is precise registration date on en.wiki even before > 2005, when there wasn't any. Should be trivial to verify. To clarify: when the fixUserRegistration.php maintenance script is run, it can only change NULL user.user_registration values to a non-NULL value if there is an existent edit for the associated account when the script is run. For many old users (user accounts created prior to 2005 especially), a NULL user.user_registration value or even an inaccurate value is somewhat expected. While I thought that fixUserRegistration.php had been run on all Wikimedia wikis, [[wikitech:Server admin log/Archive 7#June 5]] indicates that it may have only been run on the English Wikipedia.