Help talk:Unified login

Archives

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2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2022

• Talk:Single signon transition
• Talk:Single login
• Talk:Single login poll
• Talk:Single login specifications

External discussion

1. [Wikitech-l] Single user login status --Brion Vibber
   1. http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikitech-l/2006-November/thread.html#27726
2. [Wikitech-l] Primary account for single user login --Ans 11:00, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
   1. http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikitech-l/2007-October/thread.html#34137
   2. http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikitech-l/2007-October/thread.html#34172
   3. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2008-April/037286.html

old announcements

Following points were on the help page, though are so old as to not be relevant to current help

• Wikimania 2006 presentation: "What's cooking in MediaWiki: Single sign-on, version tagging, and other goodies"
• [Wikitech-l]: "Single user login status"
• Wikisource News: "Unified login in test phase"
• [Wikitech-l]: "SUL pilot"
• [Wikitech-l]: "SUL caveats"
• Wikipedia Signpost: "Single User Login enabled for administrators"
• Wikipedia Signpost: "Single User Login opt-in for all users"
• 2013 finalisation announcement
• 2013 personal announcement
• 2014 RenameUser announcement
• 2015 Schema announcement

and other old components

Tasks

• List of tasks related to SUL finalization on Phabricator
• Bug 57: "Single login (Unified login) on all wikimedia projects"
• Task T37707: "Complete unification of all accounts to SUL"

Discussions

• Single sign-on transition
• Single login
• Single login poll
• Single login specifications
• User:Brion VIBBER/Berlin roundup

History

Early discussions can be seen on the Single login page.

Brion Vibber discussed how this might work in the December 2005 Berlin roundup, uploaded implementation notes to the code base in April 2006, and it was the subject of a presentation at Wikimania 2006.

Brion announced a successful migration test in November 2006. Data collection took two hours and automatic merging took five hours. 4,457,075 primary accounts were confirmed, with 578,128 secondary accounts merged automatically based on matching email addresses or by cannibalizing unused accounts. 134,242 secondary accounts will need to be merged with user interaction (71,741 unique user names have accounts left unmerged).

Unified login was implemented for administrators only in March 2008, and Steward requests/SUL requests (now a redirect to SRUC) was created to resolve conflicts in unified logins. Unified login was enabled for all users on May 27, 2008 on an opt-in basis. On August 22, 2008, CentralAuth was set to make a global account for all users registered after this date. The change removed the need for manual merging of accounts.

On 30 April 2013, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that the unified login system would be changing so that there would be only unique global accounts with the same username across all Wikimedia projects; there would be no two users sharing the same username on different wikis. With SUL finalization, all non-global accounts will be converted to global accounts where possible and if there is clash in the username, they will be renamed to have a "~" and the wiki name will be appended to the username. For example, an account with the username "Example" on the Dutch Wiktionary, which will be renamed, would become "Example~nlwiktionary". Initially, it was announced to take place in May 2013. However, this was delayed to August 2013, and in August 2013, this expectation was removed.

As part of this process, GlobalRenameUser function was introduced in July 2014 and the local rename user tool was removed from bureaucrats' toolset in September 2014.

The mass renaming process of users with conflicts in username started on 15 April 2015 and was finished by 22 April 2015. Since 15 July 2015, only users with unified global accounts are allowed to login on Wikimedia projects.

JavaScript required

For technical reasons related to HTTP cookies, Special:CentralLogin doesn't work without JavaScript, so I'm making note of it for future reference. RAN1 (talk) 20:38, 21 October 2022 (UTC)