Maniphest T20209

Provide consistent native way to attribute offsite users in revision history
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	• brooke
	Mar 27 2009, 9:08 PM

Description

Edit attribution for revisions converted from UseMod days or imported from another wiki are currently a little odd; the revision record stores an ID of 0 and the username directly.

We then can end up assigning those edits to whoever registers the account name locally... which usually is correct, but sometimes not. :)

It could be useful to be able to store some sort of source wiki identifier with that attribution, which might help with dealing with these cases; and might also be relevant for OpenID-type cross-wiki authentication situations.

On the other hand it might be really difficult to retrofit in. Needs some pondering...

Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement

Details

Reference: bz18209

	Subject	Repo	Branch	Lines +/-
	Avoid DB rows with usable names but ID = 0 by introducing "interwiki" usernames	mediawiki/core	master	+504 -21

Customize query in gerrit

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Status	Subtype	Assigned	Task
Open	Feature	None	T40450 Reimplement MediaWiki's info action (tracking)
Open	Feature	None	T41533 Include action=credits output into action=info as well
Open		None	T87268 Copyright license and attribution issues (tracking)
Open	Feature	None	T29629 Mechanism for crediting external authors of a page
Resolved		Anomie	T9240 Usernames in history of imported pages should refer to original wiki
Resolved		Anomie	T20209 Provide consistent native way to attribute offsite users in revision history
Resolved		Anomie	T111605 Cross-wiki imports should set correct rev_user, not 0
Open		None	T179246 Fix incorrect attribution caused by Special:Import tool used prior to SUL finalisation for User:Nick
Resolved		Anomie	T181731 Run maintenance/cleanupUsersWithNoId.php on all wikis
Resolved		Ladsgroup	T183019 Wikibase must not insert local recentchanges entries for nonexistent local users (days: 5)
Resolved		Ladsgroup	T185034 Move code related to handling external user names to a dedicated class (days: 2)

Event Timeline

• bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Low.Nov 21 2014, 10:34 PM

• bzimport added a project: MediaWiki-libs-Rdbms.

• bzimport set Reference to bz18209.

• bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

• brooke created this task.Mar 27 2009, 9:08 PM

See bug 323 on the conversion issue; not marking it as a blocker here but should be considered.

Wondering if this request has simply become a WONTFIX nowadays?

(In reply to Andre Klapper from comment #2)

Wondering if this request has simply become a WONTFIX nowadays?

There's quite a web of reports on this issue, if you follow the dependencies. Luis recently brought it up again, see e.g. https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Files_and_licenses_concept&diff=1198638&oldid=1198602

Nemo_bis added a parent task: T87268: Copyright license and attribution issues (tracking).Jan 21 2015, 7:29 AM

Nemo_bis added a subtask: T29629: Mechanism for crediting external authors of a page.Jan 21 2015, 7:32 AM

He7d3r awarded a token.Jan 21 2015, 3:11 PM

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He7d3r updated the task description. (Show Details)Feb 23 2015, 11:47 AM

He7d3r added projects: Crosswiki, MediaWiki-Core-Snapshots, MediaWiki-Page-diffs, WMF-Legal.

He7d3r set Security to None.

Nemo_bis mentioned this in T9240: Usernames in history of imported pages should refer to original wiki.Jun 23 2015, 8:02 PM

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Nemo_bis mentioned this in T112384: Special:Import creates revisions with rev_user > 0 (unverified attribution of edits).Sep 12 2015, 3:20 PM

Scott subscribed.Oct 24 2015, 2:29 PM

Scott added a subtask: T111605: Cross-wiki imports should set correct rev_user, not 0.Mar 3 2016, 7:13 PM

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• ZhouZ moved this task from Backlog to Assigned on the WMF-Legal board.Apr 14 2016, 1:18 AM

• ZhouZ subscribed.

Perhaps in 2017 we already have some sort of crosswiki authentication system - CentralAuth.
With this in mind, It might be possible to take advantage of its capabilities and use it to redesign Special:Import to include option to import from any wikis included in the CentralAuth.

The import system has always assumed that any revisions attributed to user "X" in the import XML (that is, user X on the source wiki) should belong to the user X that exists on the target wiki, if such a user exists. In the pre-SUL days, this assumption was rather shaky at best, and is still troublesome when importing across wiki clusters. But in a world of SUL finalisation, the assumption is actually pretty reliable, so I don't see this as such a big problem as it used to be. That's not to say we shouldn't still fix it, though.

For posterity I'll note two approaches that have been taken to solve similar problems:

During SUL finalisation, unattached accounts for whom the SUL was already taken were renamed to username~dbname, such as TTO~enwiki.
When Wikitravel was imported to Wikivoyage, usernames were prefixed with (WT-xx) where xx was the language code, such as (WT-en) Paul Richter.

Anomie mentioned this in T178603: MediaWiki Xtools - "Top edits per namespace" creates fake attributions.Oct 19 2017, 7:44 PM

Change 386625 had a related patch set uploaded (by Anomie; owner: Anomie):
[mediawiki/core@master] Avoid DB rows with usable names but ID = 0 by introducing "interwiki" usernames

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/386625

gerritbot added a project: Patch-For-Review.Oct 26 2017, 3:34 PM

Change 386625 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/core@master] Avoid DB rows with usable names but ID = 0 by introducing "interwiki" usernames

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/386625

Anomie closed this task as Resolved.Nov 30 2017, 3:45 PM

Anomie claimed this task.

Anomie closed subtask T111605: Cross-wiki imports should set correct rev_user, not 0 as Resolved.Nov 30 2017, 4:29 PM

Nemo_bis awarded a token.Dec 3 2017, 3:47 PM

Scott reopened subtask T29629: Mechanism for crediting external authors of a page as Open.Dec 28 2017, 12:39 PM

matej_suchanek mentioned this in T143486: In some cases, moving or deleting pages on a client wiki does not result in sitelink updates / removal on Wikidata.Mar 4 2018, 4:24 PM

daniel mentioned this in T222380: Decide how to represent the identity of users from another wiki..May 2 2019, 5:24 PM

Aklapper removed a subtask: T29629: Mechanism for crediting external authors of a page.Aug 10 2019, 2:32 PM