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Sort user list according to account creation time
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Description

Author: mark_sweep

Description:
The following would be really useful for keeping the Willy on Wheels in check: a
list of all users sorted by account registration time (most recent first,
essentially like RC/watchlists) and with links to talk, contributions, and
blockip. Here's a crude ASCII mock-up:

24 August 2005

08:02 Wheelie on Wills! (talk . contribs . block)
08:01 Willee on Wheals! (talk . contribs)

The absence of a "block" link would indicate that the account is currently
blocked (i.e., this would query the IP block list as well).

Several users have been engaged in new user patrol (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Newuser_patrol),
and the functionality described above can be simulated to a certain extent
off-line. However, there are some technical problems related to the (ab)use of
UTF8 usernames, and the selective presence of block links would be especially
useful.

Related, but slightly different enhancement:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1628


Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement

Details

Reference
bz3301

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Medium.Nov 21 2014, 8:47 PM
bzimport set Reference to bz3301.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

Creation time is not recorded, but creation _order_ is (in the ID numbers).
So a sorted list can be made, but it won't include timestamps (at least for now).

mark_sweep wrote:

Let me quickly reiterate that this enhancement would go beyond the functionality
requested in #1628 (http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1628) because
of the cross-referencing with the IP block list.

mark_sweep wrote:

Re Brion's comment #1: Creation order would be an excellent start! Perhaps in
the future the DB scheme could be augmented to also record creation time for
each account?

I am actually weakly opposed to this. I think it allows for the
impression that old/early created accounts are special. Not to mention
the temptation of a new varient of the appeal to authority: "I'm user
#24325, shut up you #314531". Identifying newbies has a number of useful
purposes, but what good is served by identifying oldies? For this
reason, I would prefer that such a listing have a cutoff such that people
do age out and merely become part of the society of equals that is
Wikipedia.

mark_sweep wrote:

I agree completely regarding one point: We certainly don't want to encourage
Slashdot-style petty elitism based on user ID numbers. One way of doing that
would be to simply not show the ID numbers in the list. Also, the community is
usually pretty good about judging users by their contributions, pointing out the
dangers of editcountitis, etc. User ID snobbery would be even worse than edit
count snobbery, and I don't think it would find any acceptance.

I do, however, think we do need the ability go back in time and see if there are
any temporal patterns in account creation. The Willy on Wheels has been with us
for over a year, and has acted methodically, creating sleeper accounts which lie
dormant for a while before being used for vandalism. I don't think we should
automatically trust the oldest 99% (or some other percentage) of users: they may
have registered a long while ago, but if they haven't made any edits at all, the
only reason to trust them is [[WP:FAITH]].

Well how about removing people from the list after they have established
a certain number of edits then? That would still leave open the
possibility to observe even very old sleepers but remove users who have
established themselves within the community. 200 is a perfectly abitrary
number but would probably be enough to eliminate all but the most
enduring of trolls.

robchur wrote:

This is now feasible with the introduction of the user.user_registration column.

There also seems to be no UI for selecting it, and the URL parameter 'creationSort' doesn't follow our typical naming patterns.

Consider 'sort=name' vs 'sort=id' or such, and provide a UI for selecting it.

(In reply to comment #11)

Done

Release note that is.