Wikiversity talk:Changing username

Usurpation is against assume good faith ?
background info with SUL:

some questions:
 * 0-edit-contributors: Why take from them back the faith we put in them ? Did they do something that provoked this ?
 * Will the new owners of that account contribute here more ? If so, why didn't they so far contribute or noticed that the account was gone ?
 * After which time the existing user should lose her account to the usurper ? (the actual user still has her accunt - it is just renamed)
 * on Steward requests/Usurpation for a short time stewards handled requests about usurpation. At the moment it is stopped: "Usurpation is temporarily stopped due to technical difficulties." It was actually about: that when the projects themselves don't act on requests that the stewards look into the issue.

My example (about which some might grin):
 * What do we do if the 10 year old girl is in vacation with her class. And now she returns and notices: "Oh no, my user account was usurped."
 * It is her fault, because she did not enable email ? if so, did she know that this is important ?
 * Did we lose her for our project - perhaps she would be with 12 years a great custodian ? (e.g. in Wikipedia there is a 12 year old custodian)

Problems which also will arise, e.g. what if the account "John" is used in several wikis (and all users could prove their first name is John) - who gets the SUL rights ? The user who has more value ? How do we assess this ?

Or what if a real-John comes to late and a non-John has "SUL"ed account "John" already ? Probably the stewards are already happy about the discussions to come :-)

That an custodian/admin from another project wants to secure her account so that no impostors do harm, is understandable. But if there is done "bad" things, sooner or later we will notice this and take actions anyway.

Should we take back from "our" old users the trust we gave them right from the begin (see assume good faith) ? Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 17:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Are you suggesting that we don't participate in usurpation on Wikiversity? Perhaps it is safe to assume after a year or so of no activity whatsoever that that a username is not going to be used? --Remi 19:02, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I am asking questions mostly - to also get more participation about this usurpation approach for the future. Before acting too fast positively on usurpation requests as other projects do (we are a place which is in some ways different than other wikimedia projects - e.g. we have mentorship for being custodian). We must make both parties happy
 * our existing users who have an account here - even if they have no edits
 * and the users who just arrived here - with their usurpation requests


 * But one party might not be happy afterwards.


 * I think there are some possibilities:
 * being against usurpation
 * (fast) usurpation (as some projects do)
 * giving the existing user the possibility to react (even if no email is actively set) in a good enough time for her


 * One good way for both parties would be - as the template suggests - that they get in contact with each other. After some time the b.cats look at that matter. I am not sure if all wikimedia users so far know that SUL is in pilot project running ?


 * So, some more questions:
 * is 2 weeks enough ? why not e.g. 2 months ?
 * Remi's second question: Is it safe to assume after a year or so of no activity whatsoever that a username is not going to be used? Erkan Yilmaz uses the Wikiversity:Chat (try) 22:28, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Usurpation
There has been some confusion about the use of Usurpation requested I have made a couple of minor edits to the template, but would like to ask that the community read the existing text and suggest improvements. Please also comment on the related instructions at Changing_username --mikeu talk 14:59, 30 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I would note that Usurpation, and all the templates that go with it, existed long before Single User Login. Since SUL came on line superiority of claim to a username has become a factor such that the rule on many other projects has generally become significant edits, generally meaning edits in the mainspace of a project.  Many projects have a separate area for requesting SUL usurpations, as opposed to ordinary "I want to change my user name to User:X and there already is one but he or she hasn't edited" requests.  Even then, GFDL compliance is maintained by simply moving the old account to a new name, such as User:FOO (usurped) or User:FOO (old).  I'm not suggesting that an active user should ever have their user account usurped but abandoned accounts with insignificant edits should not prevent unification.  However, I do think the rule on this project should be a common sense rule that obviously abandoned accounts are available for usurpation by SUL accounts of the same name.  To disclose bias:  I have a pending usurpation request here.--BewareofDoug 21:34, 30 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I find that even significant edits is not the rule everywhere, and on some projects accounts with clearly significant edits are usurpable for SUL reasons. I'm not suggesting that we need to be like every other project.  I'm only suggesting we need to reconsider cutting off the ends of the ham before we bake it, SUL has changed things and understandings of GFDL relative to usernames have also changed.  The changes on other projects and on meta can inform our decisions here.  Being stuck with our possibly outdated policies can hamper us in many ways and I for one will not edit in mainspace until I have my SUL name.--BewareofDoug 06:38, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

We really need more input from the community on a decision like this. I have started a Community Review/Usurpation of usernames to draw more attention to this discussion. Please post new comments at that page, and feel free to copy & paste anything from this page that you feel the community should be aware of. --mikeu talk 13:30, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Community review
There is a previous review of the procedures and policy regarding usurpation at Community Review/Usurpation of usernames. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 05:55, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

reverted deprecation of this topic
Dave shut the page down, but the page linked from the modified page as the new policy shows that it is not policy. Global rename policy is explicitly "proposed." So I reverted.

However, a local bureaucrat may still make local changes. What has happened is that stewards are now, since July, processing global (SUL) changes. See SRUC. But where there is a local account conflicting, that is not SUL, there may be still a need for local usurpation. Now, as it is, requests have been sitting without being handled for a long time. I've pinged Jtneill, no response. They were clerked and ready to go. We should assist these users, they may need to be referred to meta, because of 'crat absence.

I notice that enwiki has not shut down the equivalent page, w:WP:CHU.

I'm astonished about how unclear all this is on meta. It's obviously hard to find good help. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 19:38, 25 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Okay, found what Dave may have seen. . The ability of 'crats to rename users is being removed, as of September 15. Grumble, grumble, this was the only way for local 'crats to delink an SUL account to allow local editing with an account that was globally locked. Will users still be able to create local-only accounts? Those accounts have been immune to global lock, not being SUL accounts. Is autonomy being chipped away? --Abd (discuss • contribs) 19:53, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Correct; local bureaucrats can't rename accounts locally anymore. The "ability" to detach an account from the global account was in my eyes more a bug than a feature. And no, it won't be possible to create local-only accounts either. But I can assure you that only vandals, spambots etc will be globally locked per the global policy. We don't usually lock other accounts and we strongly advice users to handle stuff locally when applicable. Anyhow, I processed all open requests now. (Yes, stewards can still locally rename stuff for now.) In case you have more questions, feel free to ask of course. Trijnstel (discuss • contribs) 14:08, 29 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for processing those requests, we can properly shut the page down now. (Done.)
 * However, the global lock policy is not followed; that is, there is no monitoring, and there are exceptions; I began documenting actual lock practice, and those studies were suppressed. (see Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2014-06 What you have stated is the way it is supposed to be. Almost entirely, that's the way it is. It was for the rare exceptions that we needed local autonomy.
 * There are copies of some of the deleted pages linked from However, templates accessible on meta, and thus used for those pages, are not set up on that wiki, so this doesn't work for easy access. Nevertheless, to my knowledge, none of the pages violated privacy policy (as claimed in the suppression); or if there was an exception, that could have been handled. It is obvious that "privacy policy" violation was an excuse to avoid scrutiny of actual steward hehavior -- the vast bulk of which was completely proper. Out of 5000 global lock actions at the end of 2013, I saw only a few, well under ten, that were questionable.
 * There is a nondisruptive Wikiversity user who might be affected by this; his local account was created precisely to avoid a global lock by an adverse steward. If that account is locked, it will be necessary to escalate the matter to meta, whereas, formerly, that was not necessary. So I'm hoping that stewards who support what is correctly described above as policy -- or at least as how the community has understood policy -- will support what is needed to protect our users. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 15:13, 29 September 2014 (UTC)