John Erling Blad wrote: >In some cases it would be a lot easier and/or better if it was possible to >identify and not just authenticate an user. This could include such things >as turning on real name for identified users, or limiting elevated rights >to them, thereby avoiding renomination of banned users.
Are you familiar with Twitter and Facebook's use of blue checkboxes for "verified" accounts? Are you discussing something similar to that? >In a lot of countries it is now possible to get access to systems with >highly trustworthy identification. This is at least possible in several >European countries, and I bet it will be quite common in the coming years. Sure. A relatively easy option for "identifying" users, which has been discussed previously, is requiring the use of a credit card or a phone number in order to edit. These types of proposals have not been popular. There's also <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Identification_noticeboard>, which has a somewhat interesting implementation and execution history. For users who are well-known public figures, we have OTRS or Twitter or Facebook, where people can send an e-mail or make a post to cross-reference their accounts/identities. >Some pros; >- reclaiming user accounts would be somewhat easier >- real names could be used (no impersonation) >- user verification of various public departments >- proofs of identity for copyright claims I've said this previously elsewhere, but I think the focus should be on: * supporting case-insensitive user names, so that "Brian" and "BRIAN" are the same when logging in; * supporting display name configuration, so that user "__bradley__" can be referred to as such in page histories and elsewhere; and * supporting self-renames, so that it doesn't require another user to change your username, which is just crazy. I see a lot more to gain from these features than I do from focusing on identification. There have also been thoughts around affiliations and groups and better supporting those within MediaWiki. Currently, people often have a personal wiki account and an "official" wiki account, but managing the two can be difficult and tedious. Instead, you could have a way for users to join, for example, the group "Wikimedia Deutschland" and tag their contributions as being part of that group, instead of having "User:Herman" and "User:Herman (WMDE)" wiki accounts. GitHub does this pretty well. MZMcBride _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
