RealNameLogin
What (summary)
Currently, the user can only login through the user name that he/she provided while creating the account. But, the user should be able to log-in using his/her real name.
Why this is important
AboutUs wants to encourage people to use their real names because this will get us fewer but "motivated" users. According to Brandon, "we want that newcomer to find lots of real people and say to himself/herself "Wow, I've never been anywhere on the internet where so many people use their real names. This is a place I'd feel safe participating."
DoneDone
Account Creation
- Fields on account creation are "name, email, password" (all are required) (name is the same as the real_name field in the db)
- username is a randomly generated 6 character alphanumeric string that doesn't already exist
- The ip address for the user is remembered so that they can be prompted to login the next time they visit their MemberPage
Login
- Fields on login are "name OR email", and "password" (one of name+password or email+password is required to login)
- User is redirected to her MemberPage on successful login, with a link to the page/action they were trying to take before they logged in.
Member Namespace
- The User: namespace is renamed to Member:
- An apache url rewriting rule is added that maps any User: page to Member: so that old links still work
- An apache url rewriting rule is added that maps Member:John_Doe_2E5XAP to Member:25XAP
- Wherever a link is created for a user that would normally go to that user's username (e.g., User:User_Name), it is changed to instead go to Member:Real_Name_UserName
Problem
The requirement is that multiple users can have the same real name. As long as these users have different passwords, we can differentiate among them using their password. No problem! But if there are users who have the same real names as well as passwords we are in deep trouble. Problem Problem Problem! Because we cannot recognize the person logging in.
Solutions
- One solution that comes to my mind is that while account creation
- if ( (new_user.user_real_name == existing_user.user_real_name) && (new_user.user_password == existing_user.user_password) )
- puts "We've got an emergency"
- else
- puts "Great, Continue the normal registration flow"
- end
Now, in case of emergency, we cannot allow same passwords. Therefore, we can ask him/her to change the password saying "The password you typed is too weak" or "The password is very common".
Notes
- create account
- no username field. only real name and password field. we want people to use their real names
- use MediaWiki messages to accomplish this
- put login and create account form on the same page so that UI navigation overhead is reduced
- Using messages example (from aboutus/wiki/extensions/AdSidebar/AdSidebar.php)
$wgExtensionFunctions[] = "wfInitializeAdSidebar";
function wfInitializeAdSidebar() {
global $wgMessageCache;
$wgMessageCache->addMessage('AdSidebar', 'Advertisements go here' );
}
Tasks
- user_key can never be changed
- wherever a title is created (will be used for the link batch lookup), checks for it to be a username ... if it is, changes the link text to just be real_name
- target is always realname_username
- in the revisions table, usertext is the user_key
Discussion
I was working on the using Real Names when signing up and logging in. One problem that I see with this approach is that many people can have the same Real Name. If my real name is already taken, I won't find it funny :-). What do you think?
- You've identified a nice opportunity. Given that we definitely want to encourage real people/real names we need to think of a way of dealing with conflicts. Two different people ... same name. I know that I am not the only Brandon Sanders in the world, but I think that I am the only Brandon CS Sanders. I've added my middle initials to uniquely identify myself.
- I wonder if we could do something similar by appending the city they live in, or some other identifying attribute. Perhaps we could identify a name conflict and then gather extra information (city/country/hobby/etc) and suggest names for those whose names conflict.
That's getting somewhere Brandon. But don't you think we will be creating UI overhead? Besides, people are cognitively more used to to the idea of usernames (aliases). Since we already have a Real Name field, it gives the right sort of people an opportunity to enter their real name. People who want to conceal their Real Name will do so even if we remove the Username field.
- I think RealPeople is important enough that we want to go out of our way to encourage it. Thinking about it from the standpoint of a newcomer ... we want that newcomer to find lots of real people and say to themself "Wow, I've never been anywhere on the internet where so many people use their real names. This is a place I'd feel safe participating." If a few folks quit the registration process partway through that is okay ... we get fewer but more motivated and more aligned folks through. It's a win for us all around.
- RealPeople says "Using a real name, however, is not a requirement for participation", its nice and we should encourage it but people don't always want to use there real name. This is going to scare to many great editors away from registering. While it would be nice to be a wiki like meatball and have everyone use their real names AboutUs is much too big of a wiki to close so many people out of the loop. --Simon | talk 10:29, 15 August 2007 (PDT)
