[OWW-SC] usernames

[Austin Che]

    As discussed in the SC meeting, we've agreed that we want to have
    people use their full names for their usernames, and that the
    login can be made to use their emails.
    
    Logging in via email addresses will take some coding and we need
    to ensure there aren't duplicate email addresses (which there
    definitely are currently). So I think we should punt on this until
    we hire a developer and can sort out that each person has a single
    account.
    
    However, it seems that the first step can be done independently
    for people who don't care about logging in with their name instead
    of their email (especially for frequent users, your username is
    saved in a cookie anyway so it doesn't matter).
    
    I would suggest that we standardize that people should use a
    username that is equivalent to the name they publish under (so
    including middle initial or whatever else they normally use) and
    including spaces e.g. "User:Foo Q. Bar". In the future, this will
    also make it easier to connect authors together and also make name
    collisions more rare.

    I've installed an extension for renaming users:
    http://openwetware.org/wiki/Special:Renameuser

    This extension reassigns all edits and also moves all user pages
    to the new name. I think you need sysop privileges to use
    this. Note: if you're using a private wiki, you may have some
    issues as the usernames on the private wiki won't be moved also. I
    think you should first rename the user on the private wiki and
    then on OWW. We should test this out before thinking about a
    larger rollout.
    
-- 
Austin Che           <austin at csail.mit.edu>          (617)253-5899