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Maniphest T284241

Transferring edits of an IP to their SUL account
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Description

I have a case here of an IP (82.3.185.12) that mainly edits on en.wikivoyage that has expressed a desire to have their edits transferred to their SUL account (Dreamboat1234). The main reason that the user continued using their IP address on that site is because they have >1000 edits and are well-known there, and hence it would be nice if they could transfer those edits to their SUL account.

Note that merging would not be needed, because the SUL account does not have en.wikivoyage attached to it. There is very strong evidence that the IP and the SUL account are the same person, and this can be confirmed through various means such as CU.

I haven't seen a precedent like this before, and hence was not sure if this can be done.

TLDR; an IP user wants to "rename" their en.wikivoyage account to their SUL.

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Event Timeline

Leaderboard created this task.Jun 3 2021, 5:38 PM
Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptJun 3 2021, 5:38 PM
Leaderboard updated the task description. (Show Details)Jun 3 2021, 5:39 PM
RhinosF1 subscribed.Jun 3 2021, 7:28 PM
MarcoAurelio subscribed.Jun 3 2021, 9:26 PM

I think rMW maintenance/reassignEdits.php can be used to do this, but I've never seen this being used on Wikimedia.

DannyS712 subscribed.Jun 4 2021, 12:11 AM
Zabe added a project: Wikimedia-maintenance-script-run.Jun 4 2021, 12:11 PM
Zabe subscribed.
JEumerus subscribed.Jun 4 2021, 1:04 PM

I think one big question is how sure we can be that all contributions by that IP were in fact done by that user.

Leaderboard added a comment.Jun 5 2021, 9:05 PM
In T284241#7132994, @MarcoAurelio wrote:

I think rMW maintenance/reassignEdits.php can be used to do this, but I've never seen this being used on Wikimedia.

Does it mean that the IP can start contributing using their SUL account, because the script appears to be simply "renaming" the edits and not doing anything to the account per se?

Base subscribed.Jun 5 2021, 9:52 PM
Aklapper added a comment.Jun 6 2021, 1:45 AM

It means that the question by JEumerus is still open and that this request might get declined if nobody can answer JEumerus' question.

Leaderboard added a comment.EditedJun 6 2021, 8:01 AM

My response above was to MarcoAurelio, but will supply a response to JEumerus' question below.

In T284241#7136391, @Aklapper wrote:

It means that the question by JEumerus is still open and that this request might get declined if nobody can answer JEumerus' question.

In T284241#7134277, @JEumerus wrote:

I think one big question is how sure we can be that all contributions by that IP were in fact done by that user.

I would say quite sure. When we take a look at https://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/82.3.185.12&dir=prev&target=82.3.185.12, the edits start from December 2020 (which means that we do not have to consider the case of another user using that IP in the past), and the topics edited correlate very well with what that IP normally edits. It appears to me that the IP is residential, which means that the case of someone else accidentally having that IP should be very rare (other than maybe the IP's family members, which I do not see any evidence here).

MarcoAurelio added a comment.Jun 6 2021, 11:37 AM
In T284241#7136274, @Leaderboard wrote:
In T284241#7132994, @MarcoAurelio wrote:

I think rMW maintenance/reassignEdits.php can be used to do this, but I've never seen this being used on Wikimedia.

Does it mean that the IP can start contributing using their SUL account, because the script appears to be simply "renaming" the edits and not doing anything to the account per se?

I am not prepared to answer that question. The script I linked seems to do what this task seeks by looking at its description, but I've never saw it being used anywhere. In fact I lodged a similar request some time ago as T156395 which was rejected for the reasons stated therein. The script seems to be missing some additional capabilities as well (T156459).

Zabe added a comment.Jun 6 2021, 11:48 AM
In T284241#7134277, @JEumerus wrote:

I think one big question is how sure we can be that all contributions by that IP were in fact done by that user.

Considering that the IP has more than 1000 edits, it seems to be in someway static, so that a simple CU could show that the IP is the same one as the from the user?

Nintendofan885 subscribed.Jul 18 2021, 11:03 AM
Aklapper added a comment.Jul 18 2021, 12:51 PM

It looks like nobody plans to take this risk, so this ticket might get declined.

Aklapper triaged this task as Lowest priority.Jul 28 2021, 12:11 PM
taavi closed this task as Declined.Jul 28 2021, 12:38 PM
taavi subscribed.

Reflecting reality. This is not going to happen unless reassignEdits.php gets updated so that it takes all cases into account (such as T156459) and we deem to run it safe to run in production. Feel free to re-open if that happens and this is still deemed important by the community, but I don't see that happening in the near future.

In T284241#7136274, @Leaderboard wrote:

Does it mean that the IP can start contributing using their SUL account, because the script appears to be simply "renaming" the edits and not doing anything to the account per se?

That script tries to re-attribute edits from one actor (= user account or an IP address) to another, yes. IP addresses do not have user accounts so there isn't anything to be merged here.

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