Wikipedia talk:Changing attribution for an edit

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Hi. I'm not retarded, I swear.

For some reason, it's refusing to let me log in, which is making it difficult to finish claiming my old edits. I'm BenSamples but it's refusing to take my password now that I've logged out.

Argh! I'll fix it as quick as I can -- my apologies.

Update: Fixed now! Thanks for patience. BenSamples 05:25, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

How does this gibe with GDFL? RickK 03:48, 15 Oct 2003 (UTC)

My opinion: GFDL requires that the authors be attributed. The official Wikipedia line is that "Wikipedia contributors" is sufficient for this, although opinions are divided. An IP address is not an author -- IP addresses are essentially anonymous. The author should have the right to attach their real name (or a nickname) to the contributions they have made. This page allows authors to do that, providing they can prove authorship. See my user page for an IANAL statement. -- Tim Starling 04:00, Oct 15, 2003 (UTC)
To put it another way: the rights of the author should not be infringed by quirks in our software. -- Tim Starling 04:33, Oct 15, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks tim :) Martin


To reduce the amount of time Tim or any other sysop spends fixing up all of these IP address edit attributions, wouldn't it be a good idea to change the edit screen for non logged in users to make it more obvious that they are not currently logged in? Like a message close to the Save button Note that you are not currently logged in and this edit will not be attributed to you. If you do not have an account, why not set one up? or wording to that effect. I know logging in is not mandatory, but can something like this hurt? -- Nanobug 21:35, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Might help, but not always. I have my preferences set for the "Cologne Blue" skin, so I can tell at a glance if I'm not logged in. Yet since getting an account I still have a few pages listed under an IP address because (I think) my login timed out while I was double checking a fact before clicking "Save page". Putting up a warning wouldn't help because for all intents I was logged in until I submitted the article. (I've now learned to do a final "Show preview" before "Save page" even if nothing has been changed since the last "Show preview".) Securiger 12:06, 23 Feb 2004 (UTC)

What about changed usernames? My old User:Tokerboy edits have been attributed to User:TUF-KAT, but I don't think User:Tucci528 has. Tuf-Kat

Hello, I am also User:TUF-KAT. Tucci528

Handy stuff for developers: select concat('[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=',old_title,'&oldid=',old_id,' ',old_id,']') from old where

I've posted a request for an attribution change five days ago, but nobody cared to help. I'm wondering if I did anything wrong. A lot of people seem to be posting requests at the bottom of the page, even though it says to do so in the top. If I'm correct on that, maybe that warning should be more clear, so that people won't miss it. Mackeriv 04:20, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Just hold in there, I sent my request 10 days ago and am still waiting. Sarge Baldy 09:28, Mar 30, 2004 (UTC)
Don't worry, just be patient and it will happen eventually. Only developers can reattribute edits, and currently, only Tim Starling is dealing with these requests, so it isn't going to happen that frequently. Angela. 21:18, Mar 31, 2004 (UTC)
Oh, so that's it. I see it now. Thanks for replying, you both. Mackeriv 01:25, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)


And I've been waiting and wondering if I did something wrong for 20 days! Perhaps the page should make clear it can take this long. I agree that the order of posted requests is quite confusing. Eoghan 21:31, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I took my time to highlight the warning text I talked about. That will help people on knowing where to post their requests. — Mackeriv 20:54, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Table format

Hey All - An idea involving reorgani(z/s)ation

This page is really messy. I think maybe a slight redesign is in order. I have an idea as such:

An example

---- -------------------------------------------------------------
|  IP     | User  | Ip's Edits       | Check if done by designer |
|----------------------------------------------------------------|
| a.b.c.d | Happy |   blah,blah,blah |    Done by BlahDesigner   |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------


and as follows. Then people could add the table in clean fashion and a table would also help some sort of script, in the future. At the top of the page could be a code example for people to copy and paste into the table to add a row. What does everyone think? Burgundavia 05:58, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

Note: If this idea is liked I will go and do the whole page into that style or something similar. Burgundavia 06:39, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

The table looks useful and might lead people to fill in the right information the first time, rather than having to be told later they need to sign it logged out. However, it might be worth waiting for Tim's opinion on this as he is the one who has to deal with the requests. Angela. 21:35, May 16, 2004 (UTC)
Yeah, sounds good to me, perhaps it will encourage people to follow the proper procedure. Of course part of the reason it's messy is that there are lots of requests on here. Last time I cleared the page, it took half a day. I'm not sure if I will be able to keep it up. Note that the bulk of the work that goes into clearing this page does not have to be done by a developer. Mostly it's checking that people followed the proper procedure, just using the history and text of this page. I never check logs or writing styles. -- Tim Starling 00:36, May 17, 2004 (UTC)
  • MAJOR COMMENT - We could have someone(I volunteer myself) to check for style, etc. And then the accuracy checkers could sign off on the attrib change, leaving you the developer to just actually do the changes. SIDENOTES - This idea came up because as I added my entry I realised that one person would spend a lot of time just doing this one maintenance task - not good for the overall health of the wiki, IMHO. A table would also allow you to create a script(my programming skills are bash and some java otherwise I would do it) to do it automatically, meaning you could have non-developers do the checking as per my comment above. Burgundavia 05:21, May 17, 2004 (UTC)
see User:Burgundavia/test for a test. Burgundavia 22:30, May 17, 2004 (UTC) - Maybe restrict one row for each ip unlike I did?
Er - perhaps it is me, but I find the new instructions quite difficult to follow. Could you possibly create an example of what you would expect the result to look like? Thanks.
Also, would it be helpful for people (like me!) who have previously made a request for changes in attribution to delete the old request and make a new one in the new format? -- ALoan 16:41, 28 May 2004 (UTC)
Sorry all. I will clean it up now. I am leaving the old requests, as the history is very useful to Tim for figuring out if you and you. Burgundavia 21:48, May 28, 2004 (UTC)
I'm with ALoan. I have added an entry to that page several months ago. My edits still haven't been attributed to me, but what am I supposed to do now? Delete the old entry and create a new one to comply with the new procedure? — Mackeriv 19:02, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Me too... I added an entry in April, and am still waiting. I'm not complaining - I'm just not sure if I should delete it and create a new one in the new format, or what. Thanks for any help. -Rwv37 23:58, Jul 16, 2004 (UTC)

This sounds like a very tedious process and I feel sorry for the person assigned such task to do this for the years to come. I am wondering why isn't this thing automated?

The association between an IP and a user name can be tracked based on login records. If IP a.b.c.d is always John Doe for the past 200 logins, you can almost be sure all edits by a.b.c.d are by John Doe. Since dynamic IP are often reassigned by ISP to different users, such ID changes should all be identifiable and clustered into edit periods that corresponds to login in sessions. This will take care of all the IP edits due to timeouts of named users.

For people who used to be anonymous but recently aquired a user name, and want to retroactively claim attributions for old edits, they should be allowed to click a link on any history page entry to claim ownership of an old edit. The link then register the request into a database for ID verification and later name change by adminstrators. e.g.

(cur) (last) _ .. m 02;18, 26 May 2004 .. 206.244.157.9 (attr) (edit summary ....)

If I am currently logged in as John Doe at 206.244.157.0, by clicking on the (attr) link, I registered a re-attribution request and identified myself and the particular edit in one click. If my ISP no longer assigned me the same IP address, the situation could be more complex to verify the identity, but the request can be submitted as easily and automatically.

The current procedure to require each user to edit a table is too troublesome and user unfriendly. Just my $0.02

Kowloonese 00:42, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] does any one work on this ?

I can understand that its hard to work on our mistakes. but if help is required i can be a volunteer.... i hate stuff piling up....

--kunjan1029 22:36, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

As I wrote above, only developers can reattribute edits, and currently, only Tim Starling is dealing with these requests, so it isn't going to happen that frequently. Changing the page to the #Table format that Burgundavia suggested above might make it happen a bit quicker. Angela. 01:03, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
looks like a good idea. i will start on it in a day or two... --kunjan1029 05:36, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Is there anything that we can do speed this process along? Can anyone "check" the existing entries? What needs to be done? -- ALoan (Talk) 18:11, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that the recommended procedure (specifically the part from 3. - "your IP will be automatically entered") doesn't work anymore, possibly since the switch to the new Wikipedia software. See the version before I went and corrected it all semi-manually: The source code was full of things like [[Special:Contributions&target=[[User:192.16.204.80|192.16.204.80]]|[[User:192.16.204.80|192.16.204.80]]]] which of course displayed even more wildly.

I guess at least this should be changed right now - probably let people find out their IP manually (they need it to do for the section heading anyway, and if they are net-savvy enough to request change of attribution, it shouldn't be a problem) and paste it in instead of the thre tildes. Or do I get something wrong? --Malyctenar 14:23, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Attribute change backlog

There's a large and growing backlog on Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit. Would some of the developers please spend some time reducing it?

Thanks, Tualha 18:59, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Setting that page up was a mistake. The workload was too high, I can't spend that much time on such a thankless job. I said on the talk page that the bulk of the work does not need to be done by a developer, and I outlined the tasks that need to be done. But no-one has taken the hint. If someone could check all the requests and carefully construct a list of necessary database operations, I could run those operations. But I can't afford to double-check each one. -- Tim Starling 02:21, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)
Oh, I didn't think to check the talk page. Thanks for the info. Tualha 03:46, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps in the long term what is needed is either an automated authentication process, or the ability for non-developers to take care of this task. Unfortunately re-attribution would be too sensitive to give it to all admins, but perhaps bureaucrats, or stewards, or a new user class? Claiming early edits is something a lot of people want to do, so finding a way to make the process work easilly would be nice. Isomorphic 19:58, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I know nothing of databases, so I can't construct any list of operations for Tim, and I'm not sure I quite understand him what needs to be done even though I have read the whole page: to go through the page's history and vouch that signatures have indeed been made by those who were logged-in at the moment? This is indeed a terribly tiresome gruntwork and I can see why no developers want to waste their precious time by that; but of course, nobody else would want to either. Couldn't some script to automatize this once for all and save a lot of userminutes be written in a reasonable time?
Another idea: why is it so necessary to check at all? Why should anybody want to cheat here? It's just a couple of anon edits, no good to anybody except their author's good feeling. After all, even manual checking by random volunteers is just another level of "who watches the watchers"; one could make a sockpuppet identity for zirself. Wouldn't it be easier just grant those requests and solve the any disputes only when and if ever they arise? (Of course you would then have to keep a log of changes made to have a way of reversing them.)
And if not, I can see a minimal solution: Just make it a condition that everybody who asks for an attribution change has to check, say, three requests from the backlog. That would reduce it gradually. I'd do it myself to set a good example, but don't have the time right now and I don't know yet if anything comes of this - for example, Tim might not want to deal with fewer than 100 changes at once. (And besides, as the inventor of this Egg of Columbus, I should be exempted, right? :-) --Malyctenar 12:25, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks to Kate

As well as the thanks already flooding in to her talk page, I just wanted to give Kate Turner my public thanks for fixing so many of the outstanding reattributions. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:16, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Er - has something been reverted? The edit history indicates that I was "done" at 09:06 and 09:08, 4 Sep 2004 and I'm sure I checked the re-attributions at the time, but now my contributions don't include the contributions of 193.128.231.252 or 80.229.137.127, and the attributions on the page histories of the relevant articles still refer to the original IPs (for example, here). Do I need to post another request? -- ALoan (Talk) 11:37, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Where's the table

Where's the table that we are suposed to copy????

Cjrs 79 18:05, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's at Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit#Table to Copy. Angela.
There is an error in the instruction. It says LOG IN, and add your user name with ~~~~ to the section "ADD YOUR USERNAME AND TIMESTAMP AFTER YOU LOG BACK IN". However in the table template, there is no such section.

[edit] Table broken

As can be seen if you glance down the page, the table currently being copied creates extrememly broken markup. This is because of the following line:

[[Special:Contributions/~~~|~~~]]

which produces something like the following:

[[Special:Contributions/[[User:IMSoP|IMSoP]]|[[User:IMSoP|IMSoP]]]]
→ [[Special:Contributions/IMSoP|IMSoP]]

note the linked usernames; what was intended was this:

[[Special:Contributions/IMSoP|IMSoP]]
→ IMSoP

combined with the extra | from the table syntax, it makes the parser even more confused:

[[Special:Contributions/IMSoP|IMSoP]]

I don't think there's any way round people typing their IP addresses in by hand, I'm afraid. It would be a good candidate for a template, but last I checked, there was a limit on including the same template, and no parameters in {{subst:}}, so that's no good either. - IMSoP 19:57, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing out the nested brackets. After I removed the extra brackets, the links looks fine now. Kowloonese 01:22, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I have edited the instructions to point out this problem similar to the "User:" addition below. Paul 21:04, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I think the table is broken, would it make more sense to have:

[[Special:Contributions&target=IP|IP]]

where IP is the IP address ? Onco p53 00:07, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No, this markup doesn't work - see frex Special:Contributions&target=80.188.52.66, which for me results in a URL with non-alphanumeric characters translated into percentage notation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions%26target%3D80.188.52.66 and error message
No such special page
You have requested a special page that is not recognized by Wikipedia.
But [[Special:Contributions/IP]] works perfectly - see here.
But as nobody bothers to fulfill the mounting requests, all this is moot anyway. --Malyctenar 08:58, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
OK. Yep it only works for user names. But in that case is should be [[Special:Contributions/IP|IP]]. The current instructions tell you to use ~~~~, this inserts User:IP, which mucks up the table as we want it to go to the contribution. What if there was one more instruction that said something like: Remove the User: part from the link. (in nicer prose). We should put the burdon of effort on to the submitter, not the admin, they have enough work as it is. Onco p53 09:17, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] request order

The instruction does not explicitly say if the request should be added to the top or the bottom of the list. As a result, the requests are not listed in chronological order. Given that there is a section for older entries near the bottom, the list should be in reversed chronological order, i.e. newer entries should be added to the top. Is that correct? Kowloonese 01:22, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I've changed it to say that. — Kate Turner | Talk 05:20, 2004 Oct 26 (UTC)

[edit] incorrect instructions

Step 6 says:

LOG IN, and add your user name with ~~~~ to the section "ADD YOUR USERNAME AND TIMESTAMP AFTER YOU LOG BACK IN"

However, there is no such section in the TABLE TO COPY. Tempshill 19:21, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Procedures - note

Just a small remark. The note quoted below is too little specific.

Note:You must do this on the computer on which you did the original edits. Please follow procedure, as it will make the process go much faster.

What exactly is meant by the computer on which you did the original edits - what exactly is needed i.e. same IP address, browser's saved cookie or same browser's signature? This all can and can be not achieved by logging on the same computer. I think the note should be rewritten to hold a more specific meaning.

[edit] Patience - or have I made a mistake?

Four months ago I made this request. Others more recent seem to have been attended to. Mine still show as the anonymous IP. What's wrong?

202.27.88.100 ADD YOUR USERNAME AND TIMESTAMP AFTER YOU LOG BACK IN Robin Patterson 22:49, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC) ...</>>202.27.88.100 Maori Wikipedia http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=202.27.88.100

Robin Patterson 21:28, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I understand it is a slow and painful process to correct the attributions. The request list just keep growing longer and longer with no visible sign or any correction activity. The history page does not help much because nobody leaves any edit notes. I propose that the sysadm people needs to mark their edit with very visible notes. e.g. "ATTRIBUTIONS for 12.34.56.78 FIXED" or something the readers can easily pick out from the overwhelming requests. Kowloonese 01:29, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Return to flight

This page has stagnated for a long time, and there seems to be no prospect of it becoming unjammed without reform. Accordingly, I propose to add a note to the page (a sketch version detailed below) and to clean the page up accordingly.

  • If all the edits made on a given IP are by you. If any aren't, don't list it. We can only assign all the edits of a given IP to a specific user - it's too much work to pick and choose which edits.
  • As changing attribution takes manual work for each IP, please don't list an IP with fewer than 200 contributions. If you do list one with fewer than 200, we'll delete your request. If you have multiple IPs, list only ones with more than 200 contributions each.
  • Don't list IPs that belong to proxies used by many people (particularly the list copy from Special:Blockip)

I propose to use a template rather than the table code for requests, as the table code is clearly giving people problems. I also proposed to create a user-page notification template to tell uses the change has been made, and to inform the developers of requests by email (to wikitech-l) rather than have them read this page. Any comments? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 12:51, August 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Changing username a few months ago

A few months ago, I posted on the Wikipedia:Changing username page to change User:Tony Jin to User:King of Hearts for privacy reasons. Since it told me to create this new account, I followed the instructions and did, but now it tells me not to create the new account. When I asked the username-changers to help, they said I should come here to ask. What can I do now? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 01:25, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Why is this not automatic?

This seems like something that (1) Has a lot of demand; (2) Has few people with the capability/desire to fulfill the demand; (3) Would be almost trivial to implement as an automatic service. Just put a "Claim attribution" link in each page's "Toolbox" . If you click it, and if your IP address matches any of the IP addresses of anonymous comments on the page, then they're instantly and automatically assigned to your username. Is there something I'm not seeing that would make this anything more than utterly trivial? -Rwv37 22:00, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Update: I made a request for this on bugzilla.wikimedia.org; it's bug number 3538 [1]. -Rwv37 22:19, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Updated update: I just noticed that you can "vote" for bugs/proposals on bugzilla, which (I assume) makes them more likely to get worked on. If you would like to see this change happen, please create a mediazilla account if you don't already have one (which can be done here [2]), and vote for this proposal (here [3]).
Updated updated update: For some reason, somebody on mediazilla insisted on closing the request and told me that I should reopen a new one with essentially the same underlying desire, but framed in terms of something called "Special:Renameuser". So I did. So it's now bug 3539 (here [4]), not 3538.

[edit] What a silly proposal

Yes, we would all like to get our edits that we made anonymously attributed to our accounds. The edit count warriors especially. But one IP address may represent many users. Users may claim the edits of anons as their own just to increase their edit count. There is virtually no way of verifying if an editor is telling the truth. Even if we assume good faith, it would be foolhardy to assume that all IP addresses represent one unique contributor. savidan(talk) (e@) 05:03, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm, guessing that's why the service was suspended. Alex43223 T | C | E 01:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WP:CHA

I stole WP:CHA for the Chattanooga WikiProject (Chattanooga's airport code). - PatricknoddyTALK (reply here)|HISTORY 11:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC)