NIWA improvement Idea (PLEASE READ)

[GFlame]

Recently I placed a question on zeldawiki, Here it is:

Ive just had a brilliant idea: why dont we make it that an account on one of the Wiki's (Zeldawiki, For example) can be used to log into other wiki's (Nintendo, Mario and Bulbapedia wikis)?
Each user might be able to have a page on their own on a separate Wiki (that may be called NIWAwiki) that details what sites they may have logged into. It may also have an option to merge accounts with other NIWikis (NIWA Wikis, Geddit?) or in the same wiki.
What do you guys think? GFlame (Talk) 01:07, 24 December 2010 (EST)


This is the response I got:

Hmm...that's a good idea! It could seriously be useful and make interwiki editing much easier... Have you thought about posting it on the NIWA forums? I think that idea might get a little more attention than here, to be honest... Here's the link! Dany36 01:43, 24 December 2010 (EST)

I also think that there may be an oppotunity for NIWAwiki to have this Place as itd talk page

So.... What do you guys think? 

[Maxite]

I'm not sure if this idea is technically possible. While at the face of it having a centralized location to log into the various wikis might seem nice, I doubt that the individual wikis support such a feature. Furthermore, I fear to ponder what would happen in the event of naming conflicts, where different people on different wikis use the same username.

An interesting idea though, and I have found myself calling N Wiki "NIWiki".

[Tina]

There's OpenID-- it's sort of a unified log-in thing, and there should be a MediaWiki extension for it. ZW has it, last I noticed.

[Archaic]

That's something we've discussed from the very beginning actually. It's something that we'd like to do, particularly if we can ever get an OpenID server running here on the NIWA hub site, but it's somewhat difficult given that we're all independently hosted and so forth.

[Moydow]

OpenID is the only way to make it work, realistically. The other method is to merge the user tables on the databases of each wiki, which would be next to impossible, not least because most wikis are on different servers.

[Jake]

There is an OpenID extension. If a few other wikis are on board with this, I'd be glad to install it on ACW. I think this would put us at the same level as Wikia in terms of interwiki login.

It seems to rely on the original wiki for account information, which would establish 'home wikis' in a way. I'm also not sure how this would effect users that already have accounts on most of our wikis. Could anyone with OpenID experience elaborate on this?

[Nintendoguy1]

But what about the user rename feature? Would they be renamed on every single wiki?

[Xizor]

Am I the only one who thought, "Wikia" when reading about this?

I like the idea of OpenID, but any wiki can choose not to use it. I think that making use of it in such a way that a NIWA Member not using it faces disadvantage is the wrong path to go down, but is easy to go down if we aren't careful.

This is a good idea, but it would require precision and flexibility. It would be very hard, technical issues aside.

[Toomai]

Is there any reason this isn't in the "Improving NIWA" topic at the top of the page?

Anyway, I agree with Xizor. SInce NIWA is set up so that no wiki has to do something if they don't want to, it's a bad idea to implement a system that gives an advantage to those that do it over those that don't. Besides, I got sick of Wikia's "You have messages on this other wiki" the second or third time it happened. I check all my wikis regularily, I don't need the system to try and disrupt my system. So to me the advantage isn't really that big. What if someone wants to have different usernames on different wikis? Plus there's always the problem of "Xxx is already a registered username" for a new user even though said old user never comes to the new user's wiki.

[Axiomist]

I'm interested in enabling OpenID on WiKirby, I just haven't had time to do it. But that's the only real way to simplify the login for the enduser. It works on Wikia bc that's just one website with several subdomains. The only way I can imagine NIWA wikis being able to do it is to have one central user database for all of the wikis. But what bothers me the most about it is that I've always seen Wikia as a liar on this matter. EVERY Wikia wiki's stats page reports ~2 million users. WiKirby may only have around 300, but if we had a functioning universal log in, our stats page would report the sum of all NIWA wikis---Am I the only one that sees that as dishonest?

[Jake]

I'm interested in enabling OpenID on WiKirby, I just haven't had time to do it. But that's the only real way to simplify the login for the enduser. It works on Wikia bc that's just one website with several subdomains. The only way I can imagine NIWA wikis being able to do it is to have one central user database for all of the wikis. But what bothers me the most about it is that I've always seen Wikia as a liar on this matter. EVERY Wikia wiki's stats page reports ~2 million users. WiKirby may only have around 300, but if we had a functioning universal log in, our stats page would report the sum of all NIWA wikis---Am I the only one that sees that as dishonest?

From what I understand, the way OpenID works is that it only loads user data from the user's main site. So the user count would be unaffected, because only OpenID users that authenticate with your site will be counted in the total. (I could be wrong about this, but it does make sense.)

[Archaic]

That's generally how it works Jake, yes.

This particular extension looks very interesting, since it seems like it can act as its own OpenID server with some free and open source libraries accompanying it. I'll have to investigate more

[Nintendoguy1]

Personally I think NIWA should be a network of wikis supporting eachother and working together towards a common goal, however I don't think that they should connect together to form one gigantic website. I think you should have the option of singing up on the wikis you want, like they're all different websites but on one big alliance (after all, that is, literally, what NIWA stands for).

[Maxite]

Technical issues aside, I'm not sure how I feel about the idea. It's a mixed bag for several reasons: Security reasons (one login to rule them all for you means one login to rule them all for a hacker). I also don't like the fact that it would split the community in some way, as I don't see every wiki participating in this and those that don't participate wouldn't receive as much benefit.

If NIWA wants to set something up and let the individual wikis decide, there isn't much that really can be said. So long as they leave the option open for individual logins without requiring mass login, I'll be happy.

[Jake]

Technical issues aside, I'm not sure how I feel about the idea. It's a mixed bag for several reasons: Security reasons (one login to rule them all for you means one login to rule them all for a hacker).

You do realize that this is an open standard that has shown great results, right? It's not like we're just trying to throw together our own system. We're discussing the possibility of using an established system that has already been proven to work effectively. I don't really see hackers as being much of a threat in this case.

[Maxite]

My bad. I didn't mean that hackers could hack the server and get the passwords. I was referring to people keylogging or brute forcing (or just guessing) someone's password. It was more directed at a personal level, and not one directed at the entire system.
Out of concern for personal computer security, I would prefer not to have a single line of a weakness. I would rather have individual logins for the sites and not have a centralized login system, just in case *my* computer gets compromised, so that the damage is limited to whatever wikis I am logged in at the time, and not the entirety of the NIWA OpenID network.

[Jake]

My bad. I didn't mean that hackers could hack the server and get the passwords. I was referring to people keylogging or brute forcing (or just guessing) someone's password. It was more directed at a personal level, and not one directed at the entire system.
Out of concern for personal computer security, I would prefer not to have a single line of a weakness. I would rather have individual logins for the sites and not have a centralized login system, just in case *my* computer gets compromised, so that the damage is limited to whatever wikis I am logged in at the time, and not the entirety of the NIWA OpenID network.

That's understandable. I don't frequently use OpenID either. And of course, regular wiki accounts would still be available in addition to OpenID. This suggestion just gives users who already use OpenID a much quicker registration.

[Matt]

We have not had any luck with OpenID at ZW. It has done more harm than good. It has not given us a benefit worth the costs. The particular extension we have conflicts with almost everything we have that is related to user accounts. It makes renaming buggy, it conflicts with user creation logs, it breaks bot account scripts, it causes database errors, etc. I am not sure if it that is with the extension itself of just the nature of the whole process in relation to the software.

More realistically, we could instead use something more like wikipedia. In it you can link up your existing accounts to a global login. There are extensions for it. Just takes a little searching.

[tacopill]

That option is less realistic, in my opinion. Since many of the wiki's are on different servers, often located at different physical points in the Real World.

So, say for example, I sign up for Bulbapedia and have my account at WikiBound link up with this. Bulbapedia's server (which are in Australia) talk to WikiBound's server (which are in Utah of the United States). It simple for that connect, but now image myself trying to do it on 16 wikis - It gets a bit more complicated. At best, it's making 16 connections; at worst, it's making 2.09227899 × 10^13 connections (that's more than 20.9 trillion connections).

Then image 10s of users attempting to do it. Or 100s, or even thousands.

I'm exaggerating, i am aware. But my point is, the servers could get bogged down with connection attempts because of this.

[Level 3]

IMO this is just pointless pleasantry. It's too much trouble to maintain and not necessary.