MediaWiki talk:Antispoof-conflict-bottom

Proposed Creation

From: Please choose another name.
To: Please choose another name. Alternatively, if the similar account(s) appear(s) to be inactive, you may request that the account be created for you here.

Creating this page would modify the bottom portion of the error message users encounter when they try to create an account that is blocked by the antispoof system. I think it would be useful to inform users that an antispoof conflict is not a definitive "no, you cannot have that username". Currently, unless the user looks at the username policy or encounters the request an account process on their own, they're not likely to know that such a process exists. This would most certainly increase the volume of ACC requests, but this message could always be removed if it becomes a huge problem. I think it's worth a trial. I welcome any comments below. Mww113 (talk) 15:22, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

I have informed those subscribed to the ACC mailing list of this request and invited their comments. Mww113 (talk) 15:27, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

• Amend - Think we should include a link to Special:CentralAuth by including something like, ...if the similar account(s) appear(s) to be inactive (you can check their contributions here), you may request that the account be created for you here. Regards—☮JAaron95 ^Talk 16:01, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

  I'm perfectly fine with that change. Mww113 (talk) 23:06, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

  Sounds perfectly fine to me! ~Oshwah~ ^{(talk) (contribs)} 08:01, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

  I would suggest a different page to link to. Having new users link to the ACC Guide will probably be more confusing than necessary. Perhaps a custom page with information on the topic of similar names, in a new user friendly, concise way? Tiggerjay (talk) 15:29, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Given the discussion above, I'm requesting the page be created with the following:

Please choose another name. Alternatively, if the similar account(s) appear(s) to be inactive (click here to check their contributions), you may request that the account be created for you here.

Please note that I did slightly change the message so as not to end two sentences with "here" one right after the other. Mww113 (talk) 00:07, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

 Done Changed an external link into an internal link. Made a couple of changes per WP:CLICKHERE. What do people think? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:37, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

That's perfect. Thanks and regards—☮JAaron95 ^Talk 16:05, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Didn't even think about accessibility/screen reader concerns. Very good catch! Looks great to me. Mww113 (talk) 20:32, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Changing Link from ACC Guide to Something More Newbie Friendly

@Tiggerjay made a good point above suggesting that the ACC guide may not be the best thing to link new users to. Seeing as there are parts of the ACC guide that I find confusing myself, I think this is a valid concern. Unfortunately that comment got slipped in just after I added the {{edit protected}} template. Maybe it would be worthwhile to draft a page that we could point new users to and then amend the interface message once something has been agreed upon. Any thoughts about this @JAaron95, @Oshwah, or @Martin? Should this page be a subpage of WP:ACC or should we put it somewhere else? I'm pretty open to suggestions here. Mww113 (talk) 20:43, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

I share the concern as well. I was almost thinking this myself when I was making modifications to the guide and the ACC project page last week. Don't get me wrong, the guide is useful due to its fullness and completeness with listing all policies and what to do with them. I think that there are two things we can do in order to address the concerns with the ACC Guide.

• Write a "Beginner's Introduction" page that's much easier to follow and much more friendly to read. If consensus is reached that we need one, I'll be happy to volunteer and start leading the efforts to begin writing a draft. If anyone wants to volunteer and help, please, by all means :-)
• Amend the ACC Guide into separate pages, such as what many projects do with their manuals. Make an introduction/index as one page (this will be where WP:ACC/G links to), then separate major rules, policies, and procedures into others. Again, I'm happy to lead the effort and begin this process if consensus is reached that this is needed. Just let me know.

What do other ACC Tool Users think? Input on this topic would be really good here - I agree that this is very important :-) ~Oshwah~ ^{(talk) (contribs)} 14:05, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Maybe it'd be better and more newbie friendly to explain it in the error message so we aren't making them run the gauntlet of policy/guideline/information pages before they even get an account? Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 23:37, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Technical Problems

Well it seems now we have technical problems with implementing the changed interface message. For some reason, the links display as source code rather than being parsed by MediaWiki and shown as links. Any ideas about what we can do to fix this? Should I make a bug report? Mww113 (talk) 18:12, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Update: I have submitted a patch that should fix this issue (see change 248593). It worked on my own personal test copy of MediaWiki. Once the code gets reviewed it will get pushed to the beta cluster, then the test wikipedia, and then finally to here. I will run tests on the both of those wikis once the code deploys. If it runs on the test wikipedia (and there's no reason why it shouldn't) we should be good to go here. Mww113 (talk) 06:54, 24 October 2015 (UTC)