[Community] OpenID on http://iiw.idcommons.net/

[Dennis E. Hamilton]

Well, I have some more experiences to report.

This is all on the iiw.idcommons.net.  I think I am all right on
wiki.idcommons.net, because I first logged-on their with my i-name.

1. I flushed my browser history after deleting my Facebook account (the
Beacon problems having freaked me out and ended that social experiment for
me).

2. As expected, when I returned to iiw.idcommons.net, I found that I had to
log in and the only way to log in was via an OpenId.  Unfortunately, I have
been using my name-password cookie up until now.

3. Everything is fine except when I am asked to choose a nickname for
myself.  (The option of using my OpenId name is not available for some
reason, probably the same reason it didn't work.)  When I chose "orcmid" as
my nickname, the process failed.  There is no noticeable explanation, but I
am unable to log in with that handle.  I *assume* it is because there is
already an account with that name, and the system thinks I am not the one
entitled to use it.

I chose another one, temporarily, just to log in, but that was probably a
mistake.  I don't want the other nickname (associated with =orcmid), I want
the original one.

4. How do we get me back to my existing alias?  Can we do it with the orcmid
account still there somehow, so the User:Orcmid stuff does not have to be
repopulated?  

I really, really hate unnecessary do-overs and it will keep me away.
Especially since I just deleted 17 *months* of Microsoft Money records by
mistake (it could have been worse) as part of moving to a new machine and I
will now have to reconstruct what I can from receipts, bank and credit-card
statements, and by faking in-balance conditions until I can reconcile with
better data.  Oh, I will be so glad when my Windows Home Server machine
arrives.

In both cases I guess I brought the difficulties on myself (being too eager
to use the new IIW Wiki and being careless about thinking I had moved the
latest file instead of an old backup of it before I permanently deleted all
copies on the old machine.)

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Fen Labalme [mailto:fen at idcommons.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 21:05
To: dennis.hamilton at acm.org
Cc: 'ID Commons---Community Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [Community] OpenID on http://iiw.idcommons.net/

Hi Dennis -

You wrote:
> How will this impact those of us who have gone the user-name/password
route
> to already be editing material on the new Wiki?  
>
> Put another way, how do we associate an OpenId (or i-name) with an
existing
> user-name/password and profile

Good question, and I'm sorry that I don't have an answer.  Drupal 6 does
this by separating accounts from authentication[1] - a good idea IMHO. 
But MediaWiki seems to conflate the two.

My immediate answer is that you're out of luck :( but as the wiki is
only a few days old, the damage should not be too great.

Eugene mentioned that a new MediaWiki OpenID module is currently being
tested that also supports CardSpace.  Perhaps this will properly
separate accounts from authentication.  We can only hope.

=Fen


[1] http://simonwillison.net/2007/Jan/10/account/