• same pw initially
• do no work to keep them synchronised
• if username is already taken simply report problem to user and suggest that they take a new LW username
• provide a script to create wiki users for unmatched LW users and email them to tell them why we did that
• provide a list of wiki user accounts without matching LW accounts

(broken out of #316)

"email them to tell them why we did that"

Can we have a short sample text for that?

Tim: I'm not sure what Matt had in mind; hopefully Matt can clarify.

If we create wiki accounts for existing LW users who have not created those accounts for themselves… they won't know, so they'll either: 1. never use the wiki account (and we lose - one of the goals of this story is to reduce the inconvenience of making helpful wiki edits); 2. try to use the wiki and assume that they don't have an account… then try to create one and assume that someone else already has theirs (and we lose); or 3. manage to work it all out on their own.

I think 3. will be a small group. I suggest creating the wiki accounts then emailing the LW users to tell them that they have a new account that they can access using their existing LW password.

A couple notes on this feature after initial work on it by predictably.defenestrated (https://github.com/tricycle/lesswrong/pull/84 ) and subsequent discussion

• Creating wiki account on LW signup

• in order to avoid storing user passwords, this would have to be synchronous and during registration, not on confirmation (implication: there will be stray wiki accounts for users who do not confirm)

• note: the createaccount api call on the lesswrong wiki (mediawiki) will result in an additional confirmation e-mail to the new user

• "provide a script to create wiki users for unmatched LW users and email them to tell them why we did that"

This assumes that LessWrong users use the same account name or e-mail address for their wiki account, and that past registrants would all like a wiki account. An opt-in process where logged-in users are notified of the option of creating their own wiki account would be less intrusive.

So in lieu of the proposed script, I'd recommend a form for users to either enter their wiki username or signup for the wiki without leaving LW.

… there will be stray wiki accounts for users who do not confirm

This is not an important problem. If they do not confirm their LW user will remain as an unconfirmed account, and they'll also have a wiki account with the same username - we're not even significantly contributing to username namespace pollution.

… the createaccount api call on the lesswrong wiki… will result in an additional confirmation e-mail to the new user

This is not an important problem. We should update the text of that welcome email to something like "Welcome to the LW wiki - you have this account either because you created it directly at wiki.lesswrong.com or as a side effect of creating an account on lesswrong.com. This wiki is a companion for the community blog Less Wrong. Our criterion for "notability": a concept needs to be discussed in at least one promoted article, and later be referenced by another (possibly unpromoted) article. If you want to write about something that isn't "notable" yet, do it on the blog!".

… An opt-in process where logged-in users are notified of the option of creating their own wiki account would be less intrusive.

This is a good idea. Something in the sidebar at the bottom of the user box saying something like "There is no LW wiki account called . You can create one now by supplying a password: [ ]; password confirmation: [ ]." You'd want to cache the username lookup to prevent unreasonable load from each pageview of each logged in user.

This is in production now. We are storing the name of the associated wiki account, so at some point in the future we could allow manual associations for users who were unable to auto-associate their wiki account for whatever reason.