(no subject)

[onceamy]

Hi there,

For some time now, the Wiki Committee has thought about turning off OpenID because it is a hard service to support, and many OpenID servers (such as LiveJournal) have issues with their stability. However, we have 300+ accounts that use OpenID, or who have OpenID registered on their account.

There are three types of OpenID setups:

1. people who have registered using OpenID, but who have not entered an email address or password
2. people who have registered using OpenID but who have entered an email address
3. people who have registered using the standard registration form (and thus provided a username and password), and added an OpenID later.

The first group of users (who have neither an email address nor a password) are encouraged to set an email address in this post, by logging in using OpenID and going to My Preferences and entering an email address in the "Email:" field. They are also encouraged to set a password after setting an email address by entering their username on the User Login page, and clicking "Email new password".

The second group (who have an email address) can simply log out and type in their username on the User Login page, and click the "Email new password" to receive a password. This group is advised to make sure their email address is up to date on the My Preferences page.

Both types of users can change their password after receiving the initial one.

People in the third group will not be affected when OpenID is turned off, though they are encouraged to make sure their email address is up to date on the My Preferences page.

We are not in any rush to turn off OpenID, and please feel free to ask for assistance -- moving over people may take some time, and we'll send out another email/post another post closer to the time when we are ultimately ready to turn it off.

- Amy [The Wiki Committee]

Comments

[mlyn]

May be a stupid question, but how do we know if we're in one of these OpenID groups? I remember having some trouble logging in to Fanlore in the past, with confusion between OpenID and username, so once I got the site to accept my password I cached it in my browser and haven't dealt with it since. Bad form, I know.

[cesy]

I'm in a similar situation - I'm pretty sure I count as group 3, since I now use a password all the time, but what's the best way to check?

[velocitygrass]

I just wanted to try and check if I have entered email and password or used Open ID when I signed up. I manually entered www.fanlore.org instead of following your link and got a 404. Is it by design that adding the www in the URL doesn't work?

[(Anonymous)]

It would probably be good to announce this news on the wiki main/news page itself too, b/c not everybody using the wiki may follow this comm.

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

It works for me if I follow your link.

[velocitygrass]

That's strange. I'm using the latest Firefox and just checked in IE where I also get a 404.

Thanks for checking. Do you use a different browser?

[ratcreature]

I have that problems sometimes with websites, that my computer finds all websites okay, just a single one domain not. It usually goes away if I reboot my router and it connects anew to the DNS servers of my internet provider.

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

Do you use a different browser?

No, I'm using the latest Firefox too.

[velocitygrass]

Maybe it's just on my end. When I ping fanlore.org it returns fanlore.org [69.164.212.99]. When I do the same for www.fanlore.org it returns zen.transformativeworks.org [67.23.2.53].

Just wanted to point it out in case it's a server configuration issue.

Okay, I just checked through an anonymous browsing service and there the redirect to http://fanlore.org worked, so it does seem to be something on my end.

[velocitygrass]

It seems that for some reason the redirect to http://fanlore.org doesn't work for me. Strange, but I'm glad it's not a general issue.

[ratcreature]

FWIW, earlier today I had a 404 result once too, but that lasted only a few minutes.

[aethel]

Amy is able to run something on the backend to see which users have openID, but you can also look at your user page to see if the openID account symbol is displayed. See mine here: "http://aethel.dreamwidth.org/"

As long as you can log in using a password, you should be fine.

[aethel]

Thanks for the reminder! I added a news item on the wiki.

http://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page

[onceamy]

I can definitely ask Systems about this -- just to make sure that it's not our issue.

ETA: I've sent this for investigation!

[cesy]

Thanks - yes, it appears I have one account, with my OpenID and password, so I should be all set.

[onceamy]

Aethel is correct, as long as you have a password and a valid email address set in My Preferences, you are fine.

[briar_pipe]

I'm one of those who originally started using OpenID, then switched to a regular account. I just wanted to raise the question again - is there a way to merge the two accounts? I'm happy having a regular login, but last time I checked, there was no way to convert any comments and edits made by me under my OpenID to my regular ID.

[onceamy]

There's not a way to merge your OpenID with your regular account, though I can give your OpenID a password (and thus preserve it for future log-in/history) if you have an email address set on the OpenID account. Send us a message at wiki@transformativeworks.org if you would like this option, with your username in the email.

[onceamy]

Systems got back to me, and stated that it may have been a hiccup with ISPs, or our hosting facility. Our DNS details have not changed since February, also.

[velocitygrass]

It really is strange, because I just checked and still got a 404. If I change DNS-Servers it's okay, so it seems to be an ongoing issue with my DNS server.

Thanks for checking!

[faith_girl222]

i feel a little bit confused.

if there's a difference between an OpenID account and a regular account, and these two can't be merged if someone has one of each, what kind of account will i have when OpenID gets shut off if i've been using OpenID, but now have a password for logging in? does it become a third kind of account, or does it become a regular account because it has a password?

[onceamy]

You'll have a regular account -- the OpenID system is an extra layer on top of regular accounts, but lets you login without a password. Does that make sense?

I get that it is a bit confusing -- I don't want to spring this on people, so I'm trying to leave this open for comment as long as I can. Does my explanation help?

need a bit of help...

[elke_tanzer]

I just tried replying to the emailed version of this message, and got an error message back. Is there some other email address I can use to ask a couple specific-to-my-account-questions?



Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

admin@fanlore.org

Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 5.1.1 <admin@fanlore.org>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in virtual alias table (state 14).

Re: need a bit of help...

[aethel]

wiki at transformativeworks dot org

web form contact page is here:

http://transformativeworks.org/contact/fanlore%20wiki

Re: need a bit of help...

[elke_tanzer]

Thanks, have emailed now! :-)