Someone seems to be impersonating me at French Wikipedia.

[Captain Occam]

I just got an e-mail notification that someone's registered this account at the French Wikipedia: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussio ... tain_Occam

I was notified of it because French Wikipedia appears to think this is me, but I've never had any involvement or participation there. Can anyone figure out what I should be doing about this, or how to identify the user responsible for it?

[lonza leggiera]

I just got an e-mail notification that someone's registered this account at the French Wikipedia: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussio ... tain_Occam

I was notified of it because French Wikipedia appears to think this is me, but I've never had any involvement or participation there. Can anyone figure out what I should be doing about this, or how to identify the user responsible for it?

It looks to me like this is just one of your own "attached" accounts. You should be able to log into it using the same password you do for the English Wikipedia. Usually, if you visit another Wikipedia while logged in to your home account, an account with the same user name is automatically created for you on that other Wikipedia. Usually, also, once that account exists, you will automatically be logged into it whenever you visit that other Wikipedia while logged into your home account (this doesn't always happen, though—I haven't the foggiest idea why not).

Your French Wikipedia account was created automatically on January 2nd, and no edits have been made from it, so presumably you simply visited the French Wikipedia on that day while you were logged in.

[Captain Occam]

It looks to me like this is just one of your own "attached" accounts. You should be able to log into it using the same password you do for the English Wikipedia. Usually, if you visit another Wikipedia while logged in to your home account, an account with the same user name is automatically created for you on that other Wikipedia. Usually, also, once that account exists, you will automatically be logged into it whenever you visit that other Wikipedia while logged into your home account (this doesn't always happen, though—I haven't the foggiest idea why not).

Your French Wikipedia account was created automatically on January 2nd, and no edits have been made from it, so presumably you simply visited the French Wikipedia on that day while you were logged in.

I saw that it said the account was created automatically, so I was wondering whether something like this might have happened. But the odd thing is, I've visited other-language Wikis dozens of times while logged in. (Mostly before my ban, but also a few times while I was banned.) But this is the only time I've ever had an attached account get created automatically, and I can see from the list of attached accounts that the French Wikipedia is the only other-language Wiki where it's happened.

Is this feature something that didn't exist yet in 2012, and that's also disabled for users who are banned on en-Wiki? That's the only explanation I can think of for why it's happening now but never happened before now.

[Anroth]

Its linked to SUL, which has had incremental upgrades. Its highly likely the auto-register feature either was not turned on, or didnt exist in the past when you visited.

[lonza leggiera]

It looks to me like this is just one of your own "attached" accounts. You should be able to log into it using the same password you do for the English Wikipedia. Usually, if you visit another Wikipedia while logged in to your home account, an account with the same user name is automatically created for you on that other Wikipedia. Usually, also, once that account exists, you will automatically be logged into it whenever you visit that other Wikipedia while logged into your home account (this doesn't always happen, though—I haven't the foggiest idea why not).

Your French Wikipedia account was created automatically on January 2nd, and no edits have been made from it, so presumably you simply visited the French Wikipedia on that day while you were logged in.

I saw that it said the account was created automatically, so I was wondering whether something like this might have happened. But the odd thing is, I've visited other-language Wikis dozens of times while logged in. (Mostly before my ban, but also a few times while I was banned.) But this is the only time I've ever had an attached account get created automatically, and I can see from the list of attached accounts that the French Wikipedia is the only other-language Wiki where it's happened.

Is this feature something that didn't exist yet in 2012, and that's also disabled for users who are banned on en-Wiki? That's the only explanation I can think of for why it's happening now but never happened before now.

It certainly didn't exist in the same form that it has now. Before global accounts were made the default, you had to make a specific request for your accounts to be unified, and if they didn't all have the same user name, you had get them renamed so that they did. I did this for all my accounts in February 2009. I'm not sure exactly when global accounts became the default, but from this it would appear to have been in July 2015.

I've no idea whether the automatic creation of accounts is affected by bans or blocks, but I doubt it.

[Captain Occam]

If this really is the explanation, it's one of the most irritating features WMF has ever implemented. I've just been "welcomed" to a Wikipedia where I have no intention to ever participate, in a language that I don't speak. The bot that posts these welcome templates ought to at least distinguish between accounts that a user chose to create, and those that were created automatically without the user's consent.

EDIT: It looks like French Wikipedia does indeed recognize my en-Wiki login, so at least I don't have to leave the template on my talk page there.

[Carcharoth]

Oh, if you visit a Wikipedia in a language where you can't even read the script, you get the joy of being notified (by email as well if you have that turned on) and pinged to go and read a welcome message at (in my case) the Farsi or Hindu-language Wikipedia (I forget which, though I do know the difference). Yes, a very annoying feature. At least it only seems to happen once each time, and only on wikis where they have this feature turned on (though maybe that is all of them?).

At least now when you hover over the squiggles on the interwiki links, you get something in English telling you what language the Wikipedia is written in. It took a while for the calls for that to be implemented to have any effect (and maybe it got done one day by someone who didn't even know people were asking for it).

[auriental]

Oh, if you visit a Wikipedia in a language where you can't even read the script, you get the joy of being notified (by email as well if you have that turned on) and pinged to go and read a welcome message at (in my case) the Farsi or Hindu-language Wikipedia (I forget which, though I do know the difference). Yes, a very annoying feature. At least it only seems to happen once each time, and only on wikis where they have this feature turned on (though maybe that is all of them?).

At least now when you hover over the squiggles on the interwiki links, you get something in English telling you what language the Wikipedia is written in. It took a while for the calls for that to be implemented to have any effect (and maybe it got done one day by someone who didn't even know people were asking for it).

Duh.

Been there done that. Submitted a patch for an obvious logic error (non-linguistic) and been cross-examined by a fr denizen on the basis of a total failure in comprehension.

So this is not so surprising…and then there are all these sensible suggestions coming from Bangladesh which somehow never are addressed since none of the developers…Bah! Why waste effort in stating the bleeding obvious?

Multi-lingual mediawiki—total bollocks!

[Carcharoth]

Well, machine translation (as it develops further) may address that.