Wikipedia:Historical archive/Changing attribution for an edit

This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference.
Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump.

Shortcuts

As of 2005, edits are no longer reattributed.

However, you may wish to consider the following options:

You may make a list of your contributions and post it to your new User page, or a subpage of it. If you have a static IP (all your edits came from the same IP address) you can easily copy this list from the Contributions page -- just click the "User contributions" link from the sidebar of the User or Talk page of the old IP (this takes you to Special:Contributions/(IP address)). If your contributions were made under many different IPs, you will have to assemble the list by hand.

If you have a static IP that will not be reused by others, you may redirect your anonymous User: and User Talk: pages to your new account.

Put a note at the top of your new User: and User Talk: page to explain the change.
This does not merge your contributions history; old edits will still be attributed to the old (IP) account, but anyone investigating those edits will be redirected to your new name.

General notes

It is possible for a developer to alter the database such that an edit which was attributed to an anonymous IP address is attributed to a username. This is usually requested because either:

An editor contributes anonymously for a while, and then creates a username and wants their previous edits attributed to their new name; or
A user accidentally logged out before making an edit. (Note that there is a simple way to "reclaim" such an inadvertently anonymous edit, provided you act straight away: While still logged out, revert to the version in the history immediately before the edit. Then log in and re-revert to the version after the edit, re-entering your original edit summary.)

Developers reserve the right to deny requests if they feel that there is any reason to doubt the identity of the contributor.

Please note that it may take some months before a developer has time to carry out your request.

Changed username

If a user changes from one username to another and wishes all their old edits to be attributed to the new name, see Wikipedia:Changing username.

Notes on IP addresses

If you wish to change the attribution of an edit in this way, place a request below using the same IP address as you used to make the edit. This is so that we can be sure the IP address was really the user in question. In some cases, an IP address from the same dial-up ISP will be sufficient. Also include the target username, and a link to the diff.

Old logs

Rejected requests

Rejected requests

Procedures

Note:You must do this on the computer on which you did the original edits. Please follow procedure, as it will make the process go much faster.

Make sure you are not logged in.
Create a new heading labeled with your IP address like this: ===1.2.3.4=== at the top of the list.
Copy the table below under the new heading, your IP will be automatically entered.
Add any notes to the Notes section; otherwise, leave this section blank. If these edits are in a foreign language wiki, note it here.
Save the page.
LOG IN, and add your user name with ~~~~ to the section "ADD YOUR USERNAME AND TIMESTAMP AFTER YOU LOG BACK IN"
Manually remove User: and extra brackets from the IP addresses, so that is is in this format: [[Special:Contributions/1.2.3.4|1.2.3.4]].
The last 2 cells are for the user/time stamps of the checkers and database changers. Please delete the text and leave blank.
Have patience. The checkers and database changers will eventually get around to it.

If your request is declined for some reason, it may be moved to Wikipedia:Changing_attribution_for_an_edit/Rejected_requests and an explanation given below it.

Table to copy

{| border="1"
|-
|ADD YOUR USERNAME AND TIMESTAMP AFTER YOU LOG BACK IN (use ~~~~)
|[[Special:Contributions/~~~|~~~]]
|
|
|
|}

Instructions for developers

log on zwinger
change to the maintenance/ directory
Delete ../attribute.log and ../attribute.sql if they are there from a previous run (they are in the parent directory, not in maintenance/ ).
Run script attribute.php . example: php attribute.php en wikipedia 216.103.211.240 "Daniel Quinlan". This will append a log entry to attribute.log, and some SQL statements to attribute.sql. Note that PHP doesn't work on ariel at the moment (2004-07-17). It's acceptable to run attribute.php on a slave machine, as long as the slave is up to date.
If necessary, review attribute.sql, and delete any unnecessary SQL statements.
Repeat steps 4 and 5 for each person
Send the SQL file into the mysql client, making sure you are using the master database.
Copy the contents of attribute.log to the wiki