Merging accounts

[Bio X2Y]

Hi admins/moderators,

Is it possible to merge accounts? e.g. I see that "wiee" is opening new accounts regularly :)

http://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1293/wiee

http://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1297/wiee

http://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1323/wiee

http://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1400/wiee

http://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1385/wiee

http://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1425/wiee

I can't remember the sign-up procedure, so I don't know why someone would opt to use the system in this way.

Does anyone have a ready-made "blurb" that can be used in future to encourage people to stick to one account?

Thanks!

[Dan]

These are all actually 'Unregistered' accounts. I can't comment why
they are doing this either, but whilst I'm sure they could be merged,
I'm not sure what the resulting effect would be. Could always email
the user and ask if there is an issue!

regards,

Dan

On Mar 6, 10:14 pm, Bio X2Y <bio....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi admins/moderators,
>
> Is it possible to merge accounts? e.g. I see that "wiee" is opening new
> accounts regularly :)
>

> http://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1293/wieehttp://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1297/wieehttp://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1323/wieehttp://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1400/wieehttp://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1385/wieehttp://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1425/wiee

[Istvan Albert]

On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 5:14 PM, Bio X2Y <bio...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi admins/moderators,
> Is it possible to merge accounts? e.g. I see that "wiee" is opening new
> accounts regularly :)

Hi,

there is no such functionality as far as I know. Thanks for catching
it, we should probably notify the user to reuse her acccount.

best,

Istvan

[Dan]

Istvan:

http://biostar.stackexchange.com/admin/merge-users

On Mar 7, 6:10 pm, Istvan Albert <i...@psu.edu> wrote:

[Istvan Albert]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 1:15 PM, Dan <dan....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Istvan:
>
> http://biostar.stackexchange.com/admin/merge-users

Oops - I stand corrected, I didn't know about this functionality,
thanks for pointing it out

Feel free to merge as you see fit, I am away on travel so I won't be
able to do it in the next few days.

best,

Istvan

[Dan]

OK I will get in touch with Wiee and see what their requirements
are.. :)

On Mar 7, 6:37 pm, Istvan Albert <i...@psu.edu> wrote:

[Dan]

OK I spoke to Wiee about this. They asked me to relay this reply back
to the group:

***
Hello Daniel,

I posted here (http://biostar.stackexchange.com/questions/6040/
obtaining-random-sequences-from-genbank/6191#6191) a comment which
reflects my opinion.

I find impolite to talk about someone in a place where he cannot
express himself, but on the contrary I really appreciate this email.

I was pondering about registering at Biostar, but in the meanwhile I
found polite to use the same nick while posting just as guest. That is
the only reason for creating multiple accounts (if you implement this
system, such mechanism should be expected in my opinion).

If you agree, I could register, wiee could be merged in a single
account (in this case I would prefer one with the hidden email
address, by mistake I put it in the "Home page" field, and I would
like to remove this information from public sight) or even deleted. I
would like to use another nickname (if you want, I can communicate you
who wiee will be).

Please, can you post this entire email in the discussion you showed
me? I would like other members to see this text. Thanks for letting me
know about the situation, see you soon on BioStar.

Best Regards,

wiee.
***

Wiee is of course correct in the included, there is no requirement to
register an account. I am going to merge these accounts as requested
for tidyness sake and no more, but suggest a fully registered account
might make life a little more streamlined for everyone. If they
create an account later, I will simply merge into the user account so
reputation is maintained.

regards,

Dan

[Lars Juhl Jensen]

A few more accounts that should probably be merged:

http://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1385/wiee

http://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1390/wiee

http://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1383/priya

http://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/1461/priya

http://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/244/pedro-lopes

http://biostar.stackexchange.com/users/674/pedro-lopes

Maybe we should consider a way to discourage people to create a new account each time they submit a question?

Cheers,

Lars

[Istvan Albert]

On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 12:20 PM, Lars Juhl Jensen
<lars.juh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A few more accounts that should probably be merged:

> Maybe we should consider a way to discourage people to create a new account

> each time they submit a question?

I would suggest that we should merge the accounts as soon as it is
obvious that the same user created them. This may have some privacy
implications and some users may prefer to have two accounts (although
right now I can't come up with good reasons for it).

best,

Istvan

--
Istvan Albert
Associate Professor, Bioinformatics
Pennsylvania State University
http://www.personal.psu.edu/iua1/

[sogart]

Hi all, I made a question in biostar and a helping sould pointed me
here...

[quote]
My problem is that I have a Biostar account that I've been using
(unregistered). Feeling that an openID registration is more
appropriate I tried to register that account using OpenID. In response
I got a new (empty) account with the same user name. Is there any way
to merge the two accounts or even delete the new one and just stay
with the unregistered account?
[\quote]

I think that this might be the reason why people are creating multiple
accounts. I will tell you what happened to me.

I had registered some time ago, had been lurking for some time and
after a couple of months I wanted to comment again. Of course I didn't
remember my account and the cookies were long gone (I use multiple
pcs) so I used the password retrieval option. It sent an email to my
account which I followed to my account page. I got a prompt that said
"this account is unregistered, do you want to register it?" - I
thought, cool, OpenID login so I don't have to remember a million
passwords. So I put my google openID, expecting my account to be
"registered". Instead it creates a new account with that openID and it
has 0 reputation etc. So now I have 2 accounts. And I want to keep the
first ones reputation etc but the openID of the second one... I can
imagine people trying with many different openIDs or even
reregistering with the same name... Also there is no obvious way to
delete an account.

Hope this helps, and if a moderator listens please merge the two
accounts that have my username.

On Mar 13, 9:32 pm, Istvan Albert <i...@psu.edu> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 12:20 PM, Lars Juhl Jensen
>

[Lars Juhl Jensen]

We now also have three different accounts, all named kami (and all asking essentially the same question).

[Istvan Albert]

I would merge these right away (plus deleting the superfluous questions)

[fitz...@tcd.ie]

Hi,

I am having a similar problem. I attempted to log in today after a sabbatical and I inadvertantly created two new accounts (I tried the openID log in with my usual two email addresses). I believe I may have deleted the email address I originally signed in with.

How should I go about resolving this?

Thanks!

[Istvan Albert]

The solution is to email ad...@biostars.org and state the following:

- the user account you want to keep (find the user via the user search on Biostar)

- the user accounts you wish to delete

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "biostar-central" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to biostar-centr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Peter Cock]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 3:32 PM, Istvan Albert <iu...@psu.edu> wrote:
> The solution is to email ad...@biostars.org and state the following:
>
> - the user account you want to keep (find the user via the user search on
> Biostar)
> - the user accounts you wish to delete
>

For the benefit of anyone else running a BioStar instance, how does the
admin perform the merge?

(I'd like to get my duplicate accounts on https://biostar.usegalaxy.org/
merged)

Thanks,

Peter

[Istvan Albert]

There is no merge right now, although it would not that difficult to implement, we found that the typical usecase was to delete incorrect accounts.

Typically what happens is that the email sent via Google does not match their existing account so a new account  is created. In those cases we delete the new account and set the desired email on the new account. On the next login the correct connection is made.

A user may reconnect their social account to a different biostar account in the following way:

1. disconnect social account (user account --> social login)

2. perform password reset via email on the old account (logout --> login --> forgot password)

3. log in via the new password

4. connect social account (user account --> social login)

This only works if the user has access to the old email. This also keeps both accounts. 

For all other cases we do it via the Django admin interface that drops the user and with that drops and cascades all foreign keys relationships relating to the user. This is what has kept us from having a full blown user merge, we would need to first understand the data models in third party libraries to rewire them correctly, whereas a cascading drop will still work.

best,

Istvan

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "biostar-central" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to biostar-centr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Peter Cock]

Thanks for the clarification.

In the case of https://biostar.usegalaxy.org/ it was bootstrapped
with their mailing list archives, so one account was created for
each email address - resulting in duplicate accounts where people
had used more than one email address on the mailing list.

(I don't know how that import was done, and if it used BioStar's
own code or not)

Peter

[Istvan Albert]

I did the import and we did not have a good way to merge those users

Peter

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "biostar-central" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to biostar-centr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.