Hi,
it has been frequently requested that there should be a way to contact
anonymous users. In the past few days, I've hacked together a solution
for this. It requires that you run patch-usernewtalk.sql and there's
also a couple of new texts to translate.
It works as follows:
1) In the recent changes list (both normal and extended), there's now a
"Talk" link, both for logged in and anonymous users. (This was necessary
because the link for anons goes to their contribution list, which is
useful, but from there you can't get to the talk page.)
2) Anonymous users also get the "Talk" link in the upper right corner.
They don't get a user page link (let's not give them too much).
3) When a Talk page of a user is changed, a row is inserted into the
newly created user_newtalk table. If it's a signed in user, the user_id
column is filled with is ID, if it's an anon, the user_ip column is
filled with his IP address.
4) When the Talk page is changed, instead of the "*", there's now a
"You
have new messages" link next to the "Printable version" link. (Our top
bar is cluttered on low res, I agree, but I'd rather put "Printable" on
the bottom and omit the top "Older versions" link.)
5) When the user visits the Talk page, the row is removed from
user_newtalk.
6) A text is automatically appended to talk pages for anonymous users
(which are identified using the \d{1,3}.\d{1,3}.\d{1,3}.\d{1,3} regex
pattern) explaining that the IP address may refer to several users, not
just one, and encouraging users to create an account to avoid confusion.
- - -
Numerous changes had to be made in particular to User.php;
patch-usernewtalk.sql creates the new table and removes the user_newtalk
column from the user table.
I tested as much as I could, but I would appreciate if this could be put
on
test.wikipedia.org for some testing, preferably before the next
accidental update.
All best,
Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS -
http://www.berlios.de