Last modified: 2012-07-23 07:12:57 UTC
I was doing a rename on en.wiki of a user with 31,000 edits. The rename timed out and when I re-loaded, there were two user accounts. One at the original username and one at the target. Could a dev re-merge them into the target, as clearly it was a system error for it to split one account into two accounts. I also don't know which account the non-public data (password, email address, etc) ended up residing with. The rename is logged at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&offset=&limit=1&type=renameuser&user=MBisanz&page=&tagfilter=&hide_patrol_log=1&hide_review_log=1 It involves http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Edinburgh_Wanderer being renamed to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Blethering_Scot
users with over 25,000 edits shouldn't be done without a sysadmin at hand, as a rule of thumb.
Apparently he just automatically recreated it at the exact moment the extension timed out on my end.
The provided link is of User:Edinburgh Wanderer Mobile to Blethering Scot Mobile, which seems to have worked. I see no contributions at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/User:Edinburgh_Wanderer I don't see how an old account could have been kept back, as it was renamed. Maybe it was autocreated from being logged in into SUL ?
Sorry, I used a non-persistent link. We've figured out he instantly re-created it via SUL.
