Last modified: 2013-10-30 20:06:43 UTC
This is because WMF Import doesn't exist as a user. Creating the account should fix this, I'm going to create it but this is for tracking purposes.
I'm unable to create this because of the TitleBlacklist entry: .*[A-Z -]{5,}.* <newaccountonly|casesensitive> Presumably because my account is too new - I'll try again in a few days if someone else doesn't manage to make it.
What do you mean by treats it as an ip? Generally you're not supposed to create a user for a username if all it's edits are created internally.
I mean that if you go to http://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=User:(WV-en)_Zlt3c2g82b&action=history as an example, and click on the username WMF_Import instead of taking you to the user page (which has been created and has information about what WMF Import did), it will take you to the special:contributions page, as it would for an IP, with no direct link to actually find that user page from either any page histories or Special:Contribution/ pages.
I agree that this should be created per usual practice.
That's not a bug. Any edit not made by a logged in user (ie: with a rev_user of 0) both anon and system are intentionally given a contribs link. Imported edits are not supposed to be randomly assigned to users that may or may not be the same. And creating a user account won't change those edits because they will still have a rev_user of 0.
Well I'm looking at it as a bug in that when someone is looking at the history of one of the hundreds of user pages that have had a template added on them and been protected to find out what "WMF Import" is, they'll certainly get confused that they were taken to the standard page for an IP like I was and wonder how an IP was able to protect pages to sysop only. So if we were to "fix" this by creating the account, would http://en.wikivoyage.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/WMF_Import not link to the user page instead of the greyed out "WMF Import" I can see presently where there is usually a user page link?
The `revision` table in the database contains two fields, `rev_user` for the user number (0 if IP or unregistered) and `rev_user_text` for the actual username. If the account didn't exist on the wiki at the time the import was done, `rev_user` = 0 and `ref_user_text` = 'WMF Import' (or whatever name was used). Because this is already in the database, creating the user now will only affect new edits - not the existing contributions. It would be possible to create the user, but then (short of a sysadmin using SQL commands like "update `revision` set `rev_user` = (whatever) where `rev_user_text` = "WMF Import" " directly on the server) I don't know of a way to get the contributions to appear under the newly-created user.
Closing INVALID: the situation respects of definition of rev_user ([[mw:Revision_table#rev_user]]).
