382707 - Remove old users and old-world user auth functions

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Webtools Graveyard :: Litmus, defect, P2)

Description

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

It's now been more then a year since real user authentication landed in Litmus. Our database currently has a large number of users who have not logged in since that change: 

mysql> select count(*), count(password)  from users;
+----------+-----------------+
| count(*) | count(password) |
+----------+-----------------+
|     2581 |            1295 |
+----------+-----------------+

In other words, out of our 2581 users, 1295 do not have a password set, because they haven't tried to login since January 2006. Anyone can claim one of these accounts as their own and set a password. Account is really a bit of a misnomer here, as they are really nothing more than a user_id and an email address. In addition, we currently have a box on the login page to allow these users to migrate their accounts and create a password. 

I propose that we remove these 1295 accounts from the database and eliminate the migration feature. If any of these users come back to Litmus, they can simply create a new account. This way, we can eliminate the unused accounts, remove unused and unmaintained code, and make the login/create account page simpler for new testers. If we got rid of the migration box, we can move the new account form up to the top of the page, making it easier to spot.

Comment 1

[Chris Cooper [:coop] (he/him)]

Yes, this is fine by me, but please blog about it first to give those people a few days to show up and claim their accounts. You should have time to comfortably make these changes while you wait for whatever deadline you set to pass.

Comment 2

[Chris Cooper [:coop] (he/him)]

Old users purged, login form updated, and matched up the test results the 4 users who had managed to create accounts across the old and new versions of the site.