Strange Account "Overlapping" with Multiple Users in School Setting

jackeagle
Having a strange issue at a middle school. One teacher is reporting that Zotero users have experienced other users' information spontaneously appear under their account, in some cases over-writing their own information.

The machines in his room do not have individual accounts, and my best guess is that it has something to do with how syncing works - that without a unique login (and that added directory for the information to be sent to), the web browsers on those machines are grabbing the first packet that says "Zotero". This may be completely wrong, but we are not having this issue in other rooms where users have individual accounts.

I've advised him to clear the browser cache each time so that when the student changes the sync information at that machine they are starting with a blank slate. Not sure if this is actually happening, but in any case the issue persists.

Has anyone else experienced a similar problem. Would be interested to hear about users' experiences with this or even in similar environments.
  • ajlyon
    Zotero does not attempt to provide a complete system for segregating user data on a single computer. In your case, the problem is probably because the users would have to change the sync credentials and do a "restore from server" each time they start Zotero to work as you want them to-- otherwise Zotero doesn't know that the local library is supposed to be replaced by the contents of the library on the server corresponding to the new credentials. A very careful person might be able to juggle several accounts in this way, but this is no replacement for actual segregation of data.

    If it is not possible to use distinct user accounts on the computers, you should use separate Firefox profiles or, failing that, delete the contents of the Firefox profile directory after each session. This last approach would require significant syncing delays at the start of each session and put unnecessarily load on the sync server, so the first two options are certainly preferable.
  • jackeagle
    Yes - that's all been considered (although the teacher has been slow to create individual accounts). I may not have been clear enough when describing our specific problem.

    That's not exactly the problem, though... this information is being overwritten ACROSS the room on separate machines. Like, one student syncs and then their sync data appears on a different machine, apparently somewhat at random.

    Thanks for your advice, though!
  • ajlyon
    I suppose it's possible that the network is set up incorrectly and (say) all the machines have the same IP address, but something like what you're describing just isn't possible due to any fault of Zotero's. Zotero is not designed to be tolerant of network misconfiguration. Still, it would be good if you could provide an error report and debug output (http://www.zotero.org/support/debug_output) for syncing attempts that produce this behavior.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    There is extremely little chance that this is anything other than 1) the same Zotero account being entered in the Sync pane of the Zotero prefs on multiple computers or 2) syncing a different user account without doing a "Restore from Zotero Server" to clear existing data, which would cause data to be merged (after a warning message at first sync time).

    Double-clicking "My Library" in the left pane of Zotero should take the students to their respective online libraries, and those should obviously be different if the usernames have been successfully changed.

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