This has been discussed a thousand times. I'm sorry to say this, but in
essence, you've been proven wrong. Wikipedia's been in existence for two
or three years already. It hasn't collapsed. On the contrary, our policy
of assuming good faith and constant optimism that good editors outnumber
the bad has led to a great degree of success. For example, I got a
scoutmaster to edit [[Persekutuan Pengakap Malaysia]]. He was reluctant
at first, but gladly corrected several factual errors after I informed
him that anons are permitted to edit. There are dozens, nay, hundreds,
nay, thousands more such stories like these out there, if you bother to ask.
I used to patrol recent changes regularly. A good deal of anons edit
there. Sure, some are bad, blanking or vandalising pages. But several
are good, some contributing a great deal of specialist information on
Eastern European and West Asian geography and history (this was based on
my observations from the diffs of several edits made by anons while on
RC patrol some months back).
I guarantee you, if we forced people to register before being allowed to
edit, we wouldn't be half as succesful as we are today. This debate has
gone on many times before. The resolution is always the same: Forcing
anons to register before editing is not a tenable idea.
John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])
NSK wrote:
Wikinfo does not allow anons, I think, neither my
wikis. Allowing anons is
more appropriate for "anything goes" wikis where they don't expect quality
work, but for wikis where good organised content is desired, allowing anons
is not a good idea IMO.
Forcing people to have accounts in the wiki is useful to me because it
provides:
1. Better privacy: Users' IP addresses don't show up in the wiki. I really
don't understand why MediaWiki publishes IP addresses to everyone. That's a
"bug" IMO: It should display "Anonymous No. 48367" to users and the IP
only
to sysops. Anons should get a distinguishing number based on their IP, so
that users can recognise whether an anon is the same as another anon, but the
IP should be restricted to sysops. That's a very important privacy issue.
2. Better copyright management: I have zero chances of contacting an anon and
asking for permission to publish his or her edits under another license. With
user accounts it is more easier to switch licenses because I might be able to
contact them and ask whether they agree.
3. Better antitrollness: Abusive users seem to love anon editing, but the
requirement for an account could keep them out of the wiki, especially if the
account needs to be validated from an email address and we require them to
give us their real names.
4. Better reputation: Readers would be more happy to know that articles are
edited by a united community rather than by random anons who don't know each
other and don't conform to a policy or some standards.