uninvited(a)nerstrand.net wrote:
Requiring a confirmed e-mail address would have little
effect on
legitimate contributors and would help considerably in dealing with
problem users:
It's remarkable how every time someone proposes to violate privacy, they
declare that it will have "little effect" on legitimate people.
a. It would complicate the construction of vandalbots
that register a
username and then conduct high-speed vandalism
Congratulations, you've slowed down the creation of vandal bots by a
one-time five minutes, and the creation of each vandal bot account by a
few seconds.
Oh, and you've also slowed down the registration process for real people
by a few minutes, and scared off people that don't want to be handing
out their email address.
b. It would provide a better basis for following up
on abusive users in
egregious cases where an ISP must be contacted
No vandal is going to give their ISP-provided email address, and I fail
to understand how it would provide any better basis than their IP
address even if they did.
c. It would allow likely socks to be more rapidly
identified
How? Anyone with a modicum of intelligence creating sockpuppets isn't
going to provide the same or even similar email addresses.