I would be in favour of the idea, and it seems to be a gradual progression
of the way Wikipedia is developing (which obviously is open to debate about
whether it is the right way). I think that the ends justify the mean in this
case, and with the problems we do have on images on Wikipedia relating to
copyright info it is important to be able to contact uploaders, as we may
well be able to 'save' a significant number of images.
Whether all new users should have to register e-mail addresses is a further
debate, but seems the next logical step. Again there are obviously pros and
cons to such a thing, and I think if such a system were ever introduced you
would have to allow only registered users to edit Wikipedia (which in the
present climate is never going to occur).
The question ultimately is how far are we willing to allow Wikipedia to
become less 'free' and whether we think any measure that does reduce the
'freedom' on Wikipedia is worth it?
Oliver
On 6/28/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/28/06, Oliver Coddington <olivercoddington(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I suppose it does open up the question of having
to have an e-mail
address
to just simply register an account, as opposed to
just having to have
one to
upload images. Especially when there was a debate
going on about reusing
accounts which have been inactive, if one had to register with a valid
e-mail address then a warning e-mail could be sent out to inactive
accounts,
for example. Of course that does go against the
nature of Wikipedia
slightly, in some people's views. However, it is something worth
considering
as the rate of new users keeps on increasing.
Of course, were we to do this more people would simply edit without an
account. You already are not able to upload without an account. But I
think the more important consideration is this, how often do we need
to email a few-edit account... vary rarely, perhaps only once to tell
them that their account is expiring. Drive by image uploaders, on the
other hand, provide incomplete copyright information in a majority of
cases.
It's not reasonable to expect new users even uploading ones to be
experts at our requirements, even when we make a strong effort to
inform people prior to upload. As such I support this feature.
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