There is a tradeoff between requiring the field and getting the user through the process.  This is mostly a practical concern.  Is anyone aware of a community/cultural rational?

We should think about experimenting with this at some point since we're expanding the use of email.  And depending on the community considerations, we could even consider making email a required field.  Or do what Gmail does and make it optional, but not label it as such. 

This isn't a high priority for the e2/e3 teams right not (e.g., I'd want to look at the confirm email loop first), but something to keep on the backlog.

Howie

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 3:07 PM, Matthew Flaschen <mflaschen@wikimedia.org> wrote:
On 01/10/2013 05:57 PM, Howie Fung wrote:
> I saw this over vacation and have been meaning to respond.
>
> I think Thehelpfulone raises a very important point.  Echo does rely in
> email notifications.  Also, email is where users actually are and until
> new users get into the habit of coming to our sites directly, email is a
> way to draw them back in.
>
> Does anyone have the answer to question #1 below (why email is optional
> in the first place?).

It's been like that as long as I can remember.  It has been used for
Special:EmailUser for a long time, though, so it's not true that it was
recently only for resets.

I assume the answer is a tautology, "so people don't have to give their
email".  Probably, the goal was to encourage signups by minimizing the
required personal information.

But it's clearly a trade-off.  If they don't have an email, they can't
use password reset (which alone is important), and things like Echo
emails will not work out of the box.

Matt Flaschen

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