uninvited@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.