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sockmonk@gmail.com wrote: <snip>
If we shouldn't call them "anon" then what should we call them? It could be worse. We could call them Anonymous Cowards like some forums do. The problem I have with non-logged-in users is that when you find one (or several?) engaging in edit wars or other anti-social behaviour, it's very difficult to address them by name, let alone hold them accountable for their edits. Particularly when the similar edits come from within a block of ip addresses. Could be one person using different terminals on campus, or getting different ip's via a dhcp server, or a group of separate people who just 'look' the same.
Increasingly I've seen email addresses being used as usernames, which is probably a VERY BAD IDEA given how widely mirrored our content is (check out #wikipedia-en-newusers on freenode sometime). Is this some kind of bug in the software, where the registration form is taking the email address (if given) and using that as the username, or are the instructions not clear enough on the login form?
And yes, I agree with all of the above points about telling one IP editor (for lack of a better term) from another.
And no, we shouldn't go down the path that Livejournal and others have taken of "only registered users can comment", because then we will get 10,000,000 "registered user" with one edit each, because people will be making throwaway accounts just so they can fix a typo.
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