How do you expect us to remain as an anti-elitist community if we make a big deal of author crediting? Prestige is the last thing an author should be seeking. FAness is no big deal.
Prestige (or repuation, at least, which is much the same thing) is extremely important to Wikipedia, it's one of the key things that keeps people in line. We have no way to force people to behave, one of the main reasons people do so is because they want to be respected by their peers. If everyone had to edit anonymously, we would have far fewer dedicated and well behaved contributors.