From: Gurch matthew.britton@btinternet.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 21:37:14 +0000 To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] User Pages & Editing in Wikipedia
Marc Riddell wrote:
I believe anyone who wishes to make edits to Wikipedia should have a single, individual, registered User Name, User Page and a Talk Page.
Quite apart from the issue of anonymous contributors, your demand introduces additional problems.
I operate two "bot" accounts; [[User:GurchBot]] and [[User:GurchBot 2]]. So I'm already in violation of all the above things, I have three of everything (four, actually, as I have another account for testing blocks and the like). Both these bot accounts are used for high-speed maintenance work and so require a bot flag, which can only be set per-account; separate accounts are the only way to achieve this.
So your demands would not only mean the end of anonymous editing (and a sharp decline in the amount of information added to Wikipedia) but also a complete rewrite of the bot policy and major changes to the way that the MediaWiki software works. And I haven't even touched on username changes, legitimate uses for alternate accounts, and a whole lot of other stuff. Your suggestion simply isn't workable.
-Gurch
OK - I'm learning. There is very much of the technical aspects of Wikipedia I know nothing about. It may seem like grasping, but it's really trying to wrestle with, what I see is a large problem. But, I believe, with all of the human, intelligent resources within the Wikipedia community, a solution can be found. I'm just not willing at this point to leave it at "there's nothing that can be done".
Marc
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