Fennec Foxen fennec@gmail.com wrote:
Message: 2 Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 11:30:19 -0400 From: Fennec Foxen fennec@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] anons editing To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org Message-ID: 3406cd4e040809083024802bdf@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
On Sun, 8 Aug 2004 21:40:38 -0700 (PDT), zero 0000 nought_0000@yahoo.com wrote:
In my almost-a-year editing Wikipedia, I am yet to hear a convincing reason for allowing anons to edit at all, but saw plenty of cases when I wished they couldn't. Zero.
Anonymous editors may become interested in Wikipedia and become non-anonymous. This occurs with greater frequency it would if the anonymous user was not able to experiment prior to registration.
That's /precisely/ how things went in my case: I went from anon to account holder. I simply wouldn't /be/ a Wikipedian today had it not been for anon editing starting me out on this path.
Also, in this SPAM day and SPAM age, people SPAM are SPAM weary of SPAM giving SPAM their email address to SPAM any website they SPAM haven't grown to trust. And people will not get to that stage of trust as easily if they don't get "hooked" on editing. (Yes, I know, you don't even /have/ to give an email address to create an account w/ the WP, but people will just not even proceed to signup, because they /expect/ they have to give their email address there -- after all, their experience is that most other websites require it.)
Plus, let's face it: Anons are like any other group: Sometimes we like their edits, sometimes we don't. Sometimes they cause us mischief (and [[Hanlon's razor]] applies). But how would that be different from /any other/ arbitrarily selected group of contributors (like male/female/Caucasian/African/Asian/gay/straight, etc. etc.)? I even think we should be _more_ lenient with anons than with any other group, because again, people progress from anon to account holder, so maybe there's a higher percentage of anons who are just new and thus make more newbie mistakes.
Thanks and regards, Jens Ropers
There are two types of IT techs: The ones who watch soap operas and the ones who watch progress bars. http://www.ropersonline.com/elmo/#108681741955837683