Hi Karen, The issue is that the IP address, especially nowadays, can provide identifying information such as physical location or organizational affiliation. Registering an account, perhaps with a pseudonym, and then using that to edit, prevents those details from being made public. To some, it seems unfair that registered accounts have that sort of protection, while anonymous edits don't. There are ways to mask your IP address, of course, but they are technical, may trigger additional surveillance, and may not be obvious to someone who just wants to edit Wikipedia. There is discussion of using one-way encryption or some other technical means to be able to obfuscate anonymous users' IP addresses, while still having a fixed identity for users from a particular address. Another solution would be to set up an "account-in-waiting" for anonymous users, based on their IP address. But that might be a problem for IP addresses that are used by multiple people, who might include spammers along with real contributors. Pete On 7/11/14, 09:58 AM, Karen Coyle wrote: