Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

On 6/28/06, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:

...

However, I like numbers... they can mislead but they can also be food for thought. Keep in mind we don't current recommend that anyone use the email this user to contact inactive uploaders simply because few of the images which are eligible for deletion have a confirmed user.

There were 57,472 images uploaded to enwiki in march. *21,000 come from uploaders with confirmed emails. *36,472 come from uploaders without confirmed emails

There were 30,981 total images deleted on enwiki in march. *5,149 were uploaded by users who had confirmed emails. *25,832 were uploaded by users who did not have confirmed emails.

I think the policy makes sense based both on my experience and based on the numbers.

So about 40% of useful contributions come from users without confirmed emails, and we would be throwing them away ?

That's only if you assume that all of these users, who previously haven't been required to have a confirmed email, would obstinately refuse to do so once it becomes a requirement for uploading images. Common sense, and actual experience with the experiment to halt article creation by unregistered users on the English Wikipedia, suggests that a great many of those wanting to accomplish a specific task will take the steps necessary to be allowed to do it.

It might be interesting to have a survey of image uploaders and find out how many either don't have an email address they can use, or would refuse to provide it for this purpose. Then we'd have a better idea of what your 40% number really boils down to. But such a survey would be most practical for us to conduct...via email.

--Michael Snow