--- Tim Starling <ts4294967296(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
zero 0000 wrote:
> I think it should look like this (propery fomatted):
>
> In order to edit Wikipedia pages you need to log in. If you
> don't have an account you are very welcome to create one.
> This would deter more casual vandalism than any suggestion I have
> seen and be of trivial consequence for genuine users. Is there
> really a good reason we don't do this?
Tim, Thanks for your reply. However, I don't find your arguments
convincing.
Yes, there are two reasons. Firstly, it's not a
trivial consequence
for
some genuine users. Many people make casual corrections without
logging
in, and the deterrent effect against this would be the same as for
casual vandalism.
This suggests that casual vandals have the same degree of
motivation as people wanting to make casual corrections.
Is that true?
Some Wikipedians report having started with this kind
of casual contribution, and say they would never have become active
if there were barriers to entry.
The barrier would be reduced to almost nothing if an account creation
option was provided in the edit process.
There is also an inexplicable association in some
peoples' minds
between
being logged out and being "anonymous", and such people see the
requirement to log in as a threat to anonymity.
This is very strange. I would think that a greater number of
people realise that the opposite is true. One of the reasons
I first adopted a username was in order to become more
anonymous!
The second reason is that vandalism is easier to spot
when it comes
from users who are logged out.
Yes, I'm sure that is true, but how can this be weighed against the
overall reduction in vandalism that would result? Which of the two
tendencies would be the greatest? I predict (admittedly on little
basis) that casual vandalism will overall drop by several times,
moreover that most of the residual casual vandalism will still be
easy to spot because the vandals will create usernames like aaaa
and qwert, and also because of junk edit summaries.
Zero.
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