[WikiEN-l] Policy proposal: require e-mail confirmation

[Nicholas Knight]

uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
> Requiring a confirmed e-mail address would have little effect on
> legitimate contributors and would help considerably in dealing with
> problem users:

It's remarkable how every time someone proposes to violate privacy, they 
declare that it will have "little effect" on legitimate people.

> a.  It would complicate the construction of vandalbots that register a
> username and then conduct high-speed vandalism

Congratulations, you've slowed down the creation of vandal bots by a 
one-time five minutes, and the creation of each vandal bot account by a 
few seconds.

Oh, and you've also slowed down the registration process for real people 
by a few minutes, and scared off people that don't want to be handing 
out their email address.

> b.  It would provide a better basis for following up on abusive users in
> egregious cases where an ISP must be contacted

No vandal is going to give their ISP-provided email address, and I fail 
to understand how it would provide any better basis than their IP 
address even if they did.

> c.  It would allow likely socks to be more rapidly identified

How? Anyone with a modicum of intelligence creating sockpuppets isn't 
going to provide the same or even similar email addresses.