[WikiEN-l] User Pages & Editing in Wikipedia

[Gurch]

Marc Riddell wrote:
> I believe anyone who wishes to make edits to Wikipedia should have a single,
> individual, registered User Name, User Page and a Talk Page.

Quite apart from the issue of anonymous contributors, your demand 
introduces additional problems.

I operate two "bot" accounts; [[User:GurchBot]] and [[User:GurchBot 2]]. 
So I'm already in violation of all the above things, I have three of 
everything (four, actually, as I have another account for testing blocks 
and the like). Both these bot accounts are used for high-speed 
maintenance work and so require a bot flag, which can only be set 
per-account; separate accounts are the only way to achieve this.

So your demands would not only mean the end of anonymous editing (and a 
sharp decline in the amount of information added to Wikipedia) but also 
a complete rewrite of the bot policy and major changes to the way that 
the MediaWiki software works. And I haven't even touched on username 
changes, legitimate uses for alternate accounts, and a whole lot of 
other stuff. Your suggestion simply isn't workable.

-Gurch