[WikiEN-l] User Pages & Editing in Wikipedia

[Stan Shebs]

Marc Riddell wrote:
> Sources can be checked. What I'm presenting to are the totally mindless,
> malicious vandal edits by totally anonymous fools who have complete access
> to the encyclopedia. Perhaps I am being naive, but I believe a named,
> accountable User Page would go a long way to ridding Wikipedia of them.
>   
Yes, you are being naive. :-) Have you been back to look at the user 
login creation page? Did you see anything there to keep you from 
creating ten different user accounts, and pretending to be different 
people on each of them? Rumor has it that even the God-King has a few 
extra, so that he can move among his subjects incognito. :-)

In fact, we do now require logins to upload files, and take a look at 
commons; every day there are a dozen logins created, each uploading a 
few copyvios (OK, sometimes legit images), and then never seen again. 
Pretty much zero accountability there.

Vandalism by anons is a nuisance, but it's so easily and quickly 
countered that it's just not a major issue for maintenance.

Stan