[WikiEN-l] Proposal to not allow editing without account

[Oldak Quill]

On 11/04/07, Oleg Alexandrov <mathbot at hemlock.knams.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I am sure that this came along many times, but I was not able to
> search for it through the mailing list.
>
> OK, so to start, users without account (anons) contribute a lot of
> content, at least as typo fixing, etc., and many established users
> started as anons.
>
> However, it is also true that the vast majority of vandalism is
> committed by anons, and it takes a tremendous energy to police the more
> than 1.7 milions articles for vandalism.
>
> Hereby I suggest that only people with account be allowed to edit, and
> that they also suppy an email address when registering, which is then
> confirmed by sending an email to the supplied address and having the
> user clicking on a link.
>
> This is quite standard nowadays on the vast majority of websites which
> allow more than just reading things, and people are rather used to it.
> It takes little time too to register and confirm one's email.
>
> I am aware that this may decrease somewhat the number of people who get
> hooked on Wikipedia and the amount of contributions. I'd argue however
> that Wikipedia is at a stage now where it has a very large amount of
> users, articles, and recognition. At this stage we should care a bit
> more than in the past about the quality than the quantity of users and
> articles (while of course we should hope that the community and the
> number of articles will increase).
>
> In short, I believe that having people make account and confirm their
> email is going to bring much more gain than loss.
>
> Comments?
>
> Oleg Alexandov

I'm sure people who wanted to vandalise would just create accounts to
do so - it wouldn't make that much difference (and we'd have to start
using CheckUser more). Many readers who fix typos may not bother to
create accounts and we'd lose some valuable work.

Most importantly, I think we'd lose claim to being an encyclopedia
that "anyone can edit". The greater the number of restrictions we
introduce, the harder it is to edit. I, for one, am far less likely to
contribute to a website if I'm forced to create an account to do it.

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)