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

[Kusma]

On 4/11/07, 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.
>
Before we restrict editing by IP addresses, we should perhaps try to
figure out what was accomplished by restricting page creation to users
with accounts. As far as I know, it is unknown whether this had any
net positive effect, and no other major Wikipedia disallows article
creation by IP addresses (which are easier to trace (for
non-checkusers) and less anonymous than pseudonymous new accounts).
Are there any studies about this that I am not aware of?

Kusma