Are you kidding? I often register a new email address in order to register
for this or that while still avoiding spam in the future. It takes about a
minute to set up a new account at hotmail, etc.
It seems unlikely to me that the almost negligible effect this would have on
vandals would be greatly outweighed by the number of simple typo fixes,
etc., that most people probably couldn't be bothered to create an account to
perform. I would argue that any time saved fighting vandals would be less
than the man hours lost from anon editors who would just throw up their
hands at having to register in order to insert a missing comma.
DickClarkMises
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:53:08 +0000
From: Oleg Alexandrov
<mathbot(a)hemlock.knams.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposal to not allow editing without account
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <20070411145308.GA6926(a)hemlock.knams.wikimedia.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
On Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 07:14:51PM +1000, Steve Bennett wrote:
How does us having a valid email address on
record help the project?
If the registration process is quick and easy, how does it discourage
vandals? What problem will your proposal fix, and how will it fix it?
It sounds like "vandalism is bad, so let's annoy new users".
That's the whole point I think. If you supply your email address when
you make your account you're less likely to vandalize. And if you get
blocked you can't start a new account with the same address while the
block is on.
In short, people who want to be on the project will bother registering
with a valid email, people who want to just vandalize won't.