[Wikipedia-l] Require confirmed email address to upload images?

[Kat Walsh]

On 6/28/06, Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sf.net> wrote:

> But a confirmed email addresses for uploading photos ?
> This is really way too sick. We would be annoying every single
> contributor while gaining absolutely nothing.
>
> We should rather get back to the situation where unregistered users
> have all the options available - editing pages, creating new articles,
> uploading pictures, moving articles, everything.
> Having to register doesn't stop a single vandal.

Gaining nothing? It hurts users for us not to be able to contact them.
Text usually stays, as a fact in an article can be found and supported
by a source even if it is not the same source the writer used. But an
image? If we cannot find the original and do not know where it came
from, it must be deleted. That's a pretty big loss, I think, both for
Wikimedia not being able to use it and for the original contributor
who sees the effort they spent to upload and place it gone to waste.

This isn't intended to stop vandalism, though it may slow it; any
vandal can register an account with an email address also. It is
intended to help good-faith users who want to contribute media. We
need to be strict about enforcing proper tagging and licensing of
images; we cannot budge on that. But it is a sad loss to delete things
simply because they didn't understand the procedure and we don't know
how to reach them.

Confirming an email address is a small thing and a one-time thing, and
does not require giving up anonymity. I still see it a net positive.

-Kat

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