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

[Ben McIlwain]

On 6/28/06, Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sf.net> wrote:
> On 6/28/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Gaining nothing? [...]
> > 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.
>
> The cost is anything but small and from the experience with licencing
> issues on Wikipedia I've had so far I'd guess the gain is purely theoretical.
>
> * It is a privacy problem
>
> * It is a serious loss of openness
>
> * Many people won't be uploading images if it requires email registration

They SHOULDN'T be uploading images if they won't even give us their
email, because then we have no way of verifying their image upload
tags whatsoever.  Many images are released as GFDL-self, PD-self,
whatever, and without even an email address to verify any of that how
can the system possibly work?

>
> * Even if people do register, it won't be possible to contact most of them:
> ** Most normal people who would get such an email, wouldn't understand
> what the heck is this all licencing thing about or simply wouldn't
> care. About the only people who get the licencing are Wikipedians and
> Open Source geeks. And they do not need compulsory email confirmation.
> ** People tend to automatically delete all emails from people they
> don't know as spam. So even if the email gets through it's likely to
> get ignored.** Many people have special email addresses for all the
> registrations that they never actually read
> *** Like I never do compulsory registrations using anything else than spambob
> ** People are switching email addresses all the time. Half-life of
> valid email address is very short.

None of the "concerns" you just brought up are valid.