Wikipedia:Editors should be logged in users

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This proposal was rejected by the community. It has not gained consensus and seems unlikely to do so.

This is a perennial proposal - variants of it pop up every couple of months. The answer, each and every time, is a firm and resounding NO. The whole point of Wikipedia is its accessibility, and it will not be restricted in this way. Radiant_>|< 23:13, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


Wikipedia must tighten up controls of who can edit and who cannot!

hello, i am User:Rbj and i love Wikipedia and have made quite a few edit contributions that have stuck, so i think i am a positive asset to Wikipedia. but i am spending too much time reverting vandalism.

why is it that Wikipedia allows anonymous (from mere IP addresses) editing of the articles? this is just dumb and we're literally begging for vandals to come and mess it up?

you should require every editor to Login and when they first create an identity or username, they should have to verify by responding to an email from Wikipedia (so we know their email address is real). they should have to identify themselves fully (name, valid email), viewable at least by the administrators. and whenever they login, there should be a record of IP addresses so that if vandalism is done from the same IP (but a different login name), we might have an idea of who else to contact.


you guys have to fix this!

r b-j 18:49, 20 September 2005 (UTC)



  • Can't but agree. I don't think it will stop 'em barbarians, but could reduce the attacks somewhat, perhaps. Registration is free and takes just a couple of minutes, so why not register? (I'd have to do the same with some other-than-English versions of the Wiki, where I've contributed anonimously, but this is not a problem.)

WANNA CONTRIBUTE—LOG IN! --Barbatus 14:37, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

  • Agree. It would slightly iscourage new editors to join, but I do not think that is a main problem, we have quite a few of editors already. On the other hand if it will reduce the number of vandals it is worth it!

abakharev 22:38, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree to this!! Hope this gets adopted quickly --Vyzasatya 06:16, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

This comes up quite frequently. Have a look at Wikipedia:Disabling edits by unregistered users and stricter registration requirement. --Goobergunch|? 07:38, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, so how to deal with those attacks? Is there any solution in sight? --Barbatus 14:44, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
There is always a trade-off between attracting new editors and keeping vandalism in control. I think when we have 3/4 millions of articles on English Wikipedia the balance changed. abakharev 23:13, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Um ... In what direction? (the balance changed, that is) --Barbatus 23:23, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I would think that then we had 20K articles and Britannica 250K articles, our priorities were to increase the number of editors rather than to protect the articles, now we have 750K articles, triple the number Britannica has, and our priorities might shift to protection and improvement of the existent articles, rather than attracting more inexperienced editors. abakharev 23:21, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
That what used to be called "переход количества в качество" :) Barbatus 23:27, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Sure, we have 750'000 articles, but our coverage of subjects is unbalanced. There are some subjects that we have good coverage on (in terms of number of articles), but many others that we cover quite badly (in terms of number of articles. Many important subjects do not have articles. Many others are stubs). We're simply not there yet: The current "staff" of "editors" is skewed towards technical subjects - there's inssuficient variety in the flock, insufficient breadth of interest. Maybe when we hit 5 million articles, we'll finally have the breadth of "staff" that an encyclopedia needs... --Peter Knutsen 02:48, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Completle agree, whe should not lock Wikipedia for the new user, just discourage a little bit the usage of wikipedia by trolls and spammers. It is require only a few seconds to register abakharev 04:17, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Related idea. I wonder if we might first try this: You can edit an article as an IP, but you can't create a new one without logging in. If you go to Special:Newpages, at any given time, you'll see that upwards of seventy percent of new articles come from IPs. Many of these are valuable contributions, but a large fraction need to go to AfD (unfortunately, many of them don't qualify for speedy). The ones that slip through may sit around as "cold dark matter" for a long time. This is possibly worse than vandalism of important articles; those tend to be on many people's watchlists and will be reverted quickly. --Trovatore 21:50, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
    • It might make sense, though I would think that protecting of the articles (especially the high-profile ones) is important too. abakharev 23:21, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm new here, but my impression is that most vandalism consists of sabotage against existing articles (e.g. the inserted phrase "you suck a lot of", which I removed from Maslow recently), and that people creating new articles (e.g. very minor porn actresses starting pages about themselves, to attract attention & traffic) is quite minor. But I could be wrong. As I said: I'm new here.--Peter Knutsen 02:48, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, the articles I'm talking about aren't usually vandalism. They're non-encyclopedic, or badly written, or some combination. In theory the response to a badly-written article on a reasonable topic is supposed to be to clean up the writing--but who really wants to do that, on an article of minor interest to him? So either they have to go through the laborious AfD process, or they may simply remain badly written. Personally I consider the latter outcome a disaster, much worse than occasional obvious vandalism.
Now, whether any proposal like this would actually do much to curb the influx of poorly-written articles, I don't really know. --Trovatore 23:35, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Allowing anyone to edit is an absolute cornerstone of Wikipedia, and contributes enormously to its attraction to the general public. I would be very much opposed to any attempt to restrict edits to logged-in users. I see plenty of good edits from IP addresses (and no shortage of vandalism from IPs).

Preventing article creation by IPs is something I would have more time for, but would still be wary of. Many an anonymous editor has probably found a redlink, thought 'I know about that' and started an article. However, if there were a way to prevent IP addresses from creating new articles which nothing links to, I would think that might be a good idea. Worldtraveller 13:08, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

  • Disagree completely. If it weren't for unregistered users, I probably wouldn't be here, since I wouldn't have gotten interested in Wikipedia. The fact that I could immediately change stuff on the spot was incredible. As to unregistered users being anonymous, that is simply a red herring. We're all anonymous. The only difference is that registered users aren't referred to by their IP addresses. A vandal can create an account just as well as non-vandals can. Email verification is also meaningless (ever heard of Hotmail and throwaway accounts?). Real names are meaningless when you discover that 93% of vandals are called Snow White. This is a feel-good idea, not something that would actually accomplish anything (useful).Tommstein 22:21, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Disagree completely.Exactly right I was very timid initially it was only after I realised that useful contributions stick (and that some topics i was interested in were poorly served) that i really got into it. Then i wanted the recognition - regisration would deter people with good intentions but it wouldn't bother vandals much.).Cp6ap 24 Oct 2005
  • Rejected. Perennial issue, and not a good idea. Radiant_>|< 23:13, 28 October 2005 (UTC)