Wikipedia:Block all anonymous edits

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The free-for-all policy of letting anonymous users of Wikipedia modify articles is creating a huge load of work for legitimate authors and editors. Only today I had to revert vandalism in 5 pages, in a single morning, some of them complete destruction of the article. Probably this discussion has already been done here, but I would propose that anonymous edits be banned by the WikiMedia software. In the future, identity verification should also be provided by legitimate authors. Making it slightly more difficult to vandals to alter articles will decrease dramatically the incidence. --R.Sabbatini 10:51, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Given that literally anyone can create an account (we're all anonymous, whether we have made-up login names or not), and given that sock puppets are generally identified by matching the IP addresses of their many login names (and this requires the intervention of a developer, not just an admin), those "anonymous" users are better identified by IP than by login name. They are less anonymous. All of us can change our login names. Very few of us can change our IP addresses. So your complaint on that count is misguided.

The goal of your complaint, demanding valid identification before allowing an edit, runs counter to one of the charter principles of the Wikipedia. Anything can change, but that's going to be a hard one to get done, unless someone actually sues Jimbo Wales for libel. 216.237.179.238 21:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)