I Think:
It's Time To Stop Allowing "Anonymous Editors" I'm just going to add to the very top of this edit, that my user space received its very first vandalism while I wrote it, makes me feel all warm inside, and the irony is incredible. Of course Oxymoron83 was standing by to deal with it (as always I might add), but here's the diff's just to prove this isn't made up: User Space and User talk Space. So anyway, as I was saying, here's my logic for requiring login, put against some arguments for not doing so:
- Most Anonymous Work Is Good
Perhaps, that really may be true, I'm not sure if I believe it, but its arguable. BUT! Do we really want our encyclopaedia to be "mostly" good? No, not a chance, we want it to be good to the hilt. There are tonnes of Vandal Fighters out there (yours truly included) who could be writing articles instead of patrolling the Recent Changes. Anonymous IP's are deeply mistrusted and need to be monitored. There will always be Recent Change Patrollers, but it shouldn't be the undeniable necessity that it is.
- We Don't Want To Put People Off
So we're going to make it as easy as possible to vandalise Wikipedia instead? Here is a fact: People interested in helping WILL create an account if asked to, passing vandals more then likely won't, and those that do, are all the more blockable. I've also heard the argument that it draws new users. No It Doesn't. Wikipeadia is one of the most traffic heavy websites in the world. The word is out people! New users are flooding in! Is creating an account really that hard on them?
Yes, absolutely correct, this is a Wiki... but it is not first and foremost a Wiki. First and foremost, this is an encyclopaedia, regardless of what order that appears in the name. If one must be sacrificed to protect the other than it MUST be "Wiki" not "pedia". Plus, we wouldn't really be doing that, I don't see what's so unwiki about requiring a click, inserting a user name, inserting a password, and one final click before editing is allowed.
- Not Requiring Login Allows For Anonymity
...No... it really, really doesn't. If I edit as 89.101.117.204 then by simply opening Google and typing that in you can find a whole bunch of info on me, for example where I live down to the area of the city, and my ISP etc. Determined people can then use those few facts to find out my actual identity. Now I'm not the best example due to the my signature giving it all away, but lemme tell you, my name is not Ferdiaob. It's Ferdia. There was nothing stopping me from typing JimmyGimpMaskFace in when I registered and put a whole bunch of fake info on my user page instead of the beacon of honesty it actually is, and BOOM, I am anonymous (an admin could get my IP and trace me but how likely is that, really?).
- Determined Vandals Can't Be Stopped
That's true, no argument. Lets be honest though, how many vandals are really determined? What few are easily dealt with anyway. So there's a few arguments for the registration thing. Although this is slooooooooowly happening already what with IPs not being allowed to upload images or make new pages etc. I have an idea though, why don't we enforce registration from
known shared IPs, for example AOL, and see how that goes, I bet vandalism would take a nose dive to say the least.
Disclaimer If anything I've said sounds harsh then I apologies. I used to come across quite strong in my posts to Wikipedia, but I'm trying hard not to be that guy any more. All in all though, what I've said above makes sense. Click the talk link at the top of the box to talk about this if you like. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
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