User:Kaiwen1/Vote to prohibit anonymous edits

This is a non-binding poll to determine the Wikipedia consensus on prohibiting anonymous edits as a method to reduce vandalism. The results will be forwarded to the WikiMedia Board of Trustees as a recommendation.

See also: Wikimedia:Anonymous users should not be allowed to edit articles.

Do you want to prohibit or allow anonymous edits on Wikipedia?

Prohibit

1. Prohibit. I wish it weren't so, but people are stupid, immature and ignorant, and vandalize this article all too frequently. For instance, an anonymous user just replaced the words "sperm" with "cubans" in one part of the text. --Awakeandalive1, 11 May, 2006.
2. Prohibit. I'm a new user but already I've seen countless acts of vandalism.--zider_red 19:06, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
3. Prohibit. There's a lot of people with an agenda on this topic. lock it down! --MrPogi 18:32, 16 April 2006 (UTC) MrPogi (User's only edit. HKT^Talk 23:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC))
4. Prohibit. Forcing people to register means that it's more trouble to vandalize. -User:CountZ 8:29P PST, 3 March 2006

   And more trouble to edit productively. Would the 30 or 40 good edits I mentioned below have occurred if the editors had to go to the bother of registering? Some would, sure, but how many would be lost? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:18, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

5. Prohibit. Allowing anon edits means a more inclusive community. But the sheer quanitity of vandalism degrades the experience of legitimate users, reduces the time available create and edit articles and may reduce the level of legitimate participation in the community. An overwhelming percentage of vandalism comes from anonymous users, so limiting such edits would indeed greatly reduce vandalism. -Gavin 19:10, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

   Correlation is not causation. That an overwhelming percentage of vandalism comes from anonymous users doesn't mean that removing anonymous editing will stop the vandalism; possibly the vandals will just register when they're bored and feel like vandalizing. Meanwhile, a lot of good edits come from anons. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:18, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

6. Prohibit. It is very easy to get a user name. Get it.Dodgens 04:29, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
7. Prohibit. Registering only takes about 10 seconds. If you have something useful to add, you can sign up. Ancienterf 07:29, 24 February 2006 (UTC) (User has 12 edits. HKT^Talk 23:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC))
8. Prohibit. Reverting instances of vandalism and correcting malicious edits, most of them by anonymous users, takes an inordinate amount of time in the case of the article that I have been working on for the past several months. Instead of being able to develop and improve the content of the article, I and the other editors who are struggling to maintain a modicum of Wiki standards have to devote almost all of our time to "cleanup". Polaris999 23:49, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

   Correlation is not causation. That an overwhelming percentage of vandalism comes from anonymous users doesn't mean that removing anonymous editing will stop the vandalism; possibly the vandals will just register when they're bored and feel like vandalizing. Meanwhile, a lot of good edits come from anons. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:18, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

9. Prohibit. I am generaly in favour of controversial or potentialy controversial documents being open only to editors. After all, anyone can become one easily, and will if they have something to add. Pelegius 02:18, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

   Controversial or potentially controversial, sure. See WP:SPP. But most articles aren't potentially controversial. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:18, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

10. Prohibit. Too much vandalism. Baltikatroika 05:51, 21 February 2006 (UTC) (User has 14 edits. HKT^Talk 23:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC))
11. Prohibit. As a relativly new member here, I've already seen and edited vandalism by anon users. It perplexes me how anyone with anything useful to say can't take the short amount of time to register a name. I know there are anon users out there doing good but why they can't just register and seperate from the riff-raff?--Skeev 13:59, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

    Some people are on computers which can't accept cookies, or for other technical reasons are unable to register an account. Maybe they don't have an email address to receive a confirmation. You're talking about banning these people from editing wikipedia. I say, leave things as they are; the average page stays vandalized, in my experience, for less than two minutes, and controversial or important pages often less than thirty seconds. I spend a lot of time reverting vandals myself, and I feel we have them on the run. There's no need for draconian measures unless they start kicking our butts. -Kasreyn 07:51, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

12. Prohibit. 98% of the vandalism comes from users without a log-in, and getting a log-in name is not that much to ask to be allowed to edit in Wikipedia. I've heard before that Wikipedia likes to allow anonymous edits because some people need privacy for certain legitimate reasons, but I don't understand that argument since getting a log-in name doesn't require that one divulge any personal identifying information about one's self. --Jakob Huneycutt 17:59, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

    Correlation is not causation. That an overwhelming percentage of vandalism comes from anonymous users doesn't mean that removing anonymous editing will stop the vandalism; possibly the vandals will just register when they're bored and feel like vandalizing. Meanwhile, a lot of good edits come from anons. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:18, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

13. Prohibit. I hope vandals will not take trouble to register. --The NeveR SLeePiNG 19:24, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

    I suspect many won't. I also suspect many legitimate editors won't. How hard is it to sign up anyway? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:18, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

14. Prohibit. This article is frequently vandalized by anonymous users and suspected sock puppets of pollitically motivated editors.
15. Prohibit. What's the big deal in registering, anyway? --DrBat 01:30, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
16. Prohibit. It's the only way to go. Barryvalder 04:42, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
17. Prohibit., too much vandalism and POV. Mac Domhnaill 22:10, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

    Why do you think requiring signup will reduce anon vandalism more than good edits? Many people aren't going to bother to sign up just so they can vandalize, but many also aren't going to bother to sign up to improve a page they'll probably never read again. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:21, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

18. Prohibit Anyone can still edit wikipedia. All we ask is that they identify themselves. Yes, hundreds of vandalizations can be erased per day by just one hard working wikipedian. Thats one day that wikipedian won't spend making wikipedia better, by writing something. Anons will still be able to read wikipedia, search it, etc. How bad does the situation with vandalism need to be? And how many admins is it justifiable to employ with no pay as day long devandalizers?

    Prometheuspan 21:00, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

    The less time I spend reverting vandal edits and removing spam, the more time I can spend on my real purpose in editing Wikipedia: contributing information to articles about computers and local TV shows. As you can see, I also regularly participate in discussions about Wikipedia - I'd have more time to do this with less IP vandals around. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:25, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

19. Prohibit With dynamic allocation of IP addresses (as is done by my ISP) there's no way to track the continuity of an editor. But it's not just continuity. My concern is less with vandalism than with uninformed nonsense being added to articles by unregistered editors. I think if you have to put your name to what you edit, you're somewhat more likely to edit responsibly. Of course, that's not always the case, some folks sign their graffiti on building walls. #:--SteveMcCluskey 15:56, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

    Reply We already have a solution in place, we simply ban IP's. If a legitimate anon user is affected by this, they can get a username to get around the IP block which is stopping anons in their netblock. Kasreyn 23:48, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

    I don't see your point. If you mean to ban whole blocks of IP addresses, you're imposing a similar restriction to this proposal, but selectively only to those who subscribe to a specific ISP. --SteveMcCluskey 13:26, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

    I didn't really mean it in terms of discriminating against an ISP. Essentially, if there's a vandal on a connection with dynamic IP, the only way to be rid of him is to block his local netblock, most likely 256 IP's. So this would be something like a localized ban on anonymous editing for users of that subnet. But the block notice in these cases is a template which informs users that they can get around the block by obtaining a login. Those who've voted to Prohibit, including you, are advocating extending this practise even to anon vandals who have assigned IP's. There's no need for that - an anon vandal with an assigned IP can be easily blocked without affecting legitimate editors. Kasreyn 02:11, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

    Wrong again. My IP address is 202.156.6.54, which is shared by over 4 million people (the entire Singapore population). I am always logged in, but I am often blocked because someone else using this IP has been vandalizing pages. For more information, please see Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 09:17, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

    But I wasn't talking about that, I was talking about dynamic IP's. You apparently have a fixed IP. I sympathize, but I can't imagine why a moderately wealthy nation like Singapore can only afford one IP address. It's not reasonable to expect any Wikipedia policy to be able to deal with a situation as insane as four million people sharing one IP address. Kasreyn 19:40, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

    Your post mentioned "they can get around the block by obtaining a login". This is WRONG! I am constantly blocked because people are vandalising using this IP. Having an account does not protect me. And it's frustrating to be unable to edit a quarter of the time. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:18, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

    You realize that if a registered user gets blocked, any other registered users who share an IP address with them would also get blocked? Someone editing from behind a huge proxy will be screwed until Mediazilla:550 is fixed either way. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:21, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

    *Prohibit anon users are making a mess of things around here. JohnM4402 21:31, 3 June 2006 (UTC) Changing my vote to Allow... I misunderstood the premis. I thought we were voting to keep anon users from voting on AfD's etc. JohnM4402 22:51, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

20. Prohibit It is dirt-easy to get an account. Blocking IPs has been shown to not work, as it's also dirt-easy to get an account on AOL. I've felt from the beginning that allowing anons to edit did more harm than good. Danny Lilithborne 04:23, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

    Given that, as you say, it's dirt-easy to get an account, how is blocking accounts more effective than blocking IPs? Someone with AOL can just make a slew of new accounts, and we won't even know where he's coming from. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:18, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

21. Prohibit More than 96% of the vandal edit I deal with are from anonymous users. That being said, for people who are using an ISP with a dynamic IP, blocking an IP address or a string of them would unnecessarily block out those who might do some good. However, with the vast majority of vandal edits coming from anonymous users, I vote to prohibit. It is quite easy to get a user account. Tachyon01 17:08, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

    An argument that applies equally well to both sides: easy for good users to get a user account, easy for vandals to get a user account. If the latter occurs, blocks longer than 24 hours and range blocks are both impossible with the current software, significantly reducing our ability to deal with vandals. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:21, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

22. Strong Prohibit A considerable percentage of vandalism comes from anonymous edits. By prohibiting anonymous edits, we can significantly reduce the amount of vandalism. If established editors spend less time fighting vandalism, they can spend more time on constructive activities such as expanding and improving articles. The number of editors leaving due to excessive vandalism will decrease. Many anonymous vandals are just casual vandals. They will be discouraged by the need to create an account. Although it will not deter the more determined vandals, forcing them to create an account will slow down their vandalism.

    Because registration will still remain completely open, Wikipedia will still be "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit". (Currently, allowing anonymous edits makes it "the encyclopedia that anyone can vandalize".) Wikipedia's development of articles is excellent. However, development of editors needs much improvement. Anonymous editors may lack the self-confidence to expand articles or correct errors, and they may make good faith edits that are reverted, partially because they lack understanding of Wikipedia policies, guidelines and formatting.

    Editors who create an account will be more inclined to read and understand the various Wikipedia policies, guidelines and formatting, and will be more bold. This will improve the overall quality of good-faith edits and foster a more integrated Wikipedia community. I disagree that "we were all anon users once". I never edited as an anon before creating this account.

    Anonymous vandals are also causing problems for editors with accounts. My IP is 202.156.6.54. This IP is shared by almost all Singaporeans (Singapore's population is currently 4 million). There are plenty of anonymous vandals operating from this IP address, and when they are blocked, the blocking locks out the many editors with accounts, like myself. I am unable to edit a quarter of the time and this is very frustrating! Prohibiting anonymous edits will solve this problem. In addition, please sign at MediaZilla:550. Thanks. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 09:25, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

    I don't understand how that would solve anything due to the fact that, when an account is blocked, other accounts sharing its IP are also blocked. As I said in the comments section, there are numerous options for addressing cases such as yours; however, this proposal is cutting off the nose to spite the face. Moulder 18:27, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

23. Prohibit BUT instigate other changes at the same time. Anon edits should not appear on the page until vetted by a user or admin. New users must also have a 1 to 7 day period before thay can edit. Alan Liefting 06:32, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

    Wouldn't your first proposal force users and admins to waste more time on double-checking every single individual anon edit than time actually spent improving the encyclopedia, and wouldn't your second proposal cause most people to never bother to get accounts in the first place since they'd have to wait a week before they could even make a 1-letter typo fix? People are naturally impatient. I'm glad we're coming up with innovative new ideas, but these seem like the kind of proposals which, if implemented, would actually destroy the encyclopedia. New users are the lifeblood of a collaborative project like this. -Silence 06:39, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

24. Prohibit It only takes a few seconds to register, and so much vandalism etc seems to be from anons. Might be an idea to make it bog-obvious how easy it is to register though. Britmax 10:11, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
25. Prohibit It seems quick to register, I just did today, and it gives added functions, like image uploading. It seems like a good idea. However, the first thing on my talk page was a very rude welcome anti-gay welcome, but the user seemed banned quicky. So it does seem like a good idea! Cheesehead 1980 18:27, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
26. Prohibit - Nearly all of the vandalism I have encountered on this site came from anon. IPs... Mandatory registration will probably not restrict spammers, vandals with agendas or vandals who have already developed a perverse interest in Wiki, but it is my belief that much of the more petty, childish vandalism (i.e., "eat shite, Lenny") could be avoided by forcing new users to jump through one or two hoops. --(Mingus ah um 22:50, 21 June 2006 (UTC))
27. Prohibit - The registration process is absurdly easy, and most Web users have come to accept registration requirements for certain features. The benefits far outweigh the cost. BukkWylde 17:24, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
28. Prohibit - It's incredibly easy to register, and anyone who can make positive edits to an article is most likely going to have knowledge about other topics which they can help improve, too. Agentscott00^{(talk contribs)} 21:16, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
29. Prohibit - Serious editors would not mind registering, but random vandalism (such as "Joe is great" written by someone from a high school IP) will be prevented. Fighting vandalism is time-consumming and the existing policies just punish good editors with many articles on their watchlists. Tankred 21:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
30. Prohibit. It's a no-brainer. Anonymous editing undermines the project at every turn. The burden of clearing up after anonymous vandalism is allowed to fall by default upon good editors who would far sooner be working on articles – and for what benefit exactly? It's bad for morale, and it's bad for Wikipedia. Laurence Boyce 17:59, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Allow

1. *1/2*Allow. Instead of prohibiting IP/anon edits; change wiki policy. Anonymous edits are changed immediately. I am against that, instead of changing anonymous edits immediately, redirect them to an offical all volunteer 'Recent Changes Patrol' for approval/confirmation that it is not vandalism. Once approved they can be saved on the page. I think the aforementioned suggestion would serve to reduce vandalism on quite a bit on Wikipedia, without violating the anyone can edit policy. Pseudoanonymous 02:01, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

   This seems it would be some work to implement - what about things like conflicts, because the page has changed since it gets approved? Plus, the amount of work spent approving edits would be at least as much as the time spent reverting vandalism anyway. Mdwh 17:10, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

   You'd have to have people in place that could spot any and all kinds of vanadlism though. It's not always about adding crude remarks but also slightly changing facts. I saw one guy go and change a ton of dates in the ECW article, what are the chances of the reviewer being a guy that could ascertain if a moment in the company's history actually took place in the previous or edited date? Or on that note if a battle took place in 1901 or 1902? It's insidious vandals like those that make it hard to detect and it seems like a lot to ask to have a group of people responsible for fact-checking every anon edit. On the positive side of your suggestion, knowing that thier edits will be reviewed will be a good deterrant to random anon vandals.--Skeev 14:06, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

   That would just give admins more work. And some vandalism is quite subtle. Anons are filling the RuneScape article with misinformation and lies that admins would pass. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

2. Allow. It may seem easy to get an account, but it's still more effort for someone who's just an occasional viewer, rather than someone who intends to become an editor. We want people to be fix mistakes they see, even if it's the only Wikipedia page they ever see, rather than them being put off due to having to create an account. Plus, the argument works both ways - if it's easy to get an account, then it's easy for people to get an account for the purposes of vandalism (and this is something which happens now). It's not clear to me how an account name is easier to ban than an IP address. And I'd say it will make tracking vandalism harder - with an IP address, I can see all previous edits under that IP address, but this is not true with someone repeatedly signing up new accounts. Mdwh 17:15, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

   However, some users (for example anyone on the same university subnet) may have the same IP address, and you can't ban all of them for the misbehaviour of a few users.

   Yes we can, and we do - correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure that such IPs can be banned. And if anyone is unfairly affected by an IP ban, they can sign up for an account - just as they'd have to do anyway if anonymous editing was banned altogether! Mdwh 22:55, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

   Actually, we do in fact ban by IP. There are several university and school IP's that have been banned. The user pages for those IP addresses have a notice to non-vandal users of that subnet that they can escape the ban by getting an account. Therefore there's no need to do away with anonymous editing. -Kasreyn 04:37, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

   My IP is 202.156.6.54. It is shared by almost ALL USERS IN SINGAPORE (According to the Singapore article, our population is over 4 million.) There are a lot of anonymous vandals using that IP, and when they are blocked, they are locking out all legimate editors from Singapore. This has caused massive frustration not only for me, but for other Singapore users such as User:Stefan. I once almost left Wikipedia due to this. Complaining doesn't help. Let's stop this once and for all. No more anons on Wikipedia. They are putting a huge strain on legimate editors. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

3. Strongly in favor of Allowing. One hard-working wikipedian can revert hundreds of anon vandals a day. I think they would have to outnumber us by more than that amount in order to do serious harm. Wikipedia's design makes it easier and less time consuming to revert than it is to vandalize. Therefore the field is heavily tilted against vandals. Furthermore, I think it would really belie Wikipedia's motto and contention about being "the encyclopedia you can edit" (or whatever the phrase is). Eventually, Wikipedia is going to start receiving more than just passing glances from the mainstream media. I am convinced that wikipedia is eventually going to receive major notice. And when that day comes, we will get a swarm of new anonymous users, people who heard about us on the news or by word of mouth, and the first thought on their mind will be "do they really let you edit any page?" If the promise of Wikipedia turns out to be a lie, our credibility in factual matters will take an absolute nosedive. That's why I'm convinced anonymous editing is very important, and it'll do us more harm than good to ban it. -Kasreyn 22:52, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

   Wikipedia's design makes it easier and less time consuming to revert than it is to vandalize. Therefore the field is heavily tilted against vandals. - I would love to see the basis for this statement. It is much easier to paste in spam, change a number, or remove a sentence than it is to spot the change and revert it, on a user-for-user basis, IMO. Vandals don't generally care if their edit has collateral damage for the article; they can run scripts that randomly select articles, they can put in bad spelling or punctuation at their leisure because their whole goal is less refined than a legitimate user's. I would love to see the (current) data that supports your supposition (which in no way invalidates your other points, by the way). -- nae'blis _(talk) 17:49, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

   They can, but most of them don't. From what I've seen, the vast majority of vandals are not mass blankers or script kiddies with auto-vandalizing programs. Most of them, from what I've seen over some months of vandal hunting, are anon IP's who wander upon an article and either vandalize with some sophomoric ALLCAPS witticism, or they spot something that's "wrong" (read: does not fit with their political or religious bias) and must be "fixed" (ie POV vandals). The first time they're reverted, more than half of them seem to give up and go away. These edits do take more time to make than a revert, because the vandal first has to read a paragraph or two before they can get enraged by Wikipedia's "lies" and get the urge to "fix" them. By comparison, all I have to do is scan the compare; changes highlighted in red makes it very easy to spot vandalism. The only problem arises when multiple vandals strike in a row and another editor reverts only one of them, not realizing there were multiples. Then you have to go back a few revisions and do a broader compare, but this only takes a few more seconds with practise. There are also vandal-reverting bots like TawkerBot, which do a great deal of work very quickly. I don't know which side has more bots currently, positive editors or vandals, but I am confident that "speedy vandals" of the kind you describe are a distinct minority of vandals. That, in a nutshell, is why I think we don't need extra measures to hold them at bay. If we came under attack by a determined group of script kiddies with multiple vandalbots running on dynamic IP's, then we'd be in trouble and I'd agree with the necessity of a temporary block on anon editing. As for data, I offer none but the synthesis of my observations. I don't even know where I would go to begin to collate such information. I'm sure there's some page somewhere that tracks Wikipedia statistics. You'd be much better off consulting such a resource instead of asking me! All I know is what I've seen. Best wishes, Kasreyn 18:31, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

   Exactly. For every Willy on Wheels, there are thousands of stupid, immature, lame, casual anonymous vandals. They won't bother to create an account just to vandalize. Someone who really wants to contribute probably wouldn't mind. And if they do, what they want to contribute probably isn't worth much. Spelling errors, maybe. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

4. Allow

   Why? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

5. Allow. (1) Registered users are just as capable of vandalism and trolling as unregistered ones. (2) Vandalism is a temporary problem, a nuisance with no lasting consequences for any article. (3) Preventing beneficial edits to Wikipedia is a potentially permanent problem, thus the harm that would be caused by forbidding anonymous edits far outweighs the harm caused by anonymous vandals. Most Wikipedia editors made their first Wikipedia edits anonymously; that's how they figured things out and first got involved in the project. Considering that "all vandalism washes off" on Wikipedia, it would not even be worth it to ban a thousand vandals if it meant losing ten users who would have become valuable, productive editors. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, guys. It's faster, yes, but dirty bathwater is easier to deal with than dead babies. -Silence 18:01, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

   Hear hear. -Kasreyn 04:04, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

   Not all vandalism gets quickly spotted and reverted. I have seen anons adding spam to articles such as List of social networking websites, and such spam often goes unnoticed for many hours. The RuneScape article has been completely ruined by anon vandals who insert misinformation and lies which go unspotted for long periods of time. And the quality of the Neopets article has also degraded for similar reasons. So I disagree that all vandalism is a temporary problem, quickly spotted and reverted. And as for point 1, an overwhelming majority of vandals are just lame, stupid, immature, casual anon vandals who won't bother to create an account. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

6. Allow — I do a great deal of countervandal work and part of me, at times, wishes that users would have to register. I do feel that it would cut down on the vandalism. I think that most people are like me, they ease into editing when the happen upon WP and figure out they can correct an error or expand an article. It took me several months of doing this anonymously before creating an account. If an account was required I would probably not become an editor. --Geneb1955^Talk/_CVU 03:23, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

   I never edited as an anon before creating an account. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

7. Allow, pretty much agree with everything Silence said. Jdcooper 16:37, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
8. Allow --Mcmachete 00:16, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
9. Allow. I've worked on wikis that disallow anon editing and I can definitely say that forcing registration won't change anything, it only makes good users more irritated and bad ones easier to catch (if they're on AOL or similar). Garrett^Talk 05:56, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
10. Strong Allow. --Vandals will have no trouble getting acounts (and sock puppets). Letting unregistered users edit is a good way to draw them in, and some people will be frightened by being asked to register, especially if all they want to do is add a comma.Emmett5 00:00, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

    What percentage of vandals are so determined to actually create sock puppets? Most are just casual vandals. If good users won't bother to create an account, what they are contributing probably isn't worth it. They won't do much more than adding a comma. A registered user can make contributions ten times more significant than that, every day. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

11. Allow. -- Semiprotection is already causing a lot of vandals to create accounts just for vandalising; requiring accounts for all editors would just compound the problem. Think of all the blocking of school accounts that happens now-- imagine the vandalism from each school split up into dozens of accounts. Imagine how quickly they'd realise that, once blocked, a new account would allow them to go right back to vandalising 'til they'd accumulated three more warnings. Eeccchhh! -- Mwanner | Talk 00:02, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

    Many vandals are casual vandals who will be put off by having to create an account. Of course, determined vandals will still be deterred. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:29, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

12. Strong Allow I certainly wouldn't have participated in WP had i not been allowed to edit as an anon. Borisblue 00:05, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
13. Strong Allow for three reasons. Anonymous edits 1) aren't a big pain to revert when they're bad, 2) give us an easy way to tell track suspicious edits, and 3) are a vital path to hook good editors. Forcing people to register won't stop the vandals, but it will drive away people who would otherwise get a taste for editing. --William Pietri 06:40, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
14. Allow per William Pietri. HKT^Talk 21:01, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
15. Allow'If we force vandals to log in then it will be much harder to tell established user edits from noob user edits. If I see an ip address by an edit summary of an article I am watching, then I check to see what they did. I am less likely to check edits from established users.--God Ω War 04:15, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

    If I see the registered user's username is a red link, odds are, they're new. That's the way to scrutnitize them. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

16. Allow for gods sake wikipedia was started as the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit" well, anyone doesn't JUST mean registered users. Batman2005 13:50, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

    Wikipedia currently seems to be "the encyclopedia that anyone can vandalize". Prohibiting anon edits would make it more like "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit". After all, registration is open. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

17. Allow. It's been argued pretty well that the evolution of VandalProof and similar tools balance out the vandalism, and plenty of people are arguing in favor of freedom and dogma and such, but has anyone considered Daniel Brandt's Wikipedia Watch? One of his main arguments against Wikipedia is the anonymity afforded by the creation of user accounts, and to a large degree, he's right. Creation of a user account affords far more anonymity than editing "anonymously"; consider Wikipedia:Congressional Staffer Edits, Adam_Curry#Controversy, the identification of the culprit in the John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy, etc. vs the (understandably) small number of users with access to, and the circumstances required to use, the CheckUser command. It is true that most vandalism is by anonymous IP users, but most of the vandalism where action against the ISP would be appropriate - Willy on Wheels, anyone? - is not. Who's to say the more insidious vandals who add nonsense or disinformation won't simply create a new account/personality when they come close to being banned? Unless we allow all users' IPs to be visible to everyone - and don't get me wrong, I think that's a mistake too - this simply doesn't seem like a wise move. Moulder 22:07, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

    We are not trying to stop Willy on Wheels. We are trying to stop those stupid, lame, immature, casual anonymous vandals, which clearly outnumber legimate contributors. And some people do have CheckUser rights. I think you should extend those rights to all admins. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

18. Allow I would not have become the user I am today if I could not have started as an anon user. Being open to everyone is important. JohnM4402 22:51, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
19. Allow. There's no real reason to prohibit it—if you really think that all anons are vandals, then it helps you identify which edits should be brought up under more scrutiny. Also, I'm not convinced all anons do here is vandalism. Titoxd^{(?!? - help us)} 01:50, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

    The few contributions made by anons are hardly significant, and even if they are good faith, don't always improve the encyclopedia. Make them sign up, help them learn the ropes, and they'll becoem good contributors. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

20. Extremely Strong Allow Anonymous users contribute a tremendous ammount of positive material. Furthermore this would be an unprecedented departure from past Wikipedia attitudes. Wikipedia IS the encyclopedia that *anyone* can edit! CAPS LOCK 04:24, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

    The encyclopedia that anyone can vandalize, you mean, as long as anons are allowed to edit. I've hardly seen any significant contributions from anons. Spelling corrections, maybe. With an accout, they would contribute more. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

21. Allow. Err, no. Where do you guys think registered users come from? --maru (talk) contribs 04:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

    From Earth? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

22. Allow - Even though tons of vandalism comes from their edits, anonymous contribu-TORS are the definition of wikignomes, which are valuable to Wikipedia. Since there are many anonymous users, there are that many wikignomes, which is great. I honestly don't think Wikipedia would be where it is now without them. Or maybe they want to try out editing before they decide to register an account. I know I want to be able to have a taste of something before I commit myself to an account. All things said, focus on all the positive from these wikignomes. —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER (TALK) 04:26, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

    Wikipedia is now one of the top 30 sites according to Alexa. We have over 1 million excellent contributors, but also tons of anonymous vandals. And if we don't stop these anonymous vandals, I am pretty sure that within the next 2 years, Wikipedia will end up like MySpace, AOL and Neopets - totally overgrown and in a mess. If that happens, many will leave the project, and it will be too late. Wikipedia must think about quality, not just quantity. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

23. Strong allow, for a couple of reasons. First of all, and most importantly, there's a significant psychological barrier to registration; the vandalism that results from this barrier's absence is unimportant compared to the positive contributions we get because of it. (Look over a random sample of anonymous edits: most are completely legit, only a minority are vandalism.) Second, IPs are easier to deal with than usernames, since the latter could be anyone, while many IPs are static and those that aren't can potentially be briefly rangeblocked if necessary, which is completely impossible with usernames (you'd have to run a checkuser to get their ISP to stop them from just using tons of dummy sleeper accounts).

    Being that Jimbo refers to "you can edit this page right now" as sacred, I don't think this poll is going to make the slightest bit of difference anyway. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:30, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

    Some anons do make useful contributions, but they are hardly significant. Mostly spelling corrections and stuff. Only registered users would make the kind of bold contributions I do: creating the Google Groups and Homerun articles, re-organizing information into the new History of Yahoo! article, etc. It's been a few months since anons were prohibited from creating new pages. Did that reduce the amount of vandalism? In contrast, vandalism is a huge problem. Even obvious vandalism which is easy to revert - it wastes time which admins could spend improving articles. Some articles, however, are the victims of subtle vandalism, such as spamming and the inserting of deliberate misinformation and lies. List of social networking websites and RuneScape are examples. My IP, 202.156.6.54, is shared by almost all Singapore users (our population is 4 million) and there is tons of vandalism from anons using that address (so it could be anyone). Furthermore, they are causing massive frustration for the hundreds of legimate Singapore contributors who are locked out during blocks. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

24. Strongest Possible Allow per all the reasoning above, especially Moulder and Simetrical. ^demon^{[yell at me]}_{[ubx_war_sux]} /04:45, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
25. Allow. I've seen anonymous users make quite good edits, and many are very prolific contributors. Also, I'll admit that there's probably more vandalism from IP addresses than there are from usernames; however, I feel this is to our advantage, not disadvantage. It makes it easier to decide which edits to check first; if everyone were forced to log in, it would be much harder to find vandalism, and I really don't think it would decrease that much (if at all). EWS23 (Leave me a message!) 05:20, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
26. Depends I've started to use Vandalproof and I can tell you that most of IP edits are good but, thanks to VP's ability to determinate if the editor has vandalism warnings and the times s/he's been blocked I've discovered that there are 2 types of IP contributors: good contributors and peolple who vandalize for fun and almost never contribute to the project. So, if we have to prevent IPs from editing we should prevent only those that have already been blocked once and aren't showing any interest on contributing. (If I can't say "depends" I say allow.) —Argentino (talk/cont.) 19:16, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

    If you're voting "depends", you're essentially voting "allow" because you're voting against the proposition to "prohibit all anonymous edits". Everyone agrees that some anons should be blocked, it's just that those voting "allow" don't think that all anons should be blocked, as those voting "prohibit" are arguing. There seems to be no meaningful distinction between your vote and any of the other "depends/allow" votes; you're just discussing a different issue from the one this page is directly about (though I agree with the points you make). -Silence 19:22, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

    No comment. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

27. Allow Per all above.--Anchoress 03:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
28. Strong allow per above. Anon edits should be allowed as (the way I see it) Wikipedia can be edited by anyone unless they have broken a policy/guideline consistently and allowing them to edit further would cause further problems. When bug 550 finally gets fixed (hopefully soon) - maybe, or maybe not, by Wikipedia:Blocking policy proposal - this may no longer be a problem. I'm not sure if anyone else has mentioned these, but I'm going to list the ones of importance that are related: meta:Privacy policy, WP:RULES, Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy, Wikipedia:Disabling edits by unregistered users and stricter registration requirement and the archieved poll results, and some other things that might be effected such as Wikipedia:How to edit a page, Wikipedia:Introduction, Wikipedia:Tutorial (Registration), Help:Logging in, Wikipedia:Why create an account?, Wikipedia:Anonymity#Rejected_guidelines, Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia is so great, Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers, Wikipedia:Overview FAQ, etc. IP address/anon readers/contributors are important to further wikipedia as I'm sure is the view of the Welcoming Committee. One thing that isn't addressed (or maybe was oversighted) is that many anonymouse editors regularly contribute to the Reference desk, and the Help desk - not just asking questions, but answering and helping understand a specific topic too. TheJC ^Talk_{Contributions} 08:51, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
29. strong allow as per many comments above, all said better than i could hope to. frymaster 22:08, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
30. Strong Allow I've been patrolling the Recent Changes and reverting vandalism and tests for a few weeks now. Frankly, most of the anon edits I've seen have been helpful and constructive. Most of the rest have been good-faith efforts, even if they wern't necessarily helpful. Only a few have been destructive, and most of those have been like one a couple days ago, that just put, "Hi!!!" at the top of an article... it was the first and only edit from that IP address, and it was obviously a case of, "hey, what's this? I can change the page? Cool! Is this sort of a discussion thingy or what?" When someone first discovers Wikipedia, either by a link, or by accident, they generally have no clue what it is or what it is about. It took me a long time to realize what Wikipedia was all about, then longer to work up the courage to make my first anon edits, then I saw no reason to register for an account until I saw a page that clearly needed to be deleted, and I knew a registered user would have some additional credibility in bringing it to someone's attention. If I hadn't been able to edit without an account, I doubt I would have even tried to make those first initial edits, let alone ever registering for an account at all. Some articles are written almost entierly by anons, and why should we discount their hard work? ONUnicorn

    Make them register. Then they'll read the rules and their good faith edits will be more beneficial to the encyclopedia. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

31. Allow --CygnusPius 02:20, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
32. Allow Silly concept. The anon's don't take the time to register, so they can become easier to track. It takes time for a vandal to register, and encouraging them to find ways to create accounts more quickly is not a good idea. We just need to clamp the AOL vandalism down a little, possibly with forced HTTPS. Kevin_b_er 07:39, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

    Not just AOL. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

33. Allow Riadlem 08:42, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
34. Allow. As a person who monitors only anonymous edits using VandalProof, I was surprised to find that the majority of edits are in fact in good faith and often times the edits are to fix a typo or something of that nature. Using this knowledge, I can assume that the majority of typo and grammatical fixes are actually completed by the anonymous users, the people that are casually reading an article and happen to spot the typo. Those same people would probably not take the time to register if they were forced to, instead choosing to just leave the typo for someone else to fix. Since wikipedia has over 1.2 million articles, this could take awhile.--SomeStranger^(t) 23:45, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

    Registered users would probably make 10 typo fixes a day, if their primary business on Wikipedia is fixing typos. I do fix typos and revert vandalism occasionally, but my primary purpose is still contributing information to articles on websites and Singapore TV shows/movies, and participating in discussions to improve the project. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

35. Strong Allow per Simetrical and statistics below. --Zoz (t) 11:50, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
36. Allow, because this is Wikipedia! bd2412 T 14:57, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
37. Allow per all above. I use VandalProof a lot. Anonymous users fixes typos (I noticed this). Wikipedia may suffer without these Anonymous users even if some of them vandalize. Anonymous__Anonymous 15:43, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
38. Allow. I don't think trivial vandalism is much of a problem, since that usually gets swiftly fixed by the RC patrollers, CVU, and countervandalism BOTs. The vandalism that matters is the 1% that is rather more cleverly crafted and looks right so doesn't get spotted for six months, and I don't think banning anon editors would help there. My own impression is that most anon edits are constructive and Wikipedia would presumably lose many of those. Jll 15:00, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
39. Allow, this is a Wiki. Anons are needed in many ways, to fix errors, or even add content! A miniority of them even revert vandalism. IPs should be allowed to edit, vandalism is not a big problem. I must agree with Anonymous Anonymous that the website may suffer without anons. --Terence Ong _{(Chat | Contribs)} 10:53, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
40. Allow, Oftentimes I acess Wikipedia from a computer that is not my own. In these cases where I am not logged in and I spot a typo, it is simply glorious to be able to do somthing for the good of the wiki instantly. In any case where we begin to build a wall around contribution, the Wiki is perhaps protected, but it is also cut off. Mr. Pants 01:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
41. Allow, Wikipedia has reached over 1,000,000 articles because anyone can edit. That button lead to me and many others staying here. Vandalism is a problem with I agree with Simmetrical - reviewing anon edits in VP shows that vandalism is a small part of anon editing which only gets so much visability as there is just such a large number of edits per day. Anon editing is the headline on the front page and the first section of the introduction for a good reason --Peripitus (Talk) 12:28, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
42. Allow How many of us would edit today if we weren't allowed to while we were anons? It's Wikipedia's gift, and Wikipedia's curse. You get vandalism, but it's the only way to attract new users. Seriously, how many people would join a website just to edit it? The anons realize that they can change the pages and fix typos and such, and it hooks them. There's that little 'log in' button deal at the top, but I didn't even know you could register until after somebody welcomed me! 69.145.123.171 ^Hello! Saturday, July 1, 2006, 18:31 (UTC)

Quick statistics

I just reviewed the last 50 anonymous edits. I've grouped them by whether they're vandalism or not. You can try it yourself if you don't believe my numbers, but please stop saying 99% of anon edits are vandalism. The figures I have here are 2% clear vandalism, 16% probably damaging but intentionally-ambiguous edits, 30% where I'm not sure their facts are correct, and a full 52% that are clearly harmless at worst, generally typo fixes and stuff. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:10, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Clear vandalism

(These are edits that are clearly bad for the article and could not possibly have resulted from an attempt to make the encyclopedia better, although they may still have only been intended as tests rather than damage.)

1. [1]

Intentionally ambiguous

(This includes stuff that is possibly destructive, but may quite possibly be in good faith.)

1. [2]
2. [3]
3. [4]
4. [5]
5. [6]
6. [7]
7. [8]
8. [9]

Factually ambiguous

(These are all the ones where I'm not sure if the action was based on valid info.)

1. [10]
2. [11]
3. [12]
4. [13]
5. [14]
6. [15]
7. [16]
8. [17]
9. [18]
10. [19]
11. [20]
12. [21]
13. [22]
14. [23]
15. [24]

Clear non-vandalism

(This includes everything that clearly doesn't diminish the value of the article somehow. They may not increase it, however.)

1. [25]
2. [26]
3. [27]
4. [28]
5. [29]
6. [30]
7. [31]
8. [32]
9. [33]
10. [34]
11. [35]
12. [36]
13. [37]
14. [38]
15. [39]
16. [40]
17. [41]
18. [42]
19. [43]
20. [44]
21. [45]
22. [46]
23. [47]
24. [48]
25. [49]
26. [50]

This does not appear to be the case with the articles on my watchlist. One notable example is the RuneScape article. Anonymous vandals are completely ruining the article. There is lots of childish vandalism that we can revert, but there are also anons deliberately adding lots of nonsene, misinformation, and lies to the article, and trying to degrade its quality in every way possible. The article is semi-protected about half the time, and when it is not semi-protected, it receives about 10 times as much vandalism compared to when it is semi-protected. This proves that prohibiting anonymous edits will stop the vandalism. I wish to point out that the anonymous vandalism caused RuneScape to fail both Featured Article and Good Article, partially on the grounds of stability and other problems caused by allowing anonymous editors. If we had semi-protected the article forever, I'm pretty sure it would already be a Good Article, and may already be making its way to becoming a Featured Article candidate. Many other articles, such as Neopets and Microsoft, also receive tons of vandalism from anonymous editors. The article List of social networking sites also receives a myraid of spam almost every day, mostly from - you guessed it - anonymous editors. Anonymous editors are filling articles with vandalism, spam and just outright misinformation and nonsense.

If we don't stop this, I predict that Wikipedia will implode within the next two or three years. We really need to stop anonymous vandals from completely destroying the articles. I admit that I have seen some reasonably helpful edits from anonymous editors, but never anything more than a spelling correction, or inserting a sentence of information. I don't think any anonymous editor will make any significant contribution to Wikipedia, such as the Google Groups and Homerun articles I wrote. I have already written above on why I think anonymous editors are unlikely to make any significant contribution to the encyclopedia.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:08, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

So why not simply protect the problem pages? Your experiences back this point of view - it's not that anonymous edits in general are full of vandalism, but that there are a few particular pages which attract vandals from casual users.

There's no need to force it upon every page - including the many pages which receive useful edits from anonymous editors. As for List of social networking websites, I see there are also logged in users who are putting spam links. All that will happen by prohibiting anonymous edits is that they'll get accounts and vandalise, and it will make watching vandalism far harder (at the moment you can at least pay closer attention to the anonymous edits). Mdwh 03:31, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

The articles are semi-protected on a regular basis. Then after a few days, some admin will decide to unprotect it "because Wikipedia is open to anons". Then one hundred vandal edits before it's protected again. As far as I can tell, the problem is not limited to RuneScape and a few "problem" articles. Practically every high-profile article: Microsoft, AOL, Neopets, Google, Myspace, Singapore, etc. always gets hit by tons of anon vandals. The reason why RuneScape suffers the most damage is because much of the vandalism is subtle, adding deliberate misinformation and lies (this is difficult to do unnoticed for Microsoft, for example). Another problem is anons filling articles with spam. I have personally witnessed this plenty of times. And, as I said, List of social networking websites is not neccesarily a "problem page". I just mentioned it as an example. Let's stop wasting admins' time. Get rid of anon vandals once and for all so they can spend their time on Wikipedia more constructively. And good-faith anons who register can become better contributors. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 05:15, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Comments

The fact that RC patrollers and CVU members are more likely to be in favor of allowing IPs to edit than the rest of us says something about this (rehash, IIRC) proposal, since they're the ones who actually deal with most of the vandalism in question. IMO, there is not such an out-of-control situation that we need to "seal our borders" so to speak; several legitimate concerns were related to issues that can be solved without disallowing all IP editing. Moulder 21:28, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. There are those of us (myself included) who don't write much for the encyclopedia itself, for one reason or another (mine being that I hate my writing). It's that group of people who are your dedicated vandal fighters, as well as the people who pay so close attention to policy debates, *fD, and such. We each have our strengths and weaknesses, and I think, let the vandal fighters keep fighting vandalism, because in my opinion, they do a damn good job. -^demon^{[yell at me]}_{[ubx_war_sux]} /14:48, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

i joined cvu for exactly the reason that i support anonymous edits! i think within rcp and cvu you will find a fair number of people who feel that vandalism cleanup is the price they pay willingly to keep wikipedia open for all. frymaster 22:11, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

applause! Kasreyn 02:24, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Another issue that needs to be resolved, since getting an account is no great hardship, disallowing anon edits may make it harder to spot vandalism - I guess we all inherently mistrust anon edits. A compromise may be to force all anon editors to endure a Captcha for every submission, to weed out vandalbots. Ace of Risk 16:49, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

But then that would be an accessibility issue. Some people use screen-readers and can't view a captcha, or what about other people using Lynx or somesuch? -^demon^{[yell at me]}_{[ubx_war_sux]} /16:52, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm not involved with Wiktionary nor have I ever been, so I don't know if they have more severe vandalism issues, but their registration process does use something like that. As for text-only browsers, though... I personally don't mind leaving them with the 20th century. Does anyone know when (if at all?) this thing will close? Moulder 19:22, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Problems caused by allowing anonymous users to edit

Wikipedia is now a top-20 website according to Alexa, with over 1 million articles. However, I predict that in a few years, Wikipedia is going to end up like MySpace, AOL and Neopets: overbloated and messy. The main reason is because we allow anonymous edits.

Because of Wikipedia's popularity, and how easy it is to vandalize, the amount of vandalism can only grow. Although we may be able to handle the current level of vandalism, we may not be able to handle future levels of vandalism. There may be determined vandals like Wikipedia is Communism and Willy on Wheels, but the majority of vandals are casual vandals, and they vandalize Wikipedia because it is so easy to vandalize. Just click "edit this page", add some nonsense, and click "Save". Forcing them to register will discourage them, even if it may not discourage determined vandals.

The most common rebuttal is that doing so will not only discourage casual vandals, but also many good-faith editors contributing without an account. Although I acknowledge that there are anonymous contributors who edit in good faith, I have found most of their edits to be relatively insignificant. Adding a "HI!" test does not improve an article in any way. Such tests belong in the sandbox, but few anonymous editors actually know or use it, because they don't bother to read. Sometimes an anonymous editor adds a badly-written sentence to the article, which reminds me of AOL n00bs. There is the occasional spelling correction, but a registered user can easily do 10 daily.

By making these good-faith editors register, we can groom them into better contributors. A registered user is more likely to familiarize himself with Wikipedia markup and policy. This will lead to more significant and higher-quality contributions from him. They will also be more bold in making more significant contributions to articles. I propose that if an anonymous clicks on "edit this page", he would see a message that says something like "Welcome to Wikipedia! Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It's easy to create an account and start editing. If you would like to experiment with editing a page, please use the Sandbox. If you would like to contribute, please familiarize yourself with Wikipedia policy." This will encourage good-faith otherwise-anonymous editors to sign up, test at the sandbox, and familiarize themselves with Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia currently has a great article development process, but it fails as far as editor development is concerned. Think of contributors as investments and article quality as money.

Shared IPs are also causing a huge problem. My IP is 202.156.6.54 and is shared by the majority of Internet users in Singapore. Naturally, there are lots of vandals using this IP, and when they are blocked, hundreds of logged-in Singaporean contributors are locked out from editing as well. This is very frustrating and almost made me leave Wikipedia once. In addition, leaving warnings on the talk page of a shared IP will often result in the vandal never getting the warning, but other anonymous users sharing the IP will be scared off by the warnings. This is why I think we should prohibit anonymous edits, for the sake of our logged-in users who are punished for something they did not do.

I am a regular user of Google Groups. I own a teen chat group, Minors Major, which has 481 members. Currently, only group members can post. My friend owns a group with 59 members. Anyone can post to his group, member or not. Although I warned him, he did not change the group settings. Although his group is less than 15% the size of mine, his group gets thrice as much spam as mine. He has since abandoned the group. This case study shows that prohibiting anonymous edits on Wikipedia will decrease the amount of vandalism.

Some argue that vandalism is quickly spotted and reverted. This is not always the case. Just today, an IP vandal added nonsense to the Henna article. The vandal edit remained unnoticed for 2 hours, until I reverted it. Again, just today, several IP vandals ganged up to vandalize the Neopets article. Some of the vandal edits were reverted, but two pieces of vandalism remained in the article for 8 hours, until I reverted it. A couple of days ago, an IP vandal edited the Microsoft article, adding that Microsoft's products were "inferior". 3 hours later, another IP vandal replaced the entire page with "Microsoft are a completely useless software writing company". Only then was the vandalism from the first IP vandal spotted and both edits reverted. IP vandals have been regularly attacking the RuneScape article. Besides "RuneScape is gay" vandalism, there are also cases of IP vandals deliberately inserting misinformation and outright lies into the article, or changing facts and statistics to make them incorrect. Such vandalism often goes unspotted for a very long time.

In addition, reverting vandalism wastes admins' time - time which they could have spent contributing to the encyclopedia. My main purpose on Wikipedia is contributing information to articles on websites and Singapore TV shows. Instead, I am wasting time reverting vandalism from anonymous users, which drains my energy and results in me contributing less information to the encyclopedia.

The vandalism is degrading the quality of articles. For example, RuneScape is vandalized over 20 times a day by anonymous editors. Besides "RuneScape is gay" vandalism, there are also cases of IP vandals deliberately inserting misinformation and outright lies into the article, or changing facts and statistics to make them incorrect. Semi-protection prevents the vandalism, but an admin will usually unprotect the article and leave it open to vandalism after a few days. These IP vandals have caused RuneScape to fail Featured Article and Good Article nominations. If we had permenantly prohibited anonymous edits, by now RuneScape would possibly be making its way to Featured Article Candidates.

The overwhelming amount of vandalism will eventually cause established contributors to become frustrated and leave, just like Usenet and Yahoo!'s message boards. Eventually, Wikipedia will be overrun by vandals, trolls and n00bs. History has repeated itself because no one wants to listen to it. Sooner or later, it will be neccesary to prohibit anonymous edits, and we'd better do it before it's too late. Wikipedia recently prohibited anonymous users from creating new articles, suggesting that it is about to admit defeat. Even Yahoo! and eBay have been hacked, but Neopets refused to listen to warnings from computer-literate users, and thus paid the price. Wikipedia's turn will come. So, to prevent Wikipedia from ending up like MySpace, Neopets or AOL, please prohibit anonymous editing. Not only will doing so reduce a considerable percentage of vandalism, it will also help in editor development.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:53, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

• You need accounts on MySpace and AOL, so I'm sure such people are capable of getting accounts in Wikipedia if they had to.

I posted my case study from Google Groups. I had a group where only members could post, and my friend had a group where anyone - members or not - could post. His group receives thrice as much spam as mine, although the number of members in his group is only 15% the number of members in my group. I would think that a similar principle would apply to Wikipedia. Similar results have been proven on Wikipedia. The RuneScape article receives tons of vandalism from IP vandals. Semi-protect it, and no more vandalism. When we unprotect it, the IP vandals will flock back. Wikipedia already admitted that the end is near when they blocked anonymous users from creating new pages. Do you notice vandals creating accounts just to make a new vandal page? I have never noticed such cases before. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:03, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

• "By making these good-faith editors register" - again, the flaw is made that good-faith editors will be persuaded to register, whilst vandals won't.

See paragraph 4. When an anon clicks "edit this page", he should get a page which directs him to the sandbox (which should remain open to anons). I think a good-faith anonymous editor would do testing in the sandbox if told to, because they don't really want to damage articles - they just need a place to test. After they are directed to the sandbox and done with their testing, direct them to sign up. This is a much more newcomer-friendly approach and is more likely to garner registered users who will stay and become regular contributors. On the other hand, it will drive away vandals. And remember that having 10 registered users who make 100 significant contributions daily is better than having 1000 anonymous users which make only 1 edit daily, because the good edits are likely to be minor, and because a higher percentage of the anon edits will be vandalism. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:03, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

• I'm sure I can dig out plenty of examples of vandalism by registered users (of course there's not as much, but only because they don't need to register).

I never said that registered users don't vandalize. I have seen registered users vandalize. But a considerably smaller percentage of registered users vandalize. Some of these are hardcore vandals, not the casual vandals who would not vandalize if doing so required signing up. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:03, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

• A comparison to spam is irrelevant - spam is automated, and can therefore be blocked by requiring signup, unlike a vandal/troll.

You do admit that requiring signup (possibly with a captcha) would prevent automated spam? And I don't think anyone would edit Wikipedia using Lynx. They're not worth it. Drop 'em. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:03, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

• As for IP banning, that could be fixed by only banning the unregistered users on that IP, not logged in users (indeed, I thought that was how things worked, but I guess not).

That would be a viable solution. But when will it be implemented? And it would not resolve the problem of warnings reaching the wrong anonymous editor. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:03, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Mdwh 21:58, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

It's a Wiki for a reason!

Okay, so the anons vandalise. Big deal! Can we not fix it? Can we not keep up at the same pace? How many of you here today would have registered and became full time editors if you weren't allowed to edit as an anon?

I know that I myself wasn't even aware you could edit until I clicked the 'edit this page' tab on the top. Yes, the main page mentions it, and yes, it's everywhere, but this is the internet-who actually reads things they aren't interested in? It just goes right over your head like another set of advertisments. And if you were to click 'edit this page' and got one of those 'register now' messages, what's the first thing you'd do? Skip it. Because to you, it's just another site asking you to register so they can get better Alexa results and make more money.

The fact that Wiki allows anyone-yes, that means anyone at all-to edit it shows that Wiki is unique. It shows that this is not another money making scheme, and that something new is actually going on in this crap heap we call the internet. Where else can a ten year old argue rocket science with a professor? Where else can I spell every other word wrong in this paragraph and have someone passing by fix it?

That wouldn't happen if anons lost editing privledges. The people who want to vandalise are going to vandalise, regardless of whether or not the anons can edit. If you tell them they have to make accounts to do it, they will.

It's the other half of the people you want-those who want to help out. Some of them will pass up such the change if the word 'registering' comes up.

I remember the first time I wrote something on Wikipedia. As strange as it sounds, I was nervous! I didn't know if I was going to do it wrong, or if I would get blasted for making something I should have, or if everyone here was a professional and I was just a kid...

So I moved along slowly. A little spelling, here and there, maybe fix a broken link, take off some vandalism... And I started to get the hang of it. I began getting messages and interacting with other people in the community. It took months before I was comfortable with doing much of anything here.

Nowadays, roughly 2,000 edits later, I think I know what I'm doing. I'm still inexperianced (and I still can't spell), but I like Wikipedia and I'm not going anywhere. Had it not been for the 'edit this page' tab that tempted me so, I would have never even thought of this place the way I do now. I might've seen that wonderful little box, but as soon as I clicked it and saw the 'you must be logged in to edit this page', I would have never thought of it again.

The reason you don't see that many good anons anymore is because they all register and become a part of the community-after they've already seen what they can do with nothing but their IP adress.

69.145.123.171 ^Hello! Saturday, July 1, 2006, 18:54 (UTC)