One more question in regards to this. How can you enforce people to fill in their email address? I haven't been able to find anything on that yet. Mischa

At 3:36 PM +0000 12/5/05, Rob wrote: Rob, I don't think that restricting editing is the reason why so many users are looking for email verification. Its more to reduce fraud and slander and increase the ability to trace who is saying what. You may have seen the following horror story: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x… Personally, I like the collaborative nature of mediawiki, and I have argued elsewhere that Wikipedia is so large now that it simply can't be ignored by those online (I argued this to an academic community -- many ended up accepting the fact). But the fact that an anonymous person can post a lie or misrepresentation or rumor to Wikipedia or any wiki without disclosing their identity makes it a tough sell to anyone worried about liability, let alone the quality of the information they provide. FWIW, the biggest problem that academics have with the Internet in general, and Wikipedia in particular is that it can't be verified and authenticated. Since it is already possible to restrict editing mediawiki to regisistered users, seems like a simple, useful thing to add authentication of the email address. I apologize if this is really off topic for this list -- but you kind of brought up the subject by assuming that Mischa was against 'open' editing. I don't know what his wiki is about or what his policies are, but I don't think enforcing a valid email address conflicts with 'open editing.' Kent

On 05/12/05, Mischa Peters <mischa2023(a)gmail.com> wrote: How on earth does "not having an e-mail address" equate to "bogus account" - or rather, how does "having an e-mail address" equate to "completely trusted account"? This is exactly the kind of flawed reasoning that gets trotted out time and time again on this subject, and why I think there is a serious message behind the very funny parody on meta [1]. By all means argue that the additional speed-bump provided by forcing e-mail verification, and the resulting overall decline in edits and editors - both good and bad - will be on average beneficial for your particular use of MediaWiki. But do not be so foolish as to claim that the ability and willingness to go through that process will in any way guarantee the character and intention of a particular user. Look at mailinator.com, look at bugmenot.com, and you'll realise that people who *want* to by-pass the "verification" will be able to do so perfectly easily thank you very much. -=Refs=- [1]: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_gays_should_not_be_allowed_to_edi… -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

Anthony DiPierro wrote: If e-mail confirmation is on, yes: e-mail functions will be disabled until you go through the confirmation step (it emails you a code, you visit the magic link). (It's not on on Wikipedia at the moment; we should take care of that sometime.) -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

How about valuing email verification before editing: * To assure that person x on wiki a is the same as person y on wiki/forum/mailing list/toaster b. (I mean wiki, not necessarily mediawiki) * As a necessary step towards integrating logins between all those various services. * To make it possible to warn/ban an /email address/ from using the wiki (vs graffiti, spam, etc)

On 12/6/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins(a)gmail.com> wrote: It doesn't stop the persistant nor the automated. I wouldn't restrict email addresses so much as banning *(a)aol.com or the like, or even whitelisting them. However, email authentication before allowing editing does add a level of annoyance and slows down automation. --- A bit more context on my opinions: This annoyance can and will turn away legit users. However, in my experience. And this is my experience here. Very very very very very few people contribute. Ever. I mean I could take my socks off and count them on my hands and toes. My first wiki was very highly ranked in search engines, and I had visitors dropping by all the time. Nobody would edit. When google changed their technology and also I switched to mediawiki, my rank dropped like a stone. I still had uniques dropping by. My mediawiki installation was even more open than the first one. Nobody edited. I mean.. once in a month perhaps. So for me, closing up my wiki doesn't mean anything. I still get people who are willing to sign up just to write a "hey, nice site" note. It's not that annoying to be forced to sign up to edit. However, it's also not annoying enough to prevent spam, one of the highest ranking annoyances I have with mediawiki in particular -- there is no spam prevention. It assumes that a thousand volunteers are there to thward spam with the minimal prevention tools provided. After having been hit by automated spamming, and noting that mediawiki doesn't have a mechanism to stop automated account creation, aggressive editing, link dumping etc.. I had to lock it down once again until I reconfigured and set up a *third-party* extension to help me out. Now I'm back to requiring account creation. However spamming is still very easy through automated account creation (no captcha), automated editing (again, no captcha - although I wouldn't want it) and finding the right links to dump which avoids the filters. Nothing is in place to help out.. for example, nothing automatically bans people who persistantly try to save pages with banned links. So for all of that.. email verification is just a touch more annoying for users, gives me reasonable peace of mind (e.g. that I can email a user if I need to), slows down bots etc.. I'd love to have it. I myself wouldn't mind if it was in other wikis out there, including wikimedia projects, but if it were off by default elsewhere it'd be fine as long as I could use it.

Mischa Peters wrote: Why thanx? We already told you it doesn't do what *you* asked about, which is to disable editing until they confirm the address. That's why we told you that the feature you asked for is not present at this time. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

I've been following this thread with a mixture of amusement and sadness. The Seigenthaler brohaha has been getting alot of attention, not just on the internet, but on cable tv as well. MSNBC has run a story on it several time today, and Siegenthaler himself was interviewed last night. Then I switched from reading e-mail to checking blogs only to run across this: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/05/2010247&tid=95&tid=99 If this is true, then it looks like even wikipedia is trodding the slippery slope down from true wikiness (whatever that really means). -- Rick DeNatale (Who used to sometimes hang out in bars with Ward Cunningham) Visit the Project Mercury Wiki Site http://www.mercuryspacecraft.com/

On 06/12/05, Mischa Peters <mischa2023(a)gmail.com> wrote: Requiring an e-mail address would certainly change the threshold for *edits* - it would put people off. The question is, whether it would discourage significantly more "bad" editors than it would discourage "good" ones, so that the site would improve as a result; many people are not convinced that that is what would happen. Well, what you said was "As long as their email address exist I don't mind what they type." I realise you were probably exaggerating somewhat, and would actually take what they type with a pinch of salt long after registration, but your actual words did imply a very high level of trust as soon as they've registered. Yes, I have stated before that I am not, on principle, against having this option in the software (if not in this thread, then certainly on the bugzilla entry I linked to earlier). However, in discussing implementing the option, we inevitably come to discussing whether and when it should be turned on, and I have yet to be convinced that there is a situation where it would be the best move. And, to be honest, I'm unconvinced even about "you must log in to edit" wikis - they take away the very dynamism and effortlessness that I find attractive about wikis in the first place - but at least with no verification the process is quick and painless. If I was told to wait for a "confirmation" e-mail before my account was valid, I'd probably have moved onto another website before it arrived. This is all very subjective, and a lot of it comes down to opinion and guesswork, but I don't think that makes the discussion worthless. Well, making sure an e-mail address is valid for an e-mail mailing list is kind of a different issue than demanding a validated e-mail address for a system where most users will never use any e-mail features. Validation code exists in MediaWiki already because if users *do* want to use e-mail related features (e.g. Special:Emailuser, mail a new password, watchlist notification on sites with it enabled) they can be forced to have a valid address; that is pretty much common sense, and much more similar to the mailman example. -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]