[WikiEN-l] anons editing

Mon Aug 9 19:55:10 UTC 2004

Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com> wrote:

> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 11:30:19 -0400
> From: Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] anons editing
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID: <3406cd4e040809083024802bdf at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
> On Sun, 8 Aug 2004 21:40:38 -0700 (PDT), zero 0000
> <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> In my almost-a-year editing Wikipedia, I am yet to hear a convincing
>> reason for allowing anons to edit at all, but saw plenty of cases when
>> I wished they couldn't.  Zero.
>
> Anonymous editors may become interested in Wikipedia and become
> non-anonymous. This occurs with greater frequency it would if the
> anonymous user was not able to experiment prior to registration.

That's /precisely/ how things went in my case: I went from anon to 
account holder. I simply wouldn't /be/ a Wikipedian today had it not 
been for anon editing starting me out on this path.

Also, in this SPAM day and SPAM age, people SPAM are SPAM weary of SPAM 
giving SPAM their email address to SPAM any website they SPAM haven't 
grown to trust.
And people will not get to that stage of trust as easily if they don't 
get "hooked" on editing.
(Yes, I know, you don't even /have/ to give an email address to create 
an account w/ the WP, but people will just not even proceed to signup, 
because they /expect/ they have to give their email address there -- 
after all, their experience is that most other websites require it.)

Plus, let's face it: Anons are like any other group: Sometimes we like 
their edits, sometimes we don't. Sometimes they cause us mischief (and 
[[Hanlon's razor]] applies). But how would that be different from /any 
other/ arbitrarily selected group of contributors (like 
male/female/Caucasian/African/Asian/gay/straight, etc. etc.)?
I even think we should be _more_ lenient with anons than with any other 
group, because again, people progress from anon to account holder, so 
maybe there's a higher percentage of anons who are just new and thus 
make more newbie mistakes.

Thanks and regards,
Jens Ropers

There are two types of IT techs: The ones who watch soap operas and the 
ones who watch progress bars.
http://www.ropersonline.com/elmo/#108681741955837683

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