[WikiEN-l] Anonymous proxies (was Re: Desysop Morwen)

Mon Feb 16 21:53:37 UTC 2004

zero 0000 wrote:
> I would object to it being done without a study to determine how many
> genuine editors use anonymizers.  There are quite legitimate possible
> reasons.  One is an editor who writes in Wikipedia from work but 
> doesn't want his/her employer's IP to be associated with it.  Another
> is someone who wants to be anonymous on Wikipedia but has a fixed IP
> address that uniquely identifies him/her.  We should not ban this
> practice unless we have a global policy that anonymity is forbidden.
> 
> That's not to say that I don't sympathize with the problem you
> describe.  On the other hand, how much of this problem would
> exist if it wasn't for the practice of allowing people to edit
> articles without logging in?  Every time this matter is raised there
> are screams about the sky falling in, but I have yet to see a single
> convincing reason why we can't restrict editing to logged-in users.

In this particular case, the case of "anti-capitalist", the user in
question did log in.

The most convincing reason why we ought not to restrict editing to
logged-in users is that it doesn't appear to solve any problems that
we actually have.

--Jimbo