[Wikipedia-l] Require confirmed email address to upload images?

Wed Jun 28 20:00:56 UTC 2006

On 6/28/06, Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sf.net> wrote:
[snip]
> On English Wikipedia one cannot even create an article without a registration
> (as if registration meant anything),
> what in my opinion is a huge blow to our former openness.

In one breath you claim that registration is insignificant and in the
next you claim that it destroys our openness. Can both claims actually
be true?

In any case, the registration for creation has been an experiment,
when the change was made no one was confident at how effective it
would be... since then we've gained some experience. I can say from my
measurements is that it appears that while inhibiting non-registered
user article creation has somewhat decreased the instantaneous rate of
inappropriate article creation, but it has simultaneously made our
review process less effective (new users look a lot like established
users on recent changes, especially after someone has moved their
vanity article to user namspace).  I am unable to say with certainty
without further analysis if this change has been a net detriment, but
I would be surprised if it was a net gain.

But this is what experiments are for... we are in uncharted waters for
some of our activities.

In contrast, inhibiting uploads from non-confirmed email users would
be far less of an experiment. We have a clear and articulatable need
for the email contact for uploaders today, and we already use it in
the rare cases where they have a confirmed email address.

I suppose that if you'd rather that we continue to simply delete the
uploads of folks whom don't understand that they need to tell us that
they own the picture... Then I can see why you would oppose this.  But
that doesn't seem like a very open system to me.

To me an open system is one where people can actually make a real
contribution, not just a pointless upload which will be deleted in a
week.

> But a confirmed email addresses for uploading photos ?
> This is really way too sick. We would be annoying every single
> contributor while gaining absolutely nothing.

We would gain some hope of contacting the thousands of uploaders who
right now leave us with no other choice but to delete their
submissions.  I see this as a gain.

> We should rather get back to the situation where unregistered users
> have all the options available - editing pages, creating new articles,
> uploading pictures, moving articles, everything.
> Having to register doesn't stop a single vandal.

This isn't suggested as a method for stopping vandals...  It is
suggested as a method for helping people who simply don't know better
and need our help to contribute.

I'm curious, do you know how many image are deleted on enwiki per month?