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

Wed Jun 28 20:11:09 UTC 2006

On 6/28/06, Oliver Coddington <olivercoddington at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> The question ultimately is how far are we willing to allow Wikipedia to
> become less 'free' and whether we think any measure that does reduce the
> 'freedom' on Wikipedia is worth it?

The words free and freedom are really not what you want. Even their
conventional meaning is poorly matched, and these words are so
overloaded in our community.

I'd call what you're referring to the practice of promiscuous
participation without organized review, though perhaps someone has a
more succinct way of putting it.

Because we are so often confronted with hard problems which are, at
least in part, related to that model, there is often talk about
measures that move away from that model. But all we've ever really had
is talk.  Even things like inhibiting new articles from the
unregistered users does not materially limit promiscuous
participation, unless we wish to define the requirement of hitting
'edit this page' and 'submit' as material limits on participation.