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

Wed Jun 28 20:21:28 UTC 2006

On 6/28/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Gaining nothing? [...]
> Confirming an email address is a small thing and a one-time thing, and
> does not require giving up anonymity. I still see it a net positive.

The cost is anything but small and from the experience with licencing
issues on Wikipedia I've had so far I'd guess the gain is purely theoretical.

* It is a privacy problem

* It is a serious loss of openness

* Many people won't be uploading images if it requires email registration
** Many people do not even have an email address.
** Or they have one, but won't give it for fear of spam.
** Or they won't register, because in bad cases it takes like 30
minutes to get the confirmation procedure completed (email is slow!)
** Or the confirmation email gets lost on one of the spam filters.
** and so on.

* Even if people do register, it won't be possible to contact most of them:
** Most normal people who would get such an email, wouldn't understand
what the heck is this all licencing thing about or simply wouldn't
care. About the only people who get the licencing are Wikipedians and
Open Source geeks. And they do not need compulsory email confirmation.
** People tend to automatically delete all emails from people they
don't know as spam. So even if the email gets through it's likely to
get ignored.** Many people have special email addresses for all the
registrations that they never actually read
*** Like I never do compulsory registrations using anything else than spambob
** People are switching email addresses all the time. Half-life of
valid email address is very short.

So we have a huge pile of problems against a theory that some users
can be contacted by email and correct the licencing. It simple can't
work.