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

Wed Jun 28 20:42:11 UTC 2006

On 6/28/06, Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sf.net> wrote:

> 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.

My experiences suggest otherwise. It is frustrating to try to contact
a user who has not provided an address and who is no longer actively
editing.

> * It is a privacy problem

How? You don't have to use your primary email address, or one that
identifies you; there are plenty of anonymous mail services.

> * It is a serious loss of openness

I disagree; it's a small hurdle, and does not place any additional
restrictions on who can participate (if you can edit Wikipedia, you
can register a free email account).

> * 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.

I'm not talking about requiring for all edits (and I don't agree with
doing so, nor do I agree with the experiment on en: about restricting
article creation to logged-in users). Only for those who wish to
upload images.

And the point of being able to contact them is for people who *do* get
the licensing to be able to ask. The uploader doesn't have to care,
but it is necessary that they agree to the terms, or we cannot use
their media. If we can't verify that, then we can't use what they've
done, and so in effect they are blocked from participating anyway.

> ** 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.

Then those people will not benefit, but this is not everyone. How many
people who do check their email will we reach who would not have seen
a talk page? Not everyone who is not a hopeless Wikiholic checks talk
pages every day, but most people check email pretty regularly.

-Kat

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