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

Wed Jun 28 23:20:05 UTC 2006

>From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org 
>[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tomasz 

>> However, I like numbers... they can mislead but they can 
>also be food 
>> for thought. Keep in mind we don't current recommend that anyone use 
>> the email this user to contact inactive uploaders simply because few 
>> of the images which are eligible for deletion have a confirmed user.
>>
>> There were 57,472 images uploaded to enwiki in march.
>> *21,000 come from uploaders with confirmed emails.
>> *36,472 come from uploaders without confirmed emails
>>
>> There were 30,981 total images deleted on enwiki in march.
>> *5,149 were uploaded by users who had confirmed emails.
>> *25,832 were uploaded by users who did not have confirmed emails.
>>
>> I think the policy makes sense based both on my experience and based 
>> on the numbers.
>
>So about 40% of useful contributions come from users without 
>confirmed emails, and we would be throwing them away ?

32% is closer to 30% than to 40%...

As the OP says - the numbers can be misleading - you see 40% of useful
contributions, I see that 70% of uploads by the "unconfirmed" users are
deleted as opposed to just 24% of the "confirmed" users uploads.  For me
that clearly says it's a good policy.

>The numbers prove clearly that the proposed policy is really stupid.

No, they don't.  Numbers rarely prove anything as they can be very
easily twisted in any way that seems suitable for a particular point of
view.

Cheers,
Michal (roo72)